Project - Survey your Site
- Jimmy Barrett
- Oct 10, 2016
- 11 min read
I love simplicity, it's a grand part of permaculture, but it's also the best way to achieve personal sustainability and disaster preparedness. Part of my "simplicity plan" is to consolidate all of my books, not only on a single bookshelf (wish me luck) but also in my little Kindle that I picked up for $49 last winter (I think you can still get them online at Amazon for that price). I peruse Amazon for gems from time-to-time and I ran across a freebie that just sang to my personal search for sustainability called "Weekend Homesteader: April" by Anna Hess (link: https://www.amazon.com/Weekend-Homesteader-April-Anna-Hess-ebook/dp/B009ZFOPS4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1475887592&sr=8-2&keywords=Weekend+Homesteader). Remember, whenever you're shopping on Amazon to go to www.smile.amazon.com to make a huge difference in your every day life (see bottom of blog for the reason why)!
I am also a member of our local CERT ("Community Emergency Response Team", or in Portland, Oregon it's called NET for "Neighborhood Emergency Team") and part of the process for that work is to Survey your Neighborhood. Combined with our Permaculture work, Surveying your Site is also equally important. Unfortunately, I was raised in Germany and England before moving to the United States and - as my 9th Grade United States English Teacher once told me - that experience has "permanently stained [my] use of English". Altogether a funny statement, since I was told England was the source of that language.
In any case, while I was beginning to formulate Part One of our "Survey your Site" (Part Two "Survey your Neighborhood" forthcoming), I came across the first project in Anna Hess' "Weekend Homesteader: April" edition and I immediately researched her and contacted her. Also, after reading just the first Project I went back online to Amazon and purchased her book "The Weekend Homesteader: A Twelve-Month Guide to Self-Sufficiency" (link: https://www.amazon.com/Weekend-Homesteader-Twelve-Month-Guide-Self-Sufficiency/dp/1616088826/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8) and have already put a number of her other titles on my wishlist for later purchase. I especially like how she outlines the Goal of each project, as well as it's Cost, approximate Time, level of Difficulty, and whether or not the Kids can join you.
A little about Anna Hess (from Amazon's site): "Anna Hess enjoys writing about her adventures, both on her blog at www.WaldenEffect.org and in her books. Her first paperback, The Weekend Homesteader, helped thousands of homesteaders-to-be find ways to fit their dreams into the hours leftover from a full-time job. Hess is also the author of The Naturally Bug-Free Garden, Trailersteading, and several ebook-only titles. She lives with her husband in the mountains of southwest Virginia."
I encourage you to visit her website www.WaldenEffect.org as well as click "Like" on her Walden Effect Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/Walden-Effect-110763222335789/?fref=ts)! After contacting Anna to discuss with her the wonderful work of her "Weekend Homesteader" series she has graciously granted us permission to utilize it here.
Survey your site
Goal: Figure out the assets and problems presented by your yard and community Cost: $0 - $5 Time: 2 hours to 5 hours Difficulty: Medium Kid-friendly: Maybe What's the best spot in your yard to plant an apple tree or plan a chicken run? Is there free food going to waste in your neighborhood? This exercise walks you through mapping the important features of your yard and community so that your homestead will thrive.
Map of your yard
Mapping your yard allows you to keep track of current projects and to plan for the future. This diagram shows the core of my homestead, which is located on a small plateau surrounded by wooded hills.
Start out by drawing a map of your own habitat. If you live on a large parcel of land, make two maps–one that shows your whole property and then a closeup version that illustrates the most-used zones close to home. Mark the location of your house and the edges of your yard. Add in trees, shrubs, vines, your vegetable garden, the chicken coop, the dog house, and anything else you see. If you have a septic field, include it on the map, along with any buried power, phone, or water lines. Sloped ground is important to designate, as are potential sources of water like creeks and ponds. Some of you are probably tearing out your hair by now. "I can't draw!" you're telling me. "I failed art!" Please don't worry if you're not a prime draftsman–no one needs to see this map except you. If you're having trouble drawing to scale, you can pace off distances from your house to a tree, the length of your fence line, and so forth, then use a ruler to mark off approximate distances on your map. Graph paper makes this step easier since you can set a square to equal a foot, two feet, or ten feet and do away with the ruler. But I don't want you to think that this map has to be perfectly to scale and rendered like a blueprint–it's just a memory aid, so make it as sketchy as you like. Once you have a somewhat accurate rendering of your yard, scan it into the computer and print out a few copies (or just photocopy the map). Put the original away somewhere safe so that you can make more copies if necessary, and move on to the next step.
Sunlight
By combining Google Sketchup and Google Earth, you can estimate shade patterns at different times of the year. Molly Phemister at www.eatcology.com created the images above, showing early afternoon shade during the summer and winter solstices.
Every living thing is affected by the amount of sun and shade in its habitat, so you're going to devote an entire map to outlining the sunniest and shadiest spots in your yard. The first step is to mark north on your map and look for any obstructions to sunlight, like hills, trees, or buildings. Get up at dawn one morning this week and trace in the shadows when the sun is low, then repeat this endeavor in the evening just before the sun sets. If you're technologically inclined, consider using Google Sketchup to designate parts of your yard that are in full sun even during the shortest day of the year. Next, think about areas that aren't shady now, but will be soon. Draw in the canopy spread your fruit trees will exhibit when fully grown (see the "Plant a fruit tree" chapter for average sizes), and add on the shade line from the porch you plan to build.
We keep our bees, hang our laundry, and grow winter vegetables in the sunniest part of the yard.
You should now have a good idea of the sunniest and shadiest parts of your yard. Sun is good for your garden, your chicken coop in winter, your bee hive, and your clothes line. Shade is perfect for relaxation during hot weather, for summer chicken habitats, and for planting northern species (like gooseberries) at the southern limit of their range.
Soil quality
After sunlight, the most important factor influencing plant life is soil quality. An exercise in January will walk you through sending your soil off for scientific testing, but for now we're going to focus on what you can see with the naked eye. Start with sogginess. During heavy rains, are there parts of the yard that puddle up or turn into a muddy mess? If so, mark these on your map. Even if you've never seen your yard after a rain, you can get an idea of swampy areas from the plants growing there. In mowed yards, sedges and rushes will often grow up in waterlogged spots. These plants look like grasses to the untrained observer, but are easy to distinguish once you start paying attention. "Sedges have edges," meaning that their stems are triangular in cross-section rather than round (easy to tell by spinning a stem between your thumb and finger) and sedges also produce flowers and fruit that look different from grass seed heads. "Rushes are round", meaning that these plants have stems that are totally circular, a bit like grass but lacking any flat leaf blades. Rushes also tend to be darker green than other grass-like plants, while sedges tend to be more yellow-green. Next, look for soil fertility. Are there areas where grass struggles to grow and patches of bare ground show through? There's probably something wrong with the soil there (or it's just a high traffic part of the yard, which is also good to know). Large expanses of broomsedge (a tall grass that turns red-brown during dry weather) are indicators of poor soil, especially in fields that aren't mowed down into a lawn regularly. If you're living on the site of an old farm, you might also find very fertile areas where the family dumped their compost or where their outhouse once stood, often marked by lush stands of wild blackberries.
You can learn a lot about your soil by digging up a spadeful and peering inside. Earth full of worms is usually rich with organic matter.
If you want, you can go a step further and dig up a spadeful of soil from several spots in your yard. Is the soil all the same, or does the dirt look darker (more fertile) in some areas than in others? Is your earth hard to pierce with a shovel (a sign of clay), full of rocks, or sandy and easy to spade up? Are many worms present (a sign of high organic matter)? Each soil type provides prime conditions for some plants but will make others struggle. For example, we spent years trying to grow fruit trees in a waterlogged part of the yard before learning that we had to create mounds of raised soil before planting or the trees' roots would drown. On the other hand, this area would be a great spot to install a pond or plant cranberries. The best soil for your vegetable garden will be fertile, not too wet, and made up of a mixture of sand, clay, and organic matter. Meanwhile, a field of broomsedge might be a good location for a chicken run since these animals' high fertility manure will naturally improve poor soil.
Nodes and paths
To create paths your dogs and kids will follow, design around nodes (designated by red circles on this map.) Assuming there's no obstruction (like a tree) between nodes, most people and animals will follow the path of least resistance, even if that "natural path" (shown as a red line) tramples through your flowerbeds.
The next map you'll draw is a traffic diagram of your yard. We all like to believe that we start with a clean slate and can do anything we want to with our habitat, but the truth is that your dog is going to run from the house to the garage every time your husband comes home from work, and the kids aren't going to follow that beautiful, winding path and will instead cut straight across your flower bed. It's easier to figure out where natural paths lie in advance and then work around them rather than spending your days yelling at Fido when he walks in the wrong spot. Nodes are a good way of discovering natural paths. A node is any spot in your yard (or just outside the boundaries) that receives a lot of attention from any human or animal in your family. Every door is a natural node, and so is the spot where you park your car, the pond your dog likes to drink out of, and the tree your kids love to climb. Most of us are pretty linear, and if you draw straight lines between your yard's nodes, you've probably discovered the natural paths. Your traffic map will give you an idea of where to create mulched or stone pathways to prevent mudholes during rainy days, and where to place gaps in raised beds so that your dog doesn't make his own hole right through your prize tomato plant. On the other hand, high maintenance crops or herbs you use often should be planted close to a main thoroughfare so that they get attention and are cared for and harvested regularly.
Map of your community
The final step in this weekend's exercise is to create a diagram of your community. The simplest way to start is to go to Google Maps and print out a map showing the area within a few miles of your house. Your community map will vary drastically depending on whether you live in a walkable urban area and spend most of your time within a mile or two of home or whether you live in a rural setting and have to drive twenty or thirty miles every time you head to the store. You should tweak this map to focus on what's important to you, whether that's bagged autumn leaves to mulch your garden or discarded building supplies to turn into a shed out back. Mark down sources of free garden fertility like the coffee shop that throws away its grounds, the mill with excess sawdust, or the stable with piles of manure. Neighborhood fruit trees are another natural fit for this map since many city dwellers have forgotten what to do with wormy apples and leave them to rot on the ground; if you know when the June apples two blocks over are ripe, it would be worth marking the event on your calendar so you can ask to harvest some found fruit. A community garden and the home of an elderly neighbor whose vegetable patch is starting to flag from lack of energy are worth noting if you have limited growing space–both could turn into supplemental garden plots for you. Consider areas you walk or drive to regularly–can you pick up out-of-date newspapers from a store on your way to work and turn them into worm bin bedding? You may also want to consider negative ways that your community might impact your homestead. Do you have a neighbor who's concerned with tidiness? If so, it might be a good idea to put your clothesline out of his sight. Does another neighbor spray herbicides along the property line? Best keep your vegetable garden a few feet back from the boundary so you don't end up eating poisons. Is there a polluting industrial facility within a few miles that will send windborne pollution in your direction? Perhaps a windbreak of bamboo or trees on that side of your property would capture the chemicals and keep them out of your yard.
Weather
There's a reason farmers like to sit around and talk about the weather–temperature and precipitation have a huge effect on crops and livestock. It wouldn't hurt to get into the habit of paying attention to the weather on your homestead at the same time you're learning about its physical landscape. I try to keep track of the amount of precipitation and of the maximum and minimum temperature every day, recording the information in a notebook or spreadsheet (or on my blog). I also note down the date of the first frost and the first killing freeze in the fall, along with the last frost in the spring. The main piece of equipment you'll need to start your miniature weather station is a digital thermometer that keeps track of the maximum and minimum temperature. You can buy a rain gauge as well, or can simply use a straight-sided bucket combined with a ruler to measure water depth. Your records will be most useful during the growing season when precipitation totals will help you decide whether to water your garden. In addition, you'll begin to learn how your homestead's microclimate differs from the local weather station that supplies your daily forecast. Our homestead sits on the north side of a hill, so we can count on spring freezes even if the forecast predicts a low of only 36 degrees Fahrenheit, which helps me know when to pull out the row covers to protect strawberry flowers. After a few years on your farm, you'll know which direction the storms come from, will be able to locate an exposed spot that might someday house a windmill, and much more.
What do I do with all these maps?
Hopefully, the simple act of making these maps has gotten your creative juices flowing. Maybe you're itching to put in an herb bed right outside the kitchen door, or to approach that neighbor whose luscious peaches are attracting yellowjackets two houses down. Feel free to let the maps guide your interests. On the other hand, even if you're sick of the project, don't throw your maps away. Rustle up a binder or folder and put the maps together in a safe spot so that you'll have them when it's time to find a spot for your bee hive or currant bush. It never hurts to possess extra information when planning a homestead.
Reprinted with the express permission of Anna Hess of Walden Effect and author of numerous Amazon titles that can be found by clicking the link:
My wife and I are heavily involved in our local music community and we are well known. Even though we could get into most venues for free, we insist on paying at the door in order to support our local music community. If you are involved with Heart 2 Heart Farms, or in any element of the Homesteading, Sustainability, or Disaster Preparedness community it is imperative that we support those that support and educate us. While Anna Hess' first e-periodical "Weekend Homesteader: April" is free on Kindle, we ask that you do not pass on her book, but share the link (as we've done above) if you enjoyed it. By sharing the link you introduce others to the wonderful resource that Anna is for the rest of our community.
Jimmy Barrett is a work-at-home Dad who enjoys the journey of learning about Permaculture, Homesteading, Sustainability, Simplicity, and Disaster Preparedness. Please note that opinions expressed by Jimmy Barrett may not be shared by Heart 2 Heart Farms, should you have any questions please feel free to email us directly.
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