Patch Design

You ask, we answer! Lindy wanted to know what we meant by "initial patch design." The short answer is that our design process follows the permaculture principle of "design from patterns to details," which means that while we've done lots of large scale work on the property plan, such as choosing where to put buildings and gardens, we haven't done much small scale, plant-specific design. Now that we're actually beginning to plant trees, that has to change. The process we're using is called "patch design." Read on if you want the nuts and bolts.

A "patch" is essentially a garden plot, though it may not always look like a standard raised bed or have paths running along side it. Every plant in a patch, if it's well designed, will follow one or two important rules. These rules apply no matter the shape size or style of the patch.

Rule #1 is pretty much a golden rule - no two (or more) species should be forced to compete with each other. The permaculture name for this is a "resource partitioning guild," and it means that to design a patch we need to look at root structures, sunlight, nutrient needs, water needs and the ways that the plants reproduce. Some of this is obvious to any gardener - you wouldn't likely put your tomatoes in the shade or mixed in with raspberries. The tomato plants might survive, but they would hardly flourish.

There are some exceptions - the classic forestry exception is to closely space trees so that the competition drives them directly and rapidly up, toward the available light, making for straight, high quality timber logs. Another is to put pressure on a expansive plant to control it's ability to spread.

At the same time, though, many gardeners, in an effort to keep competition to a minimum, space plants far apart in bare soil, which just creates opportunities for nature to fill those niches - mostly with weeds, right? So we're always fighting nature's opportunists, who are just trying to do their job. With a permaculture patch, we're doing our best to design with a wide variety of plants (a polyculture) so that all of those niches are filled with plants WE want. So we minimize competition within the patch but fill all the spaces that nature could exploit. No more weeding!

Rule #2 is optional, but a big bonus - plants within a patch should support each other and the larger environment. This is often known as a "mutual support guild" and is what really starts to make a permaculture plot shine. Many folks will recognize the three sisters planting (corn, beans, squash) as a mutual support guild which has the added advantage of providing food for us. Imagine different sets of "three sisters" (or five sisters, or twenty sisters) plantings to benefit butterflies, or hummingbirds, or soil quality. That's what we're working on.

In this specific case, we're building a patch that has two interlocking support guilds inside of it. We have a red pine plantation which we will slowly remove, leaving acidic soil in it's place. Our patch design is focused on building soil, using lots of big leafy nitrogen fixers and dynamic accumulators (who bring up phosphorous, calcium, magnesium, etc. from deep in the soil and release it as they shed their leaves or other herbaceous mass). It's also focused on supporting our new beehives buy providing lots of pollen and nectar sources. All of these plants, shrubs and trees need to flourish in acid soil and in the partial shade created by the pines that aren't removed yet. They also need to minimize competition and support each other, as well as build healthy soil (which should slowly begin to rebalance towards neutral pH) and support lots of bees, spiders and birds.

We spend a lot of time looking at plant databases and catalogs. Each plant is a puzzle piece which may or may not fit into the big picture! Dave Jacke's Edible Forest Gardens Vol II has been a constant companion.

Hope that helps! We'll have more details about our specific plant choices soon!

Trees!

Over the last two months, over 100 trees and shrubs have been donated to ISLAND.

From the Conservation Resource Alliance, we received gray dogwood, American hazelnut, chokecherry, American bittersweet, northern hackberry, flowering dogwood and paper birch.

Greg Safronoff, who is starting a tree nursery in Traverse City, offered up black walnut, English walnut, heartnut, and Chinese chestnut hybrid.

Our pall Bill Palladino of Krios Consulting delivered the last batch by bike--about 80 miles round trip. Thanks, Bill!


Maria, one of ISLAND's summer interns, has been constructing a nursery to help the seedlings survive the animals and the weather.

Brad and Maria have been working together on the initial patch design for the plants that will keep the trees company and enrich the soil.

Deadline July 6 for Rooting Deep Branching Out

What do we know about place? How do we understand place through art?

ISLAND is proud to work alongside The Jordan River Arts Council (JRAC) to present a collaborative art exhibition about place. Help to craft a vision of what it means to live in Northwest Lower Michigan—particularly in our relationships to the specific geographies, economies, cultural communities and ecologies of the many small places that make up the north. We invite you to create, collaborate on or host works that allow viewers to move beyond the romantic and often facile answers to the question: “What does it mean to live up north?”

A Call to Artists

Artists have a unique capacity to tell us stories about ourselves – stories that help us to view our community and our world through new eyes. Artists of all disciplines help contribute to this important creative process.

We invite you to submit new or existing work that you feel helps our community to understand more about where we live. Work can be as simple and straightforward, or as complex and conceptual as you like.

For more information, visit http://artmeetsearth.org/rooting.html

Smokehouse Design

Here is the model for the smokehouse we'll be building over the next few weeks. Quite a beauty, huh? Ours will be built almost entirely from reclaimed materials and will have a simple timber frame. We'll also run the siding vertically.

This photo and design from http://wedlinydomowe.com/smokehouse-construction.htm

We're using the book Meat Smoking and Smokehouse Design by Stanley, Adam & Robert Marianski as a guide and starting point.

The first session is on June 25th before the Jen Sygit show at the Black Cat Concert series. Just $5 but come ready to work!

Build a Smokehouse

June 25th — Build a Smokehouse (Part 1 of 3) from 2 to 6 pm, in partnership with Black Cat Concerts, 15794 Paddock Road, Charlevoix. Come ready to work, then stick around for an evening concert in the barn with Jen Sygit and Spare Change. $5 (concert extra)

July 2nd — Build a Smokehouse (Part 2 of 3) from 2 to 6 pm, in partnership with Black Cat Concerts, 15794 Paddock Road, Charlevoix. Come ready to work, then stick around for an evening concert in the barn with Michael Beauchamp and the Barn Roughs. $5 (concert extra)

July 16th — Build a Smokehouse (Part 3 of 3) from 2 to 6 pm, in partnership with Black Cat Concerts, 15794 Paddock Road, Charlevoix. Come ready to work, then stick around for an evening concert in the barn with Chris Bathgate. $5 (concert extra)

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Fiber Arts Skill Share

Date and Time: Saturday, May 16th, 1:00 pm to 5:30 pm
Cost: $20 per person for the whole day
Space is limited! Please register by Wednesday, May 13th.

The Institute for Sustainable Living, Art, and Natural Design (ISLAND) and the Martha Wagbo Farm and Education Center are teaming up to bring you this exciting fiber arts field day! If you enjoy working with wool, if you've ever thought about raising your own sheep for wool, or if you’re just curious about how wool is taken off the sheep and transformed into textiles, then this event is for you. Experienced instructors will take you through the process from raw wool to finished product. Four approximately one-hour workshops/ demos will teach shearing; skirting, cleaning, and carding the wool; natural and chemical dyeing techniques; spinning yarn on a drop spindle; and felting. One price covers all workshops as well as snacks and refreshments. Everyone will go home with their own hand-made yarn and felted piece!

1:00 pm
Shearing, Skirting, and Cleaning: So you have the sheep... now how do you get the wool off of her? Zack Shaltz of Shaltz Farm will demonstrate how to accomplish that using both hand shears and electrical shears. The tags and vegetable matter will then be pulled off, and skirting will be demonstrated. We will also talk about different ways to clean the fleece once it's taken off.

2:10 pm
Dyeing Wool: Wagbo intern Maria Wesserle will show you how to take washed, undyed wool and transform it into a colorful work of art! She will demonstrate natural dyeing with madder root, and acid dyeing using food coloring. (Don't worry--the 'acid' mentioned here is only vinegar!) Learn everything you need to know to dye your own fiber at home. Also, carding will be demonstrated during this workshop, and we will have a couple hand carders available for folks to try out.

3:20 pm and 4:30 pm
Spinning Wool and Felting: At this point we will split into two groups to make teaching more manageable for the instructors. One group will start out with spinning at 3:20, the other will start felting, and then the groups will switch at 4:30 so that everyone gets a turn! The participants will get hands-on in these two workshops and go home with their own hand-made yarn and felted piece! Michelle Ferrarese will be teaching the felting workshop, in which students will choose from colorful merino roving to create their own felted article. Yarn, wool, and textile scraps will also be available to work into the piece. Maria Wesserle will teach spinning. Everyone will receive 2 ounces of wool to make their own yarn on a drop spindle. Spindles are often considered a 'primitive' device, but they have gained popularity due to their simple design, portable nature, and ability to create fantastic yarn in a surprisingly timely manner.

The event will be held at the Martha Wagbo Farm and Education Center, 5745 North M-66—at the intersection with Kidder Rd. just three miles south of East Jordan! For more information or to register, please go to http://www.artmeetsearth.org/fiber; email brad@artmeetsearth.org; or call ISLAND at 231-480-4515. You can contact Wagbo at 231-536-0333 or wagbo@torchlake.com.

ISLAND is Hiring!

The Institute for Sustainable Living, Art & Natural Design (ISLAND) is seeking self-directed and contagiously curious interns for the summer of 2009. Interns will work in and around the Village of Bellaire in Northwest Lower Michigan (50 miles NE of Traverse City) for 8 to 12 weeks during the summer of 2009.

ISLAND is a non-profit arts and ecology center dedicated to connecting people with nature, art and community. ISLAND helps people become native to place by:

• supporting artists – visionaries, conceptual explorers and compelling communicators – with dedicated time, space and resources to create new work;
• connecting people to the skills and traditions of community self-reliance;
• creating and sharing a broad collection of tools for ecological living.

Download the description and application. Deadline for submission is May 8, 2009.