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Swales, Composting, Pruning, etc.

Posted: March 17 2009

Some lovely words from Neil Bertrando...
here's a brief rundown of the past weeks events...filling in and finalizing schedule smith-ranch-3-11-2009-7and curriculum details for NV city PDC, pulling together resources and learning materials for this course, organizing and directing delivery of 20 yards of woodchips from local tree services to river restoration project (with Americorp volunteers), designing and teaching spillway installation in swales, installing spillways, designing and teaching swale surveying, doing fine tuning on dug swales and digging new ones, ordering 750 native and useful trees to plant along swales near Truckee River, setting up native reseeding logistics, organizing tree planting logistics, loading up on cheap fence materials and tools at a going out of business warehouse clean-out at a local fencing company so we can build our chicken coop, run and portable fence/tractor systems, pruning fruit trees at our home farm, planting support species in the fruit forest at our home farm, demo day for youth outdoor program, whittling down my master's thesis to submit to a journal, gathered spent grain from local brewery for composting...and so on.


seems like there's no end to the opportunity, as usual the goal is to find a balance between excitement and overload while minimizing stress and maximizing joy (can you tell i have a college education or two?) what a crazy time this is!! the cooper's hawks fly by daily clak-clak-claking away, northern flickers pound rhythms into electricity poles, and the creeks run cold and full with recent snowmelt. chewing last year's willow growth to soften my smile.
may we envision abundant futures as we seed and care for them daily.
- Neil Bertrando, Greenhorn & permaculture teacher

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Permaculture