My 2011 Veganic Permaculture Microfarming Plan

Edited 4/16/2011

Saturday is veganic permaculture microfarming day here on The Permavegan, and this week I'm going to present my fourteen-point homestead workplan for 2011.  January is the time for annual permaculture planning in my geographic location, and one of my goals in this Saturday posting series is to synchronize my readers to the workflow of a part-time vegan microfarm in the New England-Acadian Forest as it unfolds over the course of a calendar year.  I also want to give readers a realistic sense of how long things take in the start-up phase of a minifarm - even at the modest scale I have undertaken on my site.

I am tempted to go backward in this series in order to update links and content on What Are Vegan and Veganic Permaculture?  I'm not happy with that post as it stands right now, but in all likelihood I won't get back to it until next year, when I repeat the cycle.  Life on the microfarm doesn't allow you to go backward - especially not when you're crazy enough to throw a blogathon into the mix.  Fortunately, I think I'll cover most of the things I want to add to that post through my discussion of concrete projects as they unfold in real time.

I've probably already said this somewhere else, but I'm definitely not putting this material into the blogosphere as a master veganic permaculture teacher.  Perhaps in another twenty years I will be far enough along to promote myself as an expert.  In the meantime, I think there is value in blogging about my veganic permaculture experiments at this stage, if for no other reason than to add to the discussion and networking already taking place in my local ecoregion.

Goal-setting is a dangerous business.  As soon as you set a goal for yourself, you create an internal commitment to a course of action, and if you fail to honor that commitment, or to achieve your goal, you experience disappointment.  So what do you do?  There are two ways to approach this basic reality of life.  The first way is to avoid setting goals altogether.  The second way is to set goals knowing that conflicts and setbacks are to some degree inevitable.

I am on the latter path.  If my third year on the homestead is anything like the first two years, I'll make a serious dent on maybe eight of my fourteen project goals by the end of August.  By the end of September, I'll feel so impossibly far behind on my plan I'll fall into a depression that will last until Thanksgiving.  This depression will in all likelihood parallel both my local ecosystem's response to the decline in solar energy, and my anger at America's tragic failure to address peak oil, climate change, and the credit crisis.  The miracle of grace and family resilience will gradually recharge my batteries in December, and by the time January 2012 rolls around, I'll be ready to take on the world again - another year older and wiser.

I'd like to think this will be a much better year than 2011.  Julie and I have learned so much from our experiences thus far, and there are just too many fantastic role models in the world to draw strength from when the going gets tough.  Indeed, that's why I'm putting so much energy into blogging.  I've received tremendous encouragement from the work of other bloggers, and it's only natural for me to give back to the Web as I find energy and time. 

Here are the fourteen microfarm projects I'll be working on this year:

1. Agroforestry for Wind Protection, Food, Medicine, Fuel, and Wildlife
2. Compost, Recyclables, and the Landfill
3. Decluttering (remove old oil tank, furnace, garage clean-out, etc.)
4. Financial Management
5. Biointensive Food Production System
6. Mileage Reduction and Post-Carbon Transport
7. Permaculture Design Observations and Sketches
8. Plant Identification
9. Post-Carbon Snow Removal
10. Retrofit of House
11. Saturday Planning Meetings
12. Seedballs and Scything Trials
13. Virtual Veganic Permaculture Course
14. Wardrobe for Cold Temperate Veganic Permaculture 

Every Saturday, Julie and I carve out some time to review our minifarm plan and make adjustments to our weekly calendar as needed.  The complete flow of materials and energy through our site is captured in the above set of projects, so nothing is left out of our weekly Saturday review. 

Over the last two Saturdays, we have looked over all our files and photos from the last two years, and used that information to sketch out our goals for 2011.         

The dominant focus of this year's plan is the house retrofit.  I took on too much tree planting, scything, and garden work in 2010, and progress on the house suffered as a result.  This year's landscape implementation part of the plan consists of a much smaller amount of tree planting and tree care that I'll do mostly in April; a nutrient-recycling compost project that I haven't scheduled yet; seedball trials that I'll start in February and deploy in March, April, and May; some snow scooping through the rest of the winter; and a bit of plant-identification and wild harvesting I'll do in the growing season.  Julie plans to tackle a small growing bed, and together we'll continue to develop our long-term biointensive food production plan, but otherwise I won't be spending any time on the landscape except to make some permaculture design observations and sketches. 

Most of our financial management work will take place in February, when we do our taxes and review our tiny portfolio.  We'll do a big declutter in the spring and summer, when I get several dumpsters delivered and gut the south side of the house.  I doubt we'll make much progress on mileage reduction and post-carbon transportation this year, since we've already cut that down quite far, and I have some community organizing to do that will probably push us in the opposite direction, but a regional car-pooling system for emergency fuel conservation is something I hope to at least take a look at.  We'll upgrade our wardrobe with better vegan options if time and finances allow, and publish virtual veganic permaculture posts on Saturdays - also as time allows.  Meal preparation, house cleaning, and wardrobe care are of course year-round.

If you live in the New England-Acadian Forest - or any cold temperate climate in the northern hemisphere - and you are practicing veganic permaculture, you should now be closing in on a portfolio of goals for your household in 2011.  Your list won't have all the same elements as mine, but even if you live in an apartment and have access to just a small amount of growing space, there should still be a good number of similarities in our practice.

Next weekend, I'd like to post on the issue of post-carbon snow removal, which is a design and implementation challenge that extends all the way from our rooflines and dooryards to our driveways, roads, and state-to-local road maintenance systems.  From February through April, I hope to focus on scythe-and-seedball lawn conversion, as well as tree planting for windbreak and suntrap design.  From May through September, I expect my Saturday blogging will deal almost exclusively with compact farmhouse superinsulation retrofits, and perhaps an occasional post on plant identification, wild harvesting, and site decluttering.  I'll catch up on composting and maybe a few other items in the fall, if all goes well.  Based on my observations to date, these are some of the conversion issues that rural and suburban households in the New England-Acadian Forest will need to manage as the impacts of peak oil and climate change are increasingly felt.