Resilience is designing for wellness through time. – Lorca Smetana Resilience. If I were to choose a word for […]
Looking to the Future: Permaculture and Resilient Life Practices Read More »
I distinctly remember planting my bare root grape vines in late April, 4 years ago, with a couple volunteers, Tim and Carli. It was their first day helping out and I felt kind of bad about the task I had chosen. Rather than giving them an uplifting experience of planting seeds in a backyard garden,
Growing Grapes in Cold Climates Read More »
If you’re craving green and a little inspiration for the growing season ahead, then my video today is for you. In it, I give you a tour of our food forest. Even though we live in a cold climate, it doesn’t mean that we can’t grow a lot of edible perennials in our yards. With
Tour of our Cold Climate Food Forest! Read More »
Every day, we are faced with ecological crises, natural disasters, conflict, war, and global epidemics. It’s often difficult to remain positive in the face of overwhelming problems. But what if there was a concrete and simple way for you to be part of the solution? The video above is a talk I gave entitled, The Best
Permaculture and Climate Change Read More »
I talked in my last blog post about how our directive, in the global north, should not only be to grow our own food but to look for other ways to reduce our energy consumption. The US Energy Information Administration estimates that 35% of our household energy use goes towards lighting, appliances and refrigeration. Therefore, anything we can
A Five Minute Project to Cut Down on your Energy Use! Read More »
Chickens are one of the easier and more useful animals to have in your backyard gardens. In permaculture, they are often the example of ‘each element performing multiple functions.’ In other words, having chickens as part of your backyard ecosystem accomplishes several functions at once. Not only can they provide you with eggs and meat
Using chickens in a permaculture garden Read More »
This past May, Broken Ground partnered with Blunderbuss for an Edible Backyard Blitz – an afternoon makeover of a yard into an ecological and edible garden. I first heard the term backyard blitz or permablitz when I visited Australia back in 2006. I had traveled to that part of the world, first to take a Permaculture Design
Edible Backyard Blitz Read More »
Water is life – this has been a common theme over the past few months and one that we understand inherently as growers of food. Catching and Storing Energy is one of the principles of permaculture and setting up systems on our property that can catch and store water are some of the most important design choices that
Rainwater Harvesting in Action! Read More »
The best way to predict the future is to design it. – Buckminster Fuller Design is a function inherent to all human beings. Choosing where we live, what job we have, what clothes we wear, how we arrange our living room and what we eat every day are all design choices. Similarly, when it comes to
Be an architect of your garden (and your life) Read More »
Here’s a short video to show you our gutter to swale system in action. Back in May, during our Water in the Landscape Workshop, participants constructed a swale on Broken Ground’s property to collect water both from the gutter and graywater from our washing machine. I’m happy to report that the system is functioning beautifully! On Monday, with
Swale System in Action! Read More »
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