The Permaculture Podcast

Niki Jabbour - The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener

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My guest for this episode is Niki Jabbour, a garden writer and author of The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener who lives in Nova Scotia, Canada. I've been aware of Niki and her work for sometime having read her book after my wife checked it out of the library. I wound up buying a copy for my wife because she liked it so much, and I in turn find more to like about it every time I sit down and use it as a reference. In our conversation together, Niki and I talk about her book, the writing process and working with her publisher, gardening in a cold climate year round, and the way we can use our ability to build or modify things, such as cold frames or recycle materials in clouches, to extend the season. She also shares some of her successes, failures, and ongoing experiments before closing out with her encouragement for each of us to get out there and garden. We close with a brief overview of her next book. I find her book invaluable for permaculture practitioners, especially those working in a cold climate, working in Zones 1 and 2. The clarity of information, and the many useful hints and tips make this easier on you, with a complete strategy for using the techniques inside. If you know what your first and last frost dates are, you'll know when to plant your vegetable crops for year round harvesting. And, at under $20 new from the publisher, it represents a good value. The layout work the publisher did, with the charts, color coding, and clear index, make sorting through to find what you need simple. As a general gardening book, there's plenty to go off of, plus you can readily adapt what you find using the principles of permaculture. Also, Niki is doing this, so you get to see her with her garden, working in it year round, including in the snow. Whether you're new to gardening, or find that what you're doing doesn't work, or simply would like another voice from the gardening world, it is worth picking up. And, as Kirsten Reinford mentioned in our interview together, farmer's are considered new or beginning for their first 10 years, and I think it's fair to place gardeners in that same category. Even then, there is an imperative for life long learning and adaptation. Resources: Niki Jabbour The Year Round Veggie Gardener (Her Blog) The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener The Complete Compost Gardening Guide by Barbara Pleasant and Deb Martin The Drunken Botanist by Amy Stewart Growing a Greener World and Joe Lamp'l Worms Eat My Garbage by Mary Appelhof Veg Plotting by Michelle Chapman. The garden blog home of the 52 Week Salad Challenge. Canadian Pesticide By-Law Information: Law and Ornamental Gardens - Non-essential Pesticides Banning Cosmetic Pesticides in British Columbia Ontario and Nova Scotia Lead the way on Pesticide Bans Day Length Calculator: The link below is a simple way to find out when in the year your day length slips below that magical number of 10 hours of daylight. You'll need to know your latitude, which you can find by doing a web search using your nearest city name and latitude, or look up your address with Google Earth. Day Light Hours Explorer Enter the latitude on the right hand side of the utility, then using the slider, move the point along the curve to see when the Number of Daylight Hours dips below 10, and again rises up to 10. Note the dates on the bottom of the graph, and you now know the period when the amount of daylight is too short to grow most plants.

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Josh Trought - D Acres

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My guest for this episode is Josh Trought of D Acres in New Hampshire. Josh is a working farmer, woodworker, educator, and might I dare say, community builder. In this conversation we start, as usual, with his background and how he came to be a working farmer and a name known in the permaculture community. The experience of how he got to this place forms the ground we walk over while discussing his work starting, growing, and looking into the future of D Acres. As is often the case in these interviews, he is candid about the mistakes, successes, and the amount of work that actually goes into making a go at this kind of project. Though it took time, that effort is now paying off. I wrapped up this episode soon after the release of the interview with Erik Ohlsen, so still had that chat with Erik fresh in my memory. What Josh is doing represents another way to consider how to make a living while doing something that you love. In this particular case, in order to support D Acres, it is through a diversity of income streams ranging from farming, to the bed and breakfast, wood working, and selling cord wood, among others. With that work, and I don't doubt at all that there's plenty to go around, is the salvation that Josh finds in his labor with the land, the animals, the products that come from it, and the people that come through it. I'm on a bit of a kick thinking about how all the ideas of the various guests interrelate in describing the broad umbrella of ideas we can consider as part of permaculture. I say this because Josh's efforts speak to the dignity of labor that Bob Theis and I talked about. Josh's idea of land stewardship echoes Bob's thought about not despoiling some piece of land that doesn't need us, but to look for a house in the city that does. In Josh's case, this isn't about the city, but looking for ways to preserve farm land in a way that doesn't require familial bonds to keep it in perpetuity for the people that would choose to live and work there. Then there's the experiences that Josh has gone through in order to get where he's at. Building a name for himself through what he did. Overcoming those initial thoughts that he and his companions would grow exotic asian greens and sell them to hip folks at $20 a pound. Going from that first ½ bushel of garlic in the late 1990s to less than 20 years later to being well beyond subsistence, growing enough food to eat the majority of their meals from food grown on-site meals, while also serving thousands of other to the people who visit, and still maintaining a well stocked root cellar. Here's a working model to show others in the community, and to the world. Going further into the archives is Ethan Hughes and his idea about meeting people where they're at. Josh has had to go from moving in and being an oursider, to becoming a regular and involved member of his community. He couldn't do that by being insulated from, or fighting against, the town he moved into. I'm still amazed at how each guest on this podcast finds their own way to what they're known for. Even as people proceed down similar paths the results are so varied that there's still room for others to try their hand at various tasks until they find their own niche. The last thought I'll leave you with from this interview was Josh's statement:
I think the answer is in trying to seek solutions.
We will find a way forward by doing. Go out there and get started. I'll meet you along the way. Resources: Josh Trought D Acres D Acres on YouTube

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Erik Ohlsen - Professional Permaculture

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My guest for this week is Erik Ohlsen, owner of Permaculture Artisans an ecological design and installation firm, as well as licensed contractor, in California. He is also a permaculture teacher and began teaching in 2001.

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Bob Theis - Natural Building and Design

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My guest for this episode is Bob Theis, an architect familiar with natural building and permaculture from northern California.

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Review: Growing for Market Magazine

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This episode is a review of Growing for Market magazine.

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Dr. Wayne Dorband - Ecolonomics

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My guest for this episode is Dr. Wayne Dorband, a member of the board of the Institute of Ecolonomics.

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Nathaniel Mulcahy - World Stove

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My guest for this episode is Nathaniel Mulcahy, owner and founder of World Stove, a company that produces and distributes pyrolytic gasification stoves all around the world. These stoves are tailored to fit the specific needs of each culture and community that uses them.

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Wayne Herring - Starting a Sustainable Family Farm

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My guest for the episode is Wayne Herring, owner, along with his wife Katherine and fellow family member Michael, of Herring's Green Grass Farm.

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Kirsten Reinford - Urban Agriculture at Joshua Farm

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My guest for this episode is Kirsten Reinford, the founder of Joshua Farm, an organic urban farm in the city of Harrisburg, and the second in a series on beginning farming.

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Permabyte: Biochar, Gasification, and Woodlot Management

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This episode is about my recent field day on “Renewable Energy for the Farm: Charcoal Production for Power & Fertility” where we covered three main topics: charcoal & biochar production, renewable energy, and wood lot management. The Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture and Village Acres Farm made this field day possible.

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