Midwest Permaculture

Leaving the planet in better condition than how we found it.

Don Smith Moorman
  • 37, Male
  • Springfield, IL
  • United States
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Andrew, thanks for sharing! A friend recently recommended the Fiskars all-steel shovel, and I bought one at a recent trip to a big box store. I haven't used it a lot, but so far, so good. I have a Leatherman pocket tool--don't know which kind, it'...
June 8
It's an improvement over toxic chemical monocropping. But still, you're effectively destroying an ecosystem every year. And probably importing resources / nutrients (compost, mulch) from elsewhere, unless you're very carefully using mulch crops an...
May 14
OK, I'll take the bait. :) Permaculture addresses every aspect of living; not just waste reduction, but also food production; not just construction materials, but community economics; not a blanket industrial-scale solution, but countless small s...
May 14
Sounds terrific!! I want to start looking into Central Illinois savanna ecology. We just planted a couple chestnuts, a few hazels, some elders, and we're watching the succession of weeds. Heck, with all the chicken discussion, I remembered there w...
May 10
Just for fun, I was trying to brainstorm an "edible weeds guild." Mulberry, burdock, lamb's quarter, clover, dandelion, creeping charlie. That's what's growing around here with no help from us. I can't think of a "proper" woody shrub or bush, thou...
May 6
It's good you should bring this up! My wife Carey is dead set on getting chickens. I'm warming up to the idea, but I want to know how much they need to eat, how to construct an adequate shelter for them, etc. All the inputs and outputs, basically,...
April 28
Looks delightful!
April 26
WELCOME: Enjoy these permaculture messages by our friends from all over the world.
April 7
Hey permaculturists and gardeners...! Let's get out of the books and share some of our personal successes with each other in creating plant guilds.
April 7
Don Smith Moorman added a discussion to the group General Dscussions
One of the coolest things we learned about in the PDC I took was the Robinson Congruence, a mathematical model that, mysteriously, contains patterns found in many places (and on many scales) in nature. The Designer's Manual mentions this, too, and...
April 1
This is a forum to discuss anything that doesn't fit into the other discussion topics.
April 1
Hi folks, cowpokes. Edson, I think you're well along the right track for thinking about this in permaculture terms. I have no experience in this area myself, but I do think you would have to somehow protect little trees from the big mammal, until...
March 30
Thanks folks!! I added a bit of discussion to the Talk page for that appropedia page. Someday (always someday) I'd love to flesh out a real beginner's pc garden page for that site. But not right now. Well, maybe tonight and tomorrow, 'cause it's g...
March 28
Way cool!! Is this specifically focusing on native plants, or is more of just a CSA that happens to be run by (or for?) Native Americans? (It seems so ironic to me that honeybees are not native.)
March 28
The Designer's Manual has info in it that might help, and illustrations of different kinds of terraces etc. What I see in the pic looks good to me :)
March 28
Permaculture has to start somewhere, but since these people are soooo busy, they won't have time to figure out the principles. They need to understand the principles first. The site has WAY too much info for people who are soo busy. The people sh...
March 27

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At 2:11pm on May 10, 2009, Badger Johnson said…
hello hello! i'm about to change the oil in an old car, yo, which is the first step to becoming an airship-ready steam punk. voyaging to Zombaland will be fun in a grease car, but better in a pedal-powered flying contraption. have you thought about muscovy ducks as a chicken alternative? they don't tear up the ground and they like eating grass, and not so much just grain and worms. they do like to wander, have coyotes been noticed in your immediate vicinity?
At 1:56pm on February 27, 2009, Midwest Permaculture said…
Hey Don, thanks for joining us. You should be all set in the graduate forum. We're going to invite some PDC grads to join us and help test things and should have the whole thing public by March 15.

Profile Information

Bio
Inhabiting the dreaded east side of Springfield, Illinois. Took the PDC in August 2007.

Links...

Our house blog, Little House in the Ghetto.
I've been hanging out in these inspiring forums, Urban Evolution.

Don Smith Moorman's Blog

Don Smith Moorman

just now

A random update. Planted a couple chestnut trees, one in place to shade the house nicely on those hot late-summer afternoons (in 15 or so years when it's tall enough!). We have elderberries planted in a few places, and hazels yet to go in the ground. A lot of onions coming up, more going in the ground, with garlic. I know you're supposed to plant garlic in the fall, but we have a lot, and some of it is "spring garlic" so we're just gonna plant as much as we can and see what happens.

Weeding out… Continue

Posted on April 26, 2009 at 11:32am —

Don Smith Moorman

This is a Test

I'm having trouble getting ning to acknowledge that I'm actually logged in, when I try to reply to something. So I'm making a quick post here to see if it'll work.

Speaking of tests, and fungi ...

A couple issues ago, Mother Earth News printed a letter to the editor about garlic tea being the cure for a cold. Crush a few cloves, let 'em sit 10 minutes, pour near-boiling water over, add lemon. Add… Continue

Posted on March 28, 2009 at 8:00pm —

Don Smith Moorman

Big Steps

The past few weeks Carey and I have been working on a pathway design for our garden, to be more interesting and functional than the typical rows of 4-foot-wide beds. I went through a long series of doodles, starting with a mandala design, trying out other patterns (e.g. branching spirals), taking breaks, indulging inspiration, and referring to the Designer's Manual and Edible Forest Gardens. Eventually I arrived at what now seems obvious, what EFG calls "rootlike" path design. This would be a de… Continue

Posted on March 16, 2009 at 9:53am —

Don Smith Moorman

Greetings

Hey, folks! Happy to have a(nother) place for us permafreex to network. I like being in touch with other midwesterners.

We had our first Spring thunderstorms yesterday--and now it's back to freezing temperatures. I gotta go cut firewood now. Bye!

Posted on February 27, 2009 at 1:24pm —

 
 

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