Permaculture Design for Knuth Farm

It has taken me a good number of weeks, but I have finished it. Pretty much. Well the first draft is done, and its a good first draft.

There'll be some definite changes after a bit of consulting with some other people, but I'm actually pretty happy with what I have managed to do.

For anyone not really familiar with Permaculture... it is a design concept coined in the late 1970s by a couple of Australians. It can probably be summarised as a sustainable design system for human habitation, and 'Permaculture' comes from the joining of 'permanent-agriculture', or 'permanent culture'. I could go on, but its much easier to look up one of the 100s of sites already all about permaculture. www.permaculture.org.au is a good one, have a read & look up some pictures.

The farm I have done the design for encompasses about 80 hectares / 200 acres.
It features remnant miombo woodland, field crops (maize, sweet potato), a seasonal creek, about 15 cattle on range and a few goats & chickens wandering around.
The soil is gutless. Deep granitic sands with very little water holding capacity and no organic matter. Plough agriculture and application of fertilisers has pretty much killed the life in the soil & ruined the soil structure.

The features of the design that I have put together are:

• creation of a 1 acre intensive vegetable garden for horticultural production
• development of a aquaponics system for horticultural and fish production
• a rotational chicken forage system to grow free range chickens, eggs and vegetable & fruit crops; chickens will also forage into the food forest & the fields as part of a pest management system
  
• use alley cropping of field crops between soil improving tree species to improve the structure & organic matter in the soil
• water harvesting through swales and a dam in the creek
  
• create a food forest of mixed fruit trees
• increased fodder for cattle & goats through large scale planting fodder trees & creating paddocks for rotational grazing
• creation of woodlots for construction timber, firewood & long-term fine timber for sale
• expansion of existing remnant woodland to improve wildlife habitat

It has been a lot of research, and stomping around the property with a tape measure, pencil & pad; I still haven't found where we can access a lot of the seed that we require, especially for nitrogen fixing & fodder trees. Permaculture wisdom suggests that 'the problem is the solution' and we've realised that it could be another area of profit growing such trees & harvesting seed for sale.

The pictures are images of the design, including an inital drawing of the current set-up in the area where most of the work will take place.