A halfway successful permaculture weekend
If you want to go to a
conference 45 minutes from your father's house and want to squeeze in a
visit at the same time, do you attend the conference first and visit
afterwards, or do you have family time right off the bat? Mark's
gut said the latter, and I think he was right, since I wanted to see
Daddy more than I wanted to learn at the conference...and some weeks I
can't manage even one night away from home. After a wonderful
visit on Friday, I managed to net two whole hours of sleep, and that
only came once I gave up on the bed in the guest room and on the quiet
and comfortable couch and went to squeeze myself into the back seat of
the car. (Yes, I am the world's weirdest sleeper and really like
small spaces. I should have brought my tent.)
Anyway, that's all a long way of explaining why --- even though Mark and I were itching to hear Tradd's
newest talks and to check out the South Carolina Organic Growing
Conference --- we only managed to enjoy a delicious lunch there before
heading home. On two hours of sleep, even pastured pigs, medicinal
mushrooms, and biointegrated homesteads didn't sound as lovely as
returning to the peace and quiet of our own farm.
I did get one of the
nicest February tomato plants I've ever seen out of the weekend, though,
plus some cuttings and a rooted sprout from Daddy's Brown Turkey
fig. That brings us up to five fig varieties we're trialling for cold hardiness here at the edge of their range. More on what I'm doing with my new figs in a later post.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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hi; We live in Franklin Co. VA and have a turkey fig that just hasn't done well, I moved it to a new location this winter and also got a small fig from a neighbor who has figs but don't know the variety. I have seen them do well here but can't find out the variety. The guy that I got my last one from piled old hay around the base of his figs and then covered them with tarps with rocks holding them down. So I have done that with my newly planted ones. Other people don't go to that trouble and still have success so it is a mystery so far. gill http://sunnybrookfarmus.blogspot.com/