Best Laid Plans and Focusing on Zone Zero

Best laid plans.... so much for posting weekly and following the "Gardening Week-by-Week" book. I got off track but for a good reason! As some of you know, back in April, Momma headed to Florida to visit her momma and sisters. In her absence, there was some surprises afoot.

In Permaculture, Zones are The KEY to all things planning. Zone Zero is the home, Zone 1 is the space around the house that you can get to easily for gathering a quick herb for the kitchen without getting soaked if it is raining, Zone 2 is the next area…and so on. When you read about permaculture design, usually they start with talking about Zone 1--designing from the doorstep outward. Zone Zero gets little attention.

Well, April to mid-July forced me to stop focusing on Zones 1 & 2 and turn inside to Zone 0 -- our home. We had tried to finance a mobile home but were turned down. I had knocked on every door I could think of to get help with making our home safe in general and especially for my elderly mother. When she left home, she expected to return to the same broken down home. The trip wasn't expected to be more than a few weeks or a month at most. What she didn't know was that while she was gone, friends and a few very special Baptist Men came in and worked on making some major repairs to our house. I had to refocus off the gardens and onto decluttering, painting, and dealing with life in a construction zone. It was all very worth it and Mother was very surprised about what she found when she finally came home mid-July.

Zone Zero – the home. The place we gather as a family to seek warmth and comfort. Our spirits as well as our bodies are sustained and supported by what Zone Zero provides. The kitchen is a big part of Zone Zero as it is the “center” – it is where we go multiple times a day, engaging in the timeless rituals we have around cooking, eating, and gaining physical, emotional, and spiritual sustenance. 

What should our goal be for Zone Zero? I think most would agree that the goal is comfort, safety, tranquility. It should be a place where family and friends like to gather. An uncluttered place that allows for the uncluttering of the mind and spirit. Just as we hope to create permaculture gardens that others want to enjoy, our Zone Zero should be a place we – and others—want to live in. But, what makes a home comfortable, safe, and full of tranquility? For each person, there will be a different answer -- but it is important to ask the question.

First, declutter. One of the biggest things I had to do in front of, and behind, the construction work was to declutter. My mother is minor league hoarder. Along with that, at some point this home fell under a grey cloud that seemed to collect "stuff". As stuff collected, the cloud got heavier and more oppressive and harder to fight. Stuff not only clutters the space but it clutters the mind and spirit. So, step one is to declutter. It sounds easy. But Stuff has a way of entwining itself around and through our hearts. We find ourselves keeping things because of the memories invoked. King Solomon wisely stated, "...a time to keep and a time to throw away" and indeed there is a time to throw out the clutter so that the treasures we keep are appreciated and enjoyed more. An amazing amount of useless stuff went into the waste bin and to the curb. With it's departure, and a fresh coat of paint throughout, the cloud lifted and a light and lightness came in.

Making an inviting home: [be] a lover of hospitality, ...sober, just, holy, temperate.... (Titus 1:8) One of the hopes mother and I have is to be able to open our home to friends and guests. We want to have prayer meetings and Bible studies and fellowship meals. We've not done so for a long time because of the condition of the house. We are getting close to a point when we can do that without shame or embarrassment. The desire is there to be hospitable...we just need to get things to a point we can. The Proverbs 31 wife worked with her hands to provide for her family and to create a Zone Zero that was hospitable. I have been realizing that somewhere along the journey of the last decade, I lost consistent practice of arts and crafts that both beautify a home but also feed my soul. This is something I hope to remedy.

Creating a Pantry:  The wise store up choice food and olive oil.... (Proverbs 21:20) I won't get into the argument of whether we should store up 25 years worth of freeze dried food or none at all. That is for each person to decide for themselves. Personally, I don't want to eat MREs for 25 years. I would much rather be able to source food locally. And, as much as possible, I'd like to be able to provide healthy food for my family and friends -- and a good neutraceutical/herbal medicine cabinet. So, this is where we begin to expand our focus to include the other zones of the permaculture homestead plan -- and beyond into the local trade/barter systems you can form. That trade/barter system covers our shortcomings in food production systems within our own homestead. In other words, what I can't manage to grow -- either due to lack of space or lack of skill -- I can trade or barter to obtain.

Some of the things I'd like to have in my food and medicinal/neutraceutical pantry are (**denotes things I need to learn or perfect):

Fermented foods:

Kombucha

Kefir

Sauerkraut**

Pickles / fermented veggies**
fermented garlic**

Smokehouse**:

Fish

Venison

Pork

Rabbit

duck

Larder (cool room—not quite refrigerator but cool enough to keep produce fresher longer):

“root cellar”-ed vegetables**

Canned vegetables, fruits, and meats

Dried mushrooms

candied lemon slices**

rose water**

dried herbs from the garden**

herbed vinegars/oils**
Medicinal/Neutraceutical:

salves/ointments/tinctures/teas**
Elderberry elixir
Muscadine juice
Mulberry juice
Mulberry, Blackberry, Elderberry elixir

Zone 1 & 2 activity during the last four months:

I gifted myself 15 Welsh Harlequin ducklings (females) for my birthday. I lost three before figuring out what the issue seemed to be and corrected the problem. The remaining dozen are doing well. I also gifted myself a quad set of Standard Rex show quality rabbits. This is a breed I didn't think I'd find on the East Coast so when I discovered someone just 90 minutes away, it was a no-brainer.

 I managed to actually harvest my garlic but not my elephant garlic. I hope I can locate their bulbs so that I can replant them for next year. My potato patch did well but I did not get a chance to harvest them. The tomatoes and cucumbers were a disaster. I know that a big part of the failures were because I was not paying attention to the garden. I feel very frustrated and with each passing season and garden failure, I become more convinced that animals and perennials are more my "thing" than vegetable gardening.

Speaking of perennials, my elderberries are doing fabulous! We actually did harvest some this year and made a dozen jelly jars of elderberry syrup/elixir. I will be expanding my elderberry bushes and working to make this a cash crop product. I hope to find other perennial crops that do well without a lot of effort.

Chicken Tractor

This week Son began building the chicken tractor for our first chickens. We are looking to house 6 chickens in the tractor. Son designed the tractor in his head.

Dimensions are 4' x 8' x 3' with a taller 4' section in the back end for the chicken roost.


I used to think, based on all the chicken coop plans I saw, that chickens needed coops almost as airtight and insulated as our own homes. Then, I read about open sided coops aka three-sided chicken houses. The idea that chickens are healthier in housing that does not allow the build-up of ammonia which harms their lungs makes a lot of sense to me. It also makes sense that chickens, like other birds, are able to handle the cold as long as they don't have drafts. Birds, after all, roost in trees! So, the tractor is designed to provide a roosting area that is open bottomed and with ventilation at the top. 

At the front end will be an access door for entering the tractor to tend to the chickens. The back-end will have the nestbox bump-out where our ladies will be depositing their eggs.

The tractor will move on wheels. Those square blocks on the corners are for adding stability to the structure and to provide an attachment base for the wheels. We got wheels that will carry more weight than the tractor will weigh but figured that would help guarantee ease of move-ability.

Yes, Son plans on closing the gap between the bottom frame and the ground so that undesirable movement between outside and inside is eliminated while still maintaining the mobility of the tractor.

I am proud to report that the structure is quite sturdy while being lightweight enough for even my mother to move. Soon, we'll have six lovely ladies tilling garden beds, eating bugs, and laying eggs in the prettiest tractor in a tri-state area! Only thing left to decide is what color to paint the pretty thing! (Anyone got any leftover outdoor paint they want to donate?)

We might not be quite there yet...but we are quite excited about the progress we are making!  (I'll post pictures of the completed coop soon!)

A Homestead Fence

As my son and I erected a fence for the dogs yesterday, Mother asked me if it was an organic fence. My initial response was "of course" -- this is an organic homestead afterall. But, of course, a fence of metal can not be "organic" as metal is inorganic. My chuckling at this turned to pondering about the fence and how it symbolizes the homestead life.

Homesteading is a growing movement here in the US. It isn't the same as the homesteading that took folks west to settle new territory in the early days of this country. Today, it is about self-sufficiency. Folks are learning how to raise their own food organically so that they know what they are feeding their families. We're growing our own herbal medicines and learning how to make tinctures and salves. We are learning new skill sets so we are ready for what may come. It's a movement about gaining confidence in our ability to care for our own.



Dogs checking out their new Dog Yard



What does this have to do with a fence? Well, I got it through Craigslist at a great deal as long as I came, took it down, and moved it. BJ and I went and took it down and a friend came and loaded it on his truck. The same friend loaned us a post driving tool (non-power driven) but was not able to provide a stretcher for the chainlink. Together, we drove the posts and stretched the chainlink. Stretching that chainlink without a stretcher was impossible until I remembered a little physics trick. We got some rope, tied it around the link and post and used a screwdriver to twist the rope. Tada! The chainlink stretched, and the fence came together--literally!

Then, there was the issue of the damage done by the seller's dog. Mostly of no consequences except for one spot where our dogs were bound to decide to use it as a back door. More homesteading ingenuity. BJ took an old board we'd saved from an old set of porch steps, hammered a few nails in it, and wired it to the fence to close off the back door. And, finally, there was a small gap at the gate that was Chloe sized. Sure enough, it didn't take her long to find it. So, a metal post used for temporary fencing was hammered into place and the Chloe sized exit was closed.

I used to wonder why my dad and stepfather were so fanatical about saving "stuff". Neither were hoarders by any means but they tended to hold on to things that I saw as trash. Coffee cans, old brick, the odd piece of old wood or bits of wire. They understood what I am just beginning to learn: that today's junk is tomorrow's "just what I needed". Homesteading is about being prepared for the "in case of's" and that requires having a well selected stash of "I might just need that"s.