The Permaculture Payoff

The work has been hard. Some of it remains to be done and all of it, in one way or another, is perpetually ongoing.

Substantial soil and water conservation programs, vermicomposting, deep well and intensive irrigation, daily small pasture rotation for about 20% of our horses, clearing off new land and leaving coppage stumps for grazing, better use of forage in the woods lot, organic fertilizer, no artificial  chemicals, encouragement of dung beetle production, adding high carbon materials to compost piles, hugelkulture demonstration plots, swales and soil decompaction techniques, pasture inoculation experiments with helpful bacteria and fungi, mowing weeds in pastures, combining goat and horse grazing, encouraging growth of existing "wild" vegetation and planting several different grass species

......lead to a forty percent reduction in our hay bill for the last month. When one considers that our horses were consuming 10-12 thousand pounds of hay per week, that is a lot of money....and healthier horses, and less mud and less dust.

And perhaps equally important, we have included th teaching of these techniques in our educational programs.