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Traction

Keeping the momentum

We have put a lot into our permaculture quest this year. With the help of David Spicer, (docspicepermaculture.com) earthworks specialist, we have taken larger, more tangible steps this past week. Heavy equipment and many helping hands have made a visible difference, but the work is not finished.

A few of the “next steps” in our 2019 permaculture endeavors include moving a 2,000 gallon tank to a higher elevation. Dean Gentry of 5D-Designs (5d-designs.com) donated this tank. Dean is a fellow permaculture enthusiast and long time supporter of Grayhill School Farm, the teaching non-profit that we host. Thank you, Dean! This tank is a key element in our plan and with the help of a Glockemann pump it will be efficient to fill as well as to use.

2000 gal tank
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Sitting on the highest point of our property, this tank will provide irrigation via gravity for our blueberries, blackberries, muscadines, and rice paddy. That’s right… rice paddy, built by David Spicer (photo below). One of the experiments of Grayhill School Farm, is a series of rice paddies to determine overall feasibility and varietal studies in our area. We are beginning with normal rice (Oryza Sativa) and will progress to black rice, water chestnuts and perhaps even crawdads in the same area. Rice is grown commercially in the mid-west and western United States, so hopefully we can grow it in West Georgia.

Rice Paddy
Rice Seedlings 2019

Planting the Terraces

The sculpting of the terraces that has taken place this past week must now be seeded and maintained. This time of year is definitely not optimum for sprouting regular grass seed, so we have to use a Millet. With seed ordered and hay already delivered, we have a lot more work to do to protect the terraces and the investment we’ve made in them. There is still no rain in sight, which means they are really dusty and dry right now. Once we get the seed and the hay down, hopefully Mother Nature will send us a few days of solid gentle rain. After this initial rain, we can also start planting our young walnut and fruit trees.

Berry Season

Multi tasking is in order since blueberry season is now upon us. Thursday May 30th is opening day for picking blueberries at RabbitEye Farm. Many of you have inquired about opening day, and this hot weather means they are ripening up fast.

If you would like some fresh blueberries, you don’t need to bring anything special with you to pick, but you may want to bring a hat (a helper is also nice). We supply buckets that have a liner. You simply lift out the liner to carry your berries home. This is the gentlest way we’ve found to transport your berries. Hope to see you on Thursday. Morning pick is 7AM – 11AM and evening pick is 5PM – 9PM. Rain or Shine. Click here to read more.

It’s officially summertime!

EARTH CARE Workshop at RabbitEye Farm

Permaculture swales, how do they work? (small urban garden or large land plot)

RabbitEye Farm is hosting an educational EARTH CARE workshop with master gardener, Patrick Bexton, and permaculture enthusiast Brandon Banks!

Patrick Bexton

Patrick Bexton

Sunday July 8th, 2018, 6:30 PM at RabbitEye Farm, West Point, GA. Cost is $15 per person for lecture, demonstration, and build experience.

Certified UGA Master Gardener, Patrick Bexton, has been a lecturer, and advocate of permaculture practices for many years.  With the help of Brandon Banks, he has implemented and proven several unique ideas with his own farm, Willowood Garden, where he runs a CSA with the abundance that he grows. In this workshop, he will teach and explain the overall concept of swales, why they are important, and how to begin to build one.  This is a hands-on workshop. Participants are invited to take part in all aspects of layout, plotting, and building a segment of a real working swale.  You will understand the relative scale, properties, purpose, potential, and variations of the swale whether urban or rural, particular to our southeastern landscape and soil.

Patrick BextonSwales are a key concept in the workings of Permaculture. They have been proven to rebuild soil that was considered barren with rather miraculous results.  Most of our soil problems, are the result of man’s influence.  But man can reverse big problems such as erosion and even desertification using this practice. Developers, city planners, land owners, farmers, and others all need this knowledge. Swales are used around the globe, but we will teach you how to layout and build swales for your own land’s benefit in Georgia’s red clay soil.
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Complimentary blueberry farm tours will be offered to participants after the class.

Wear appropriate working farm clothing and shoes. Parking is plentiful. Water is provided. Restroom facilities available. Pre-registration is not required. Payment by PayPal is accepted as well as cash before the workshop.  Rabbiteye Farm is located at 279 Grayhill School Road, West Point, Georgia.  Workshop is approximately 2 hours.

 

Retrofit or Custom Design?

Greenhouse build September 2014 Another one of our large projects, is building an aquaponics greenhouse.  This is in line with our goal of creating an energy efficient ecosystem.  Since we are utilizing parts that we already had, you could technically consider it a retrofit.  At the beginning, yes, I would have agreed that the word retrofit was accurate, but not now.  Really, that is just what sparked the design, but from there it is totally custom.  We already had a small greenhouse frame whos footprint was basically square.  To make this greenhouse, we took the two halves and placed them all on the same side to make a long, one-sided greenhouse.  The back is attached to the barn via a room that will eventually house the aquaponics.  With the ribs on the southern side and the back wall being reflective, there will be plenty of light.  In the hot summer months, we will still need to use a shade cloth.  If you aren’t familiar with what a shade cloth does, it filters out a certain amount of the sun and partially shades what is underneath.  They are not used in the winter months here, only in the summer.  It doesn’t give total shade either, so plants still grow under it.  The light is simply filtered, and the temperature under it is cooler.  They come in various filtering percentages.

In this first picture, you can see the ribs and begin to see the overall plan.  The back of the greenhouse is not built, but the frame is there.  Redell (one of our nephews) and Doug are putting decking on it. The plan calls for a loft area above where Redell and Doug are working, but we are not to that stage yet. The clear part of the greenhouse will be where the aluminum poles are angled down to the ground.  Those are what we are calling the ribs.  We have several permaculture ideas incorporated into this design.  One of the ideas is an underground pipeway that will create airflow into the greenhouse from a low lying and shaded area on our farm.  The pipes begin in the cooler, shaded area that is located at a lower elevation than the greenhouse.  These pipes are buried underground all the way from there to the inside of the greenhouse to create a draft.
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Permaculture pipesPutting in the pipesHere you can see the process, where the trench was dug with a trackhoe, and then Caleb (our intern) and Doug laid the pipes into the trench.  The trench is really quite long, so it was a lot of work and a lot of pipe.  You can kind of get the idea of the transition from the lower elevation to the higher elevation in the second photo.  Permaculture techniques use naturally occurring things like this transition from lower to higher, and the difference in the temperatures between the shaded area and the greenhouse to achieve benefits like airflow without the use of electricity. 

Red Wigglers

Organic worms… is there such a thing?  Absolutely, and you can order them right off the Internet, which really shouldn’t surprise you.  We bought our first batch of Red Wigglers about 6 years ago, but now we grow our own.  They are pretty self sufficient, but we do check on them often, make sure there is adequate moisture and provide fruit and vegetable scraps for them to feed on.  They seem to especially like melon rinds.  Worms are incredibly beneficial for gardens.  Plants need oxygen at their roots, and worms create the loosened soil that allows that.  They provide lots of other services as well, but one of the main things is the worm castings (worm manure if you don’t know the term castings) …you can also buy that on the Internet.  If a worm or its castings touch the roots, it helps inoculate the plant against bad nematodes and many soil born diseases.Reg Wigglers

Currently, we are beginning our fall preparation for the cold months ahead by making over-wintering a little easier on the plants.  Perennial plants are plants that come back the following year.  Even perennials can die over winter if it is exceptionally cold and Additionally, testosterone levels rises levitra for women when you execute resistance and strengthening workout. You should also create sure that you are look at every ingredient that is there in the product. http://www.midwayfire.com/FrequentlyAsked.asp online pharmacy for levitra Meantime, compensations from adhesive hip capsules online sildenafil also travel down through the knees, ankles, and feet searching for a weak link in the lower kinetic chain. You may have often heard of the drug and can tell you what it does.In the years since it was introduced in 1998, former Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole has served as a spokesman for the drug, manufacture of counterfeit pills has gone through the roof, and cialis order online jokes are now a permanent feature of the pop culture landscape. viagra (sildenafil) relaxes muscles and increases blood flow to particular areas. they don’t have adequate mulch.  We will try to check all the plants, but we are starting with the blueberries.  Some varieties of blueberry produce earlier than others and are subsequently finished before others.  The Climax variety was our first variety to fruit, so they are the first to get babied.  It’s a slow process because we are trying to do everything we can for each individual plant while we are there because with so much to do, it could be a long time before we get back to that plant.  That is also why we are beginning in August.  The process includes taking out any weeds, moving away the old pine straw and checking the crown of the plant, checking the moisture level and the ph, shaping the bush slightly to help it grow the way we want it to but pruning as little as possible, then adding a handful of worms to each plant, top dressing with compost, and finally adding fresh pine straw.  We are a little obsessive about trying to do everything right especially since the blueberries are young.  Everything is organic but with all of the permaculture practices we are incorporating, it should get easier as the years progress.