The amazing progression of the Dead-end Homestead

In harmony with the beautiful Spring weather, the permaculture excitement continues to blossom on Austin's East side. The timing, in fact, has never been better to get involved! So many educational projects to work on, amazing people to connect with and delightful local dishes to savor... it's what we mean when we talk about community cultivation!

Thanks to the contributions of so many wonderful volunteers, the Dead-end Homestead has made some impressive transformations over the past two weekends. As Cooper's relaxed demeanor would suggest, the atmosphere is laid back and stress free. When the main goals of the day are to have fun, learn something new and cultivate new friendships... there's never a reason to rush.

At the same time, it's always very impressive to see the tons of projects we manage to knock out in short order on any given Sunday afternoon. The Mulch-crete hoophouse has only one more wall left to pour before it's ready for a layer of plaster to seal it all up. The swales have been cleaned out, mulched and drainage piping laid. Several compost piles have been spread around various fruit trees and grape vines. And several large piles of wood mulch have met a quick death at the end of a pitchfork. All the while, the ambiance remains one of relaxation and leisure. Take it from Cooper, life at the Dead-end Homestead is pretty darn sweet!

Speaking of sweet, this past week we were blessed with a somewhat impromptu wild bee capture workshop taught by Carrie "Queen Bee" Guipe. She showed us what we need to build "swarm boxes" and use those, scented with lemongrass oil, to attract wild bee swarms. After the bees establish a colony in one of our swarm boxes we can build them "top bar hives" so they can begin to build combs and produce delicious honey! The process is actually fairly simple and said to be mostly fool proof -- so long as you don't try to agitate the bees that is.

Carrie graciously set us up with all the plans, basic materials and laid down plenty of wisdom to get us started. Needless to say, she's sweet as honey, and it was very inspiring to have her stir up the dormant hive in us!

To continue on the path of organic design, Daryl Stewart, founder of ape99.org and host of the Permaculture Park, the one acre site that makes up the core of the Dead-end Homestead, laid out this lovely walkway that makes a beautiful accent to the swale system traversing the land. Fed by the top swale on the property, this walkway will boarder and help to retain a small pond. If you're at all familiar with the Central Texas climate, we sometimes wait months for the rain. When it finally does bless us, we want to hold onto that water as long as possible or risk the serious drought conditions that have surely been the tragic end of many a backyard garden. Creating plenty of small retention ponds helps to keep the humidity high for our dry seasons and, better still, attracts an abundance of aquatic creatures that help us build balanced and resilient ecosystems we can all enjoy.

This and other projects at the Dead-end Homestead is only a fraction of the fun work cooking up. If you've yet to make it out to a Sunday Potluck yet, there has truly never been a better time! As the weather starts warming up and approaches the unbearable 'Jul-august' the work and fun slow down and we start seeking more indoor activities. The opportunity to get some practical, hands-on permaculture education awaits. Best of all, it's completely free of charge! Just bring some work gloves, a wide brimmed hat, some sturdy shoes and an open mind... the rest will come naturally.

If you can't make the work party, the potluck usually starts around sundown and is always accompanied by friendly faces, live music, interesting conversation and, of course, some of the best food Central Texas has to offer! If you come for the potluck be sure to bring at least one dish that will feed 6-8 happy people and, whenever possible, use only the freshest local fare. For those participating in the work parties, no need to bring anything aside from the aforementioned hat and gloves, we're more than happy to feed you and keep you hydrated! Of course, if you have a dish you just have to share... by all means, your generosity is an important part of what makes us a thriving community!

With that in mind, come join us at the beautiful Dead-end Homestead this Sunday! For details check out our facebook event listing. While you're there, join the Community Cultivators facebook group and stay up to date on all the cultivation action, of which, the Dead-end Homestead is just one piece of the big vision we're cultivating together! 

Cultivating the Park

As many of you may already know, Community Cultivators, in conjunction with our friends at ape99.org, have been putting a lot of energy into cultivating a great urban permacultural demonstration site in East Austin. The site, a one acre lot near the intersection of 12th and Airport, hosts permaculture work parties and potlucks every Sunday. Starting around noon, and running late into the evening, we gather and begin to look at the various projects that are still in progress (there's always something to do in the garden).

Over the course of the past few weeks, thanks to beautiful weather and the kindness of the community, we've made significant progress on several projects. You might already be familiar with the "Just add water..." video and story we put together as a result of these fun work days. In addition to the hoophouse project you see developing through the video, we've also been working on several other exciting projects.

Built from locally harvested bamboo, our outdoor shower is beginning to take shape. This structure is a truly brilliant piece of the permaculture design.

The idea is simple, rather than flushing all that precious water down the drain as you rinse yourself off, why not use that valuable resource, otherwise wasted, to water your garden? And, if you're already going that far... why not just put the whole thing outside in the garden?! Well, that's exactly what we're doing at the out at the Deadend Homestead!

The shower is set up to feed water directly into a network of swales that traverse the property. The bamboo was harvested from a nearby property and split with a special tool that resembles some kind of kitchen utensil you might have seen on a late night infomercial. Splitting the bamboo actually increases the flexibility of this amazing building material which allowed us to weave it into the solid and artistically appealing wall form you see depicted in the picture above.

Another great new addition is the beautiful new herb spiral designed and built by Logan Keech.

This structure was built atop an old herb spiral that had falling into serious disrepair. Overgrown with weeds, with nothing notable occupying the space aside from a towering rosemary, Logan set to work revitalizing a once neglected section of the garden.

Herb spirals are another one of those iconic permaculture design structures. Utilizing shapes from nature, the herb spiral accomplishes many things in a very compact space.

The spiral shape, inspired by the nautilus, increases "edge space" (a very desirable territory in ecological terms) and creates small micro-climates that help provide more ideal conditions for a whole assortment of plants with varying environmental requirements.  In a typical garden, for example, you'd rarely want to plant parsley next to your basil. Basil is a sun loving herb that can't tolerate cold and really doesn't like the shade much. Parsley on the other hand, thrives in shady areas and, in the full Central Texas sun, can wilt and dry up quickly if proper attention and water are not dutifully applied. In the herb spiral design, these two unlikely compatriots each are able to occupy their divergent niches in relatively close proximity.

In addition, pulled by the force of gravity, water tends to move from the top-center of the structure down into the lower rings. Therefore, the drought tolerant, sun loving, native rosemary that crowns this herb spiral is the perfect centerpiece.

To help out the delicate new additions to this miniature ecosystem, Logan constructed an arching dome structure that bowes over the outer rings and meets in the center around the stately rosemary. More than just artistically inspired, this bamboo latticework helps to prevent the scratching inclinations of the resident guinea hens. They especially like getting into newly disturbed soils and fresh mulch. As you might imagine, this habit comes in direct conflict with our desire to cultivate new plants and new spaces within the garden. Being able to imagine and design structures that prevent this natural behavior from destroying our hard work is essential to good permaculture design. We want the birds to be able to express their natural desires to scratch for food and grit but we just want them to do it in places that don't disturb our delicate new ecosystems.

And finally, just to assuage those fears that Sundays at the Permaculture Park (aka, Deadend Farm and Homestead) is all work and no play, we occasionally have a local band come out to join us for entertainment. As the sun goes down, the fun begins... with fresh local food, friends, live music and the comfort of a campfire, we share our visions, thoughts and inspirations for the future. We're dreaming of the abundance we can cultivate together and we're sharing the insights our expanding community has only begun to manifest.

Please join us, all are welcome! For details, contact me directly or visit our facebook page and look up the events section. New friends are always welcome. Even if you don't know anything about permaculture, herb spirals or natural building, we're always interested in sharing our experiences and expanding community. We are, after all, Community Cultivators... and you, no matter where you are or where your interests lie, are a part of our community. Let's cultivate together!

Natural building fun!

Every Sunday a group of cultivators have been gathering together to work on various permaculture projects. Over this past year we've built several gardens, re-landscaped a housing co-operative's front entryway and built a few aquaponics systems. During the month of February, we took to a natural building project that will soon become a large new greenhouse. 

For this project we knew we wanted several strong, well insulated, walls. Going in, we already had an idea for a natural building technique using woodchip mulch of which, we just happened to have a surplus. Also on hand was a large bale of weathered paper pulp left over from a previous papercrete project. It took a little experimentation but in the end we came up with a surprisingly strong material that sets nicely and shows very little evidence of slumping!

And yes, of course, we did another fun video to inspire your own creativity.

After the "mulchcrete" wall is plastered we'll add the greenhouse panels and plastic over the top and begin to build our new aquaponics system, propigation table and guinea perch (we need a warm place to shelter the guinea hens when the weather turns bad.)

Stay tuned for more!