Tactic: Graywater recycling

Gaia's Garden has a section on graywater recycling... building a marsh to filter the graywater and then storing it in several ponds... I wonder if you can combine that idea with the mycelium filtration system explored in Running Mycelium? Basically, you'd build the marshfilter, and then at the end of that add a straw bale inoculated with garden giant mushrooms... double filtering leads to redundancy [a thing permaculturists adore] and I bet the garden giants could be eaten or fed to beasts like chickens or goats...

Yield: Wood for burning and working

The heat requirements of my abode/workshop will be met by woodstove/mortar scandinavian radiant thingy systems. In the Willamette Valley, about 2 cords of wood suffice. In Bend, an average home uses six cords. A cord is 4'x4'x8' and comprises 128 cubic feet. If a tree has a diameter of 6" and a height of 30', it takes 22 trees to get a cord of wood. If a tree has a diameter of 9" and a height of 50', it takes 6 trees to get a cord of wood. I need to learn about coppicing to calculate the frequency of cutting for the maintenance of a woodlot. I intend to have  a woodlot that will provide the heating needs of my abode as well as for furniture making. 

The best article found in thirty minutes of searching the interwebs.

Lost Crafts, a BBC book appears like it may have useful info.

This link also looks promising.

Yield: Wine

According to various sources, making wine averages between $1 and $3/bottle. My favourite bottle, Chateau St. Michelle Riesling, costs $7 on the west coast and $15 on the east coast. The Kniffen System of pruning, detailed in the ubiquitous Backyard Homestead, will produce 8-12-15lb of grapes per year per plant [depending on whether you read page 104 or page 106]. Page 106 tells me that I need 11-12lb of grapes for 1gal of wine. A gallon is 3785ml or slightly more than 5 average 750ml bottles of wine. At a rate of one bottle per week, I'd need to make 11 gallons of wine and so would need 13 plants [Rounding up to be safe]. This is of course after the plants reach maturity, 3 years after planting. The first two years yield nothing but mulch.

Further reading [suggested in TBH]: From Vines to Wines - Jeff Cox; *The Home Winemaker's Companion - Gene Spaziani and Ed Halloran; Making Wild Wines and Meads - Pattie Vargas and Rich Gulling; The Winemaker's Answer Book - Allison Crowe;

Yield: Eggs

When in my tip top form, I eat two eggs, fried, for breakfast daily. I like the protein early in the morning, and since various health peoples have told me it's safe to eat as many eggs as I wish, I can calculate my chicken and/or duck needs. Young layers [once they start laying at 8mo or so] can be expected to lay an egg every other day. In order to satisfy my breakfast desires, I need four chickens. Ducks are also an option, or so The Backyard Homestead tells me, but it seems like it would be a bit more difficult to care for them.

Yield: Milk

I don't like cows, apart from eating them. I don't feel comfortable with their size. The Backyard Homestead offered some ideas on substitutes, namely goats. Apparently, cows yield 6gal/day. Way too much for me. Goats yield 3q/day - a much more usable quantity. Minigoats, the Nigerian Dwarf in particular, maxes out at about 60lbs of animal and produces 1q/day, which is just more than I consume in all forms. As goats are companion animals, you can imagine getting 2q/day - perfect for milk, yougurt, ice cream, and cheese. Apparently goat milk is also indistinguishable from cow milk when raw. In order to provide all the milk I can think of needing I need 2X Nigerian Dwarf goats. She doesn't say anything about whether Angora goats can also be milkers. Doubling the function of my goats would be nice. Mini-Angoras would also be nice. [I imagine goats could also be included in the compost process of returning nutrients to soil]

Overarching Yield Goal:

Self-sufficiency!

Food production and storage

Lumber/textiles?

A big [global warming] idea is that the cost of food is going to go from being 10% of the western [American] budget back to it's historic reality of 30-50%... In order to win big, I need to devote a minimal effort to food production/storage. Lets say my production level is at 50H/W - that means if I spend less than 5H/W in activities related to food in order to maintain the current proportion of my western budget. [Meal preparation isn't included unless I somehow end up working in a restaurant sometime soon] That seems unrealistic in the high yield summer months [5H is the amount of time it took me mum and me to can 14Q [30lb fresh] of pears this year]

Permaculture, in particular Forest Gardens

~ The art of creating a landscape/ecosystem that is self-sufficient and lush. A productive garden without the intense labor costs of traditional [read: monoculture] vegetable plots or the intense fertilizer costs thereof. Key phrase: perennial polyculture of multipurpose [plants] inhabitants* P1 of Edible Forest Gardens

Key steps in building a permaculture [via Gaia's Garden P6]

1. Observe
2. Connect
3. Catch and store energy/materials
4. All elements multifunction
5. Each function supported by multiple elements
6.  Make the least change for the greatest effect
7. Use small-scale, intensive systems [wait, that makes no sense, chunking kinda does]
8. Optimize edge
9. Collaborate with succession [plan longterm]
10. Use biological and renewable resources
11. Turn problems into solutions
12. Get a yield [immediate and longterm]
13. The biggest limit to abundance is creativity
14. Mistakes are tools for learning

I mean, these are the kinds of things that one would use to evaluate anything, right? I think my process will look something like this:

1. Planning for yield - Working backward from the end goal
2. Meeting the needs of various functions that get you to the desired yield

*denotes my word change

The purpose herein:

• an exercise in planning a homestead
• principles to remember
• ideas collected
• references noted for future study
• conclusions reached
• realizing the vision [way in the future]