Our Big Dreams of Greening the Desert - Off-Grid Homestead Permaculture Plans

[Music] hey i'm jonathan i'm ashley and we're tiny shiny home we're a family of six building our off-grid desert homestead from the ground up that's right we're focused on natural and sustainable building methods and doing everything as naturally as we can today we're going to be showing you our long-term permaculture plan for this property as well as our detailed site plan very exciting but before we get started what exactly is permaculture wikipedia says that the definition of permaculture is an approach to land management that adopts arrangements observed in flourishing natural ecosystems it includes a set of design principles derived using whole systems thinking uses these principles and feats such as religion true what is it i don't i can't regret are these words to dump something regenerative aggregate energy regenerative agriculture rewilding and community resilience what um if you had trouble understanding that that's okay because we did too lots of words no real meaning guys let's talk about what permaculture means to us here in the desert [Music] first up is water we need to catch store and divert as much water as possible we need to plant wind and fire break trees because we have extreme weather and fire events here we also need to create ponds and irrigation we want to build an oasis in the desert we want to design our property for maximum efficiency but also we want it to be beautiful and we want to give back to the land instead of taking away from this leads us to rudy po he's our local permaculture designer here in cochise county and he's helping us wrangle all of our ideas into a cohesive plan for this homestead we're gonna spend some time with rudy today he's going to explain a lot of these permaculture concepts in detail how burns and soils work and he's going to share specifically our property design for our long-term plants so without further ado [Music] i'm rudy poe and i'm a permaculture designer one of the things that inspires me tremendously about permaculture is this concept that we can relate to nature in a form that's power with versus power over nature and when we start to acknowledge and look at nature and empower with perspective we can start to observe its patterns we start to observe how energy flows and we can start to utilize systems that help us harness those energies to help us live as humans so that's the specific reason why it inspires me because we have the ability to be able to live on our lands forever when i say forever i'm talking about being able to stay on our lands increasing the abundance increasing the amount of organic matter in the soil which translates directly into foods things that we use and build with we can design our system here so that all of the energy stays and grows more abundance a big part of my journey has been working with and learning from some of the local greats brad lancaster was a huge inspiration for me he's a tucson native who really pioneered the rainwater harvesting and has made a lot of significant shifts in my hometown of tucson arizona the other big giants in my mind there's bill mullison who is the father of permaculture and then also i studied directly with the modern day father of permaculture who is jeff lawton who if you haven't seen it has a wonderful video called greening the desert and really just shows how we can transform even a desert or desertified landscape and bring it back to a state of thriving abundance that can produce food shade and shelter for life [Music] so my goal my mission is to help others to really essentially heal these lands in such a way where we can harness the energy of sake for example water and the sun and wind even to aid us and living that way we as humans can live and increase abundance versus overdrawing the natural capacity of the natural systems one of the first things we're working on here with the tiny shiny homestead is berms and swales [Music] we're gonna talk about water right because water is a big deal in the desert everybody always asks us why don't you just drill one unfortunately in this particular area there's an issue with sort of big agriculture some dairy farms that are pulling down the water table and so existing wells are starting to dry up so for us it doesn't feel like it's a good investment because wells are really expensive out here you have especially like where we are we probably have to go down six seven hundred feet at least to hit walk so we're looking to rainwater catchment as an alternative it's also expensive but it's not necessarily dictated by what other people are doing there's obviously roof rain water catchment which is what most people do we don't have a lot of roofs out here yet we will eventually have some but what we're going to talk about right now are berms and swells berms and swales actually pull from sort of the ancient wisdom of our elders essentially even if you look at more recently um back in the 1930s during the great depression roosevelt created these work organizations once called the civil conservation corps the ccc yeah the ccc and the work progress administration the wpa but through them they actually focused in on doing rainwater harvesting and i don't think at that time they were necessarily like you know it's not like a movement like the way it is now you can think of them as a way to sorry you can think of another way you can think of them as a way to harness and capture the flow and the energy of water as water flows down a landscape if there's nothing to stop it it'll eventually congregate and concentrate down small drainage ways eventually into washes and eventually to larger washes and eventually to large rivers like for example the colorado river which drains to what is called source energy or the source which is the ocean but all the points in between there the easiest and the simplest time to capture all that energy is at the top when it first falls on the ground and it starts to sheet flow across the landscape right which is what we have here we have a really terrific opportunity considering the landscape that we have here where we have in general a pretty flat landscape that is pitched downward and with all that water um it will flow it will fall on the ground and gently sheet flow down the landscape and the good news is just looking at what's here it's got a ton of grass and this is always a wonderful thing to see on any property because a ton of grass means there's something holding that soil in so then as it fingers its way downhill what we can do is we could create a capture and the capture is literally a swale depression in the ground so that if this is uphill it will flow down this way and we can stop it right there and allow it to infiltrate into the ground so let's talk about like the basic mechanics of a bourbon swale because some people may not know what that even means or what it looks like [Music] there's a lot of different swales out there and a swale is basically a depression a long linear depression in the ground that we install on contour and that's the important part about it is it's on contour which is perpendicular to the flow of water so if water is flowing downhill we stop it with a perpendicular swell which is a depression in the ground that can hold the water right so all of our water is going to be flowing this way towards you yeah and then we're going to be putting berms as well as across this way so the water runs into it absolutely yeah one way to increase the holding capacity of a swell is to create a simple berm which is as you excavate that swell as you remove soil you're taking that excess soil and you're putting it on the downhill side of that swale to build a raised area where you can plant plants and trees right and also the one of the main functions of it is really to increase the capacity of that swale so it can hold more water the berms serve a wonderful place to plant plants because they're relatively higher and drier and then allows the roots to go down as deep as they need towards where the water is captured the other huge benefit with it is that we are creating a capture not only for water but for everything for organic matter for materials for animals for you know things to decay and because of the relative moisture is higher in those areas we're gonna have more decay which translates directly into more organic matter increasing of organic matter translates into more abundance you can grow especially here in the desert right absolutely especially here at the desert so yeah that's and that's the biggest um challenge we have living in desert climates is stopping these torrential flows to stop again stopping torrential winds even because winds are wonderful for they deposit nutrients from afar there's a lot of benefits to slowing winds down because it helps deposits of organic matters of nutrients of minerals to go back into the soil and the best part about is it deposits all of that on the surface so that it can trickle down and get more access to underground roots to underground microorganisms it's all food for life right there [Music] we're using we're capturing water and it's not like it goes on the ground and it goes to the aquifer and then we use it but there's actually so many more other benefits to that in the sense that we're using the ground as a battery storage and the way these natural processes work is as we build the organic matter in the soil we actually increase the capacity of that soil to hold more water so for example for every one percent of organic matter that we increase per acre of soil we increase the water holding capacity of that soil by on the order of eight to ten thousand gallons of water it makes a huge difference when we do these things when we can make those changes and the shifts to increase organic matter and then everything else benefits from that your fruit trees that you plant close to that area the wind breaks pieces you put of course close to the area become more resilient they have better access to nutrients we don't have to water them as often you don't have to water them this often yeah so besides actually like you know recharging the aquifers and like putting like increasing our battery storage in the ground the other practical benefit is that we can actually capture and store this water runoff to use for later too so it's not all going in the ground so let's talk about that and how on our particular property like we've designed a few like a swimming pond and like a storage pond and then like how big they are and how that those numbers actually work in terms of like how long it'll take to fill them up and how many gallons we're able to produce just from rains because it's crazy [Music] with the rainwater harvesting plan for the tiny shiny homestead we're going at it from multiple aspects of types of storage and what i mean by that is we're starting first and foremost with what is readily available when it rains and we can do this in two ways we can do it passively or actively an active refers to water tanks you know above ground storage systems which tend to be expensive right and those are experiencing yeah and we will be doing that especially for the rain like the roof catchment we'll be putting that into like storage tanks and then pumping it around the property yeah but we're also going to supplement with ponds yeah and that's and that's the other sort of the multi-faceted approach that we're taking here is we're gonna also harvest the rain water that flows on the land utilize it for the most beneficial use so um one we're storing the water in the ground yes and then two we're also going to be storing it in a system and a network of ponds we're actually pulling from what our great grandparents did in this very valley and you can actually see remnants of these there's remnants of this on my property where they dug and harvested water into large ponds that they burned up across washes and drainage waste they knew what they were doing back then yeah during the times of year when that pond would fill up they would utilize that water to irrigate crops to water cattle and that's just how they did it back then because it was probably the lowest cost option available at that time sure to be in tune with the rhythms of nature and so that's what we're going to be doing here at this very property is capturing that water that sheet flows down from this direction and flows this way and we're going to have this spawn contour swale across the entire land uh landscape here that will capture all that water and once it all fills up that one swell it will overfill into a pond that's on the same line of the contour swales as well and i should say the property that our house is on this parcel is six acres so what we're talking about here in terms of of water storage is only six acres and there is another smaller parcel that's up ahead of us it's an acre and a half that we can also include in those calculations because nobody's doing anything with it these are going to dictate like you said where the swimming pond goes where the other pond goes but also where our buildings and our houses and our animal animal pens and all that like this is this is like the basic infrastructure for the whole property so it's really important that we start to get these in place so that we can start to do other things in where we live we what's a general pattern of our climate our environment is that we get these monsoon rings it's not uncommon for and one of those rains to get one or two um large two inch rain events and we're talking about within a 24 hour period about two inches of rain falling in that period and so when you put the numbers together it's close to 350 000 gallons of rain just falling on this six acres because we get such big rain events that means there's a higher potential for runoff right because it can't soak in that fast oh yeah yeah yeah it can't soak in that and then there will come a point when the soil becomes super saturated and at that point that's what runs off okay so during a two-inch rain event you're saying that in our brooms and soils and ponds we could capture 250 000 gallons absolutely yeah and so that's when we think about those numbers that's what we're sizing our swales for we're sizing our swells to calves for 250 000 gallons over the landscape the depth of the swale and like the width of it that's all sized based on our water calculations yeah [Music] so when we moved on to our 11 acres we decided to only fence in six and even on that six acres the decision of where to put things was completely overwhelming so that's when we called rudy we were like help us design where our house goes where our animals should go how we're gonna store water and all the things so we have our plan here that rudy has helped us decide on so we're going to go over what all this means so do you want to talk about why we chose to put things in certain areas yeah absolutely um one of the most important things that you can just even looking at this is you'll start to see some structure naturally arise that was formed by water the energy of water and when we take into context like we want to capture water we want to make sure that we capture most of the flow of water most the rainfall that falls into play and most of the stuff that flows into the site it created this natural pattern that you see on the site and that's the first structures you start to see here is the natural patterning of your landscape so you start to see things naturally develop there like oh there's a great spot for a building because it's when i think about a building we're trying to think about what is the safest place to put it free from getting flooded free from um also protected the most from wind and also the sun zones is this idea of looking at how do we as humans interact and relate to our environment and there's this concept that's really important it's called the lazy man's garden sort of the lazy man's home and so a great way to illustrate this is say for example you have your home at a certain point on the property and then you have your vegetable garden like 200 feet over this way and you see it naturally maybe every other day versus if you place the garden close to where you walk every day to go to the car for example or you have a fruit tree on the way to where you visit your car or to get into your car you get to set our eyes onto that element to that garden to that orchard or whatever daily and so that's what informed where we started i started to place your elements here there are certain things that are energy intensive for example vegetable gardens very energy intensive you'll probably be going there once a day at least another thing that's energy intensive are chickens you're probably going to be harvesting eggs every day so you better bet that when we zone things we're gonna put the energy-intensive things close to where humans reside and the less need and care that the element needs for example cattle don't need to be seen every single day you can start to push those things out towards the periphery when we look at your property you'll see these concentrated zones of intensive human and energy-intensive aspects like for example the vegetable gardens the living systems the intensive watering systems the energy systems like solar power are all kind of concentrated in sort of the sort of the core center of your whole property and then as you build your way out from there we get into the less intensive things for example pastures little paddocks for your goats as you walk to the chickens you have other interactions for example i love how you guys designed your property here because as you walk from from your house to this chicken coop you're walking past your kids village all the kids so you can check in with all the kids by virtue of just checking on the chickens yep or by virtue of checking on your kids you're going to check on the chickens so we're starting to double up all these different energy energies so that you guys have the most efficient flow and then also it creates the most sort of vibrancy in your life we're talking about a lifestyle of community family interaction and that you want to walk past your kids every day and see them every day and um you also want to see your chickens every day that's where we start to stack compatible functions to create energy efficient systems that aren't just efficient but they're effective they're effective at building relationships to people and things and animals yeah that's beautiful [Music] [Music] this is the general overview of the six acres that we have fenced in here is our house this is facing west so the pond is right out here in front of the mountain view we have our chickens here which is where we're building our chicken run right now our gardens will be closer to the house and a food forest here and then this will eventually be a barn and all these green areas are where we're going to rotate animals our goats our pigs our chickens and maybe even eventually a cow and up here on the far south side of our property is where the airstream will be that's our solar shed and here is a general area where our solar array is now this down here is our extra pond this is the swimming pond but this is going to be our irrigation pond where it catches any extra water and we can pump up to irrigate trees and and any other garden that we need to and eventually our kids will have their own little casitas here around the driveway and eventually a little outdoor kitchen gathering area here when we talk about the rotational grazing aspects of your property to put it into context of what a lot of the maybe cattle ranchers or people around here would use is generally the rule of thumb is 40 acres per head of cow per cow that you have that's being flipped on its side with the holistic ranchers out there now where they rotationally graze and they move the cattle often daily and um they only allow one site to be grazed once and then they move them on so that number is smaller but you know we're dealing here with six acres of land and we want to have potentially a cow and you have you have the goats you have chickens and all sorts of stuff so the way this is designed is where you can still sustainably and regeneratively rotationally graze your animals for certain periods of time during the year and then the other times say for example there isn't enough land to sustainably allow them to rotationally graze their property they're held into your central core holding pen that's the time where all the fields are being recovered for the next season for the next phase and then also here they just get fed whatever you might be growing or feed from other sources but that's how you can have animals sustainably on small acreage you know you're still going to have to get the outside feed so you can start to dial that down and tune it based on your area and the good news with your area is you got lots of grass so you got lots of good grass that um you know over time once you build the organic matter into the soil the grass stands will get denser and richer more abundant which means less food that you have to actually import this is sort of the new wave that we're on in the modern days which i'm really excited about is to see us be able to utilize a creature that we've kind of demonized as being the culprits of global warming and over grazing and all that and start to utilize them as how nature intended and designed it to be [Music] before we go let's talk more about wind breaks because hey wind is a big deal out here it really is we've seen it cause all sorts of destruction it can be a real problem if you're not prepared for it and so like we mentioned earlier these berms and swells if we plant the right types of trees along those berms then we can help protect the things that we're building out here first step with wind breaks is getting the general property boundaries or established in terms of protection anything with inside the protected zone of the windbreak will have a relative higher humidity really yeah okay we'll also have less wind which means more established concentration of organic matter and material right because it's not getting blown it's not being blown away right so yeah so that's the most important aspect is deciding and placing your wind breaks so it actually protects the areas that you want to protect and what's worth protecting is anything you're growing um things that consume energy like houses because you know if your house is getting blasted with high winds all the time that's reducing the thermal efficiency of your home right so we're protecting the house too those windbreak species that we want to choose at this point would be things that can withstand the wind and a lot of the plants like the pines a lot of pines do really well right with winds yeah which you don't think about pines a lot in the desert but it does help that we're high desert though right yeah if we were like lower would that still be an option uh no lower uh mesquites in our climate mesquites are always a great option because they're so dense they're so thick and they also double up as a food native food source we're high enough that we can do pine based which fill in even better than a mesquite right well they give you more protection in the sense that they're taller true so the taller the one break the more zone of protection behind it with the spin brake system here we're creating a system of a zone of protection to support life and that directly translates into less maintenance less upkeep and also privacy too right i mean you can use these as privacy screens in addition to wind breaks one other thing we didn't talk about earlier was firewood so you can also use the berms and soils to generate more tree and especially as they fill in like you were telling me about the idea of sort of leaving space between those trees and growing up a smaller tree in between the big ones and to help fill it in quicker but then once the bigger ones fill in then you can cut down that little one and you can chop it up and use it as firewood absolutely yeah we have for example on this plant a 600 foot long swale that's a lot of digging guys if we closely spaced these trees say at 15 feet on centers and say for example we did something like a arizona cypress which will easily get 20 25 feet wide we're looking at every other tree you can take out as they fill in right so we're talking about up towards to about 40 trees just on this one swale with in the future timeline 20 full trees that you're going to be able to harvest for firewood and one tree will probably get you through a whole season so i think about multiple seasons of firewood available for for a harvest right here so it's like it all works together or something a really big point about any of this design work that we're doing is we're beginning with end in mind [Music] so man this has been amazing thank you so much not only for like designing this because it's been a huge weight lifted off our brains of like because decision fatigue is a real thing when you're building raw land from scratch i mean you can put anything anywhere you want and it just becomes too much so thank you so much for helping us focus and figure out what we needed to do um and thank you so much for coming on here and like sharing all this information because if you live off-grid if you're trying to build something like this from scratch like these concepts are huge it's the it's sort of the new way of doing things it's the way everything is going and we just really want to help shine a light on this whole permaculture thing because it's going to change the way that we can live offer it yeah thank you jonathan yeah and yeah i really appreciate your guys's vision and effort you guys brought me in at the perfect time in the sense that um oftentimes i'll get onto a site where we've already got houses too many things already and that makes the design a little harder but still completely possible sure but you you brought it in a time where we can actually make some very big critical decisions early on and that way you can know you know into the future that your your house is placed for a very good reason exactly we've got multiple reasons why the house is there from energy efficiency to wind breaks to protection to view sheds to all these things and so when we could take all that and look at it in the planning stage you can step forward with that security and assurance knowing like ah yeah that's there because of that yeah and you you know why that foundation's there you know why that wall is being built exactly yeah well cool um yeah thanks again so much and uh ashley and i are going to wrap things up but we'll tell you how to get in touch with 3d if you need your own permaculture design because i think a lot of you might all right we hope that you found this interview with rudy super useful i know that we have learned so much from him and we're so passionate about sharing these concepts and ideas because we know that it will make a huge difference for off-grid homesteaders as you know we're just getting started here on our own property so if you want to follow along make sure you're subscribed and if you need your own permaculture guide like we did we can highly recommend rudy you can get in touch with him at waterslifedesign.com we'll see you next time [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: Tiny Shiny Home

Views: 94,245

Keywords: off grid, permaculture farm, off the grid, living off grid, self sustainable, geoff lawton, greening the desert, permaculture farmstead, permaculture farm in desert, permaculture farm design plan, regenerative agriculture homestead, regenerative agriculture carbon sequestration, food forest harvest, off grid solar power system, permaculture homestead, regenerative agriculture, permaculture garden

Id: CoCiCW4xK0Q

Length: 33min 34sec (2014 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 08 2022

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Hey friends, we sat down with a local permaculture specialist who's studied with Geoff Lawton and talk about all things berms + swales, ground water catchment calculations, designing our property with intention and purpose, and so much more. If you're planning on doing any permaculture design work for your off-grid homestead, this is a wealth of information to start with. Enjoy!