Category: farm planning

Book Review: The Resilient Farm and Homestead: 20 Years of Permaculture and Whole Systems Design. Ben Falk. Chelsea Green. Revised and Expanded Edition, 2024. 342 pages, $44.95 US, 40G BP.

Ten years after writing the first edition of his book, Ben Falk has made a revised and expanded edition with new information on greenhouse design, agroforestry, silvopasture, beekeeping, human health and more. Even more valuable are his further ten years of experience feeding his thoughts and practice of permaculture in a cold Vermont climate, no-till farming, native versus introduced plants and insects, vegan versus livestock-included farming, dealing with climate change and living a whole life. He was a single, physically fit, energetic and slightly idealistic, 25-year-old when he landed on his 10-acre homestead in 2003, and 35 when he wrote his first book, encouraging readers to “Be bold and try stuff.” After another ten years, he has a partner and a son, a lot of lived experience with various agricultural theories, a realization that his first decade was the “establishment phase,” a career in professional land use design, and determination to live a balanced life. His gained wisdom shines through.

Ben has the courage to tackle his earlier ideas and those of other agricultural writers and speakers and say what did not work for him and what does. You can be confident that his suggestions are practical and efficient, as well as resilient. The beautiful photos show ideas in action, not merely under construction as some permaculture publications do. Rice paddies in Vermont, possible but sensible? Swale-enclosed ponds, lovely.

The book includes chapters on creating a legacy in a time of change, design and site establishment, water and earthworks, fertility harvesting and cycling, food crops, adaptive fuel and shelter, resilience and regeneration for the long haul. There are useful appendices, including an aptitude quiz on living a resilient lifestyle, a skill list for emergencies, a curriculum for a resilient homestead, a checklist of tools and materials, a vulnerability checklist, and a glossary, a resource list, chapter notes and a thorough index. The introduction lists 20 new ingredients in this revised edition (including a list of 30 common cold climate site design and building mistakes); 16 practices they have stopped since his first book (spraying compost tea takes too much time and shows little result); and 10 new practices they have adopted (grazing cows).

Farming and ecological living can appeal to people across the political spectrum, but Ben does not shy away from briefly mentioning the current threats of economic, social and environmental collapse, while addressing vulnerabilities and how we might respond. This is not a “doom-reading” book, but an encouraging and very practical one! “If we steer Earth towards adaptive regeneration, we’ll see true resilience much sooner than by just letting it develop ‘naturally’.”

This book uses permaculture design and its framework for problem-solving and refers to numeric zones within a location. This is concisely explained, so don’t let the word deter you if you are new to permaculture. Ben Falk has not unquestioningly adopted that cause, or the Green Dream (personal ecological consumerism regardless of lack of fundamental political change) but thoughtfully tested and applied ideas that work and don’t cause problems elsewhere in the world. Ben advocates for people becoming producers rather than merely “less-bad “consumers.

The chapter on design and site establishment is best read before you decide which piece of land to buy. This is the time to consider your mission, goals, analysis of what’s possible, and how you plan to do that. To make your land use design, analyze what’s available, consider your options and implement your decisions, (aka think-design-do-reflect-redesign) as many times in a repeating cycle as you need to. Likely you’ll have more ideas for tweaking the system than you have energy for, so you’ll need to prioritize the adjustments that will have the most effect. This ensures maximum regeneration of land for minimum energy and time input. Ben lists his top five leverage points: swale construction and use, grazing animals, broadcasting seed and transplanting, cutting and clearing trees, scraping and tillage to create bare soil.

We need crops that convert the most sunshine and rainfall into usable food. More nut trees, for example, and intensive rotational grazing. Much of the cold-temperate climate landscape would be most productive converted to permanent silvopasture. Sometimes fossil fuel use to develop a site sooner is very worthwhile. Examples include chain saws, earthmovers, electric power tools.

Resilience is the ability of a system to recover from disturbances. Factors include Diversity, Redundancy, Connectivity and Manageability. Efficiency is not the same as Resiliency. The “whole world” picture needs to be included, and adapting to changing conditions must be built in. Actions that increase both biodiversity and biomass increase the ability to be regenerative.

No single design works for all sites or all groups of people. Your own skills and aptitudes are your most dependable asset. Practice welcoming adversity (the blessing of disillusionment), as a chance to learn and grow stronger. Try to avoid tight attachments to your goals, as this can lead to big struggles. Check out popular notions that others have already found faulty: planting marginally-hardy perennial plants beside bodies of water does not keep them warmer in winter! Your climate is not the same as information from ten years ago would have you believe! Keep your own weather records. Likewise, observe whether some practices you don’t believe in – dowsing for example – do in fact work. Modify your design to balance theoretical “best” practice with practicality: perfectly on-contour plantings do slow, spread and sink water best, but they make mowing and harvesting harder.

Once you have your land, assess it in some detail before taking any firm direction. Work with the realities of your land, rather than planning to radically change them. You may see a better plan emerging. Good designs incorporate the ability to change. Using modular designs makes this easier. For example, consistent bed and path sizes.

Swales are on-contour ridges made by ditching along contours and piling the soil below the ditch, helping even out the water supply and retaining water that would have run off the surface as much as 20ft downhill. Swales make great places to plant hedges, and the space between one swale and the next makes a good small paddock for intensive rotational grazing.

Only the importation of fertility from other parts of the world has enabled chemical farming to continue after the Great Soil Erosion of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. When this becomes no longer tenable, will we turn to regenerative farming, or let society collapse? We can save farming by building and conserving topsoil.

When we make compost we need to investigate the source and the content of the materials: What feedstock was given to the Organic livestock that provides the manure? Was it from lab rats with a diet of antibiotics or worse? Grasses take up PFAS, such as those in flexible plastic sheeting. But if not contaminated, they can be a key nitrogen resource. Are roadside leaves safe? Pond weeds, comfrey, burlap bags, cover crops and organic mulches all have their advocates, Human urine benefits plants. Humanure is possible if the household doesn’t use pharmaceutical drugs. Biochar can increase soil water retention, reduce nutrient leaching and encourage diverse micro-organisms, but poorly made biochar can stunt plant growth spectacularly.

Wood chips are great, but wood chippers are expensive to own and operate and a pain to use. (One colleague said to me, “Lots of money, lots of noise, lots of gasoline, lots of time, lots of logs and branches. Small pile of chips.”)

Remineralization is the replacement of missing or deficient minerals, which could be factors limiting crop health. The Soil Food Web is an approach that focuses on soil biological activity as the main limiting factor in crop health.

Livestock has an important role for resilient homesteads. Regenerative high density stocking with very short periods of grazing in each paddock (called intensive tall-grass grazing or mob stocking ) is very productive and builds soil. Tall grasses (having deep roots) are grazed down to within a foot of the ground (not all the way down). Some roots die back once they are no longer needed.  As the tops quickly grow back, more roots grow, and soils build. Active management produces much healthier soil than neglect does. Anyone wanting to restore a neglected field area can read what not to do, and what to do, in this chapter. Ben’s approach included sheep, prescribed burns, scything, and over-seeding for several years. But no tilling or plowing.

There are benefits to mowing in some circumstances, with correct timing and severity. Stem density increases and grasses are promoted. If the existing plants have been cut down enough by grazers or machinery, May and June are the windows for lightly reseeding. Never let a field lie fallow for more than a year. Water management will help reclamation. Mow early and often.

Consider permanent fencing. Plan tree plantings in straight rows to make fencing and mowing easy. Refrain from pruning off lower branches if you plan to have livestock, as that will deter browsing. Feed hay to cattle on pasture if needed. If you don’t want to raise animals, you need to mulch or mow the understory of your trees and perennial vegetables. Those tasks take a lot more labor than raising livestock.

Ducks and chickens, sheep and cows all have their niche. Ben found sheep to be more work than cows, and both to be quite an emotional and logistical commitment. Sheep are prone to many diseases, but have a role as smaller, short-term livestock, practical on a smaller homestead. Ducks eat slugs, forage actively, are cold-hardy and have low health maintenance needs. They are good layers, and good mothers, have good predator-awareness, and generally won’t fly away.

Don’t believe all the generalizations you might hear about livestock, species, varieties or even individual animals. Ben reports that his ducks never ate mature vegetation during the growing season, for 3 years. In year 4 they attacked the cabbages. Who knows why? It was a dry, relatively slugless summer, which might have contributed. Observe what is true of your animals this year, but don’t depend on the same thing happening next year. Do believe that chickens will scratch up your seedlings and new transplants!

Keyline plowing is favored by many permaculturists. It was developed in the drylands of eastern Australia and may not translate to moister climates. It doesn’t work well in New England, for example. It may be useful in cold climates (where weather and soil conditions combine to move water across the soil, rather than into it) if drought conditions prevail. Managed small ephemeral ponds can capture and hold heavy rainfall.

In-ground septic systems have leach fields capable of supporting good crop yields, of either cover crops or food crops. Plants cannot move bacteria or other organic pathogens through their tissues, so there is no danger of E. coli in tomatoes grown above your leach field. Plants can, however, bioaccumulate heavy metals and other inorganic compounds. If in doubt, test the plants. Research 2020-2023 suggests plants tend to accumulate PFAs as well as toxins in their vegetative parts, rather than their fruits and seeds.

Chapter 5 moves us on to details of food crops. Long ago, Polynesians navigated the Pacific in their canoes, locating small pieces of land to settle. They took with them 24 special “canoe plants”. These included foods, medicines, fiber and dye plants, building materials and ceremonial plants. They carried plants gathered from a wide area of the world, to adapt to many situations.

Alongside the benefits of perennial crops, there are some disadvantages. Climate weirdness brings changes to frost dates that kill blossoms and pollinators, and can affect chilling hours and flowering dates. One harvest per year from the space the crop occupies can be less than short term multi-cropping annuals provide. Establishment of perennials can take years (so grow some annuals around new perennials for the first few years).

People with short growing seasons would do well to grow lots of storage crops, and all of us are advised to grow a wide range of diverse crops. The book has tables of perennial crops best suited to various extremes of weather, Goldilocks crops to try out on a small scale, if at all, and those that give high yields.

For simplicity, focus on larger quantities of more-reliable long-storing foods rather than lots of small-quantity foods (but keep that crop diversity in mind!). Although Ben’s family used to grow paddy rice, they no longer do so, due to challenges of aquatic weeds, and losses to birds. Especially focus on summer-planted late fall harvests, to preserve food for the Hungry Gap from March to whenever it warms up enough to produce spring harvests. Another option is fermented storable foods like krauts and kimchi, which take less work than canning.

Ben has a very interesting essay on “Native to When? “Invasive” Species, Species-ism, and Optimization” that really got me thinking. Healthy ecosystems include high diversity. Humans are part of the ecosystem (not kings or tyrants, but participants). We intend to manage our gardens and farmland in a responsible right-action kind of way. Not merely sit back admiring the view while elsewhere forests are razed to grow soybeans to feed us and our livestock.

Permaculture views plants and other organisms that have been in place for 10 or 100 or 300 years as not fundamentally more natural or proper than recent arrivals. More important is to consider what the plant does and how it affects the soil and other organisms, and our needs in that space. Plants, animals and other humans are not regarded as evil aliens.

Permaculture seeks inclusion and synergy, with adaptation to challenges that arise. This includes a high level of biodiversity, embracing the legacy of food systems from across the globe. It is not modeled on what the ecosystem looked like on the North American landmass in 1491, or before native peoples managed the land to promote chestnut and oak forests, or before mass migrations of buffalo or any other date.

Some conservationists seem perversely focused on getting back to specific species and ecosystem arrangements from an idealized past time, even if this involves large inputs of fossil fuels, chemicals, labor and money.

We are unwise to adopt a “Nativist War-on-Alien-Invader” ideology. During the time that humans have been moving around the Earth, we have moved around plants and animals (and associated microbes). What year could be chosen as a starting point to determine whether a plant is native or alien? We have potatoes from South America, corn from Mesoamerica, honeybees and earthworms from Europe, apples from Southwest Asia, and much more. Choosing European contact as a starting date is a prejudice that ignores previous centuries of land management.

No living thing is permanent. Plant successions and ecosystem change are natural. Native white pine and goldenrod have forced out numerous species across New England. A human moving a plant from one area to another is no more unnatural than a bird moving seeds. Movement of species is part of biodiversity. It is our responsibility to determine if it would be helpful to redistribute a particular species, considering the needs of other humans and other forms of life.

Ben says (and I strongly agree) “Feeding oneself from a monoculture in Iowa or Mexico while devoting time to spraying Japanese knotweed with toxic chemicals will not get us where we need to be.” Attempting to maintain the world around us in a static condition is simply not an option. We now need to provide for 8 billion humans. Hunting and gathering is no longer viable for most. We cannot live as people did when the Earth was more thinly populated.

Worries about invasive alien species may also indicate a fear that nature will “take over”, and even a belief that humans are separate from nature, perhaps its masters, a very colonial concept.

The urgent ecological and social issues in front of us require unified solutions. Fragmented approaches, including wars on specific plants (and cultures), have rarely, if ever, worked. Species eradication and similar fear-based hyper-controlling and divisive efforts fail even as they line the pockets of Monsanto. Treating all life-forms with respect leads us to more understanding, with prospects for synergy. Why, oh why, do the Acknowledgements list 16 men, while Ben’s wife Erica Koch is one of only four named female family members? Let’s have more biodiversity and inclusion!

Chapter 6 covers adaptive fuel and shelter, well worth reading, but one on which I took few notes. It includes house design and construction, fuel for heating and for power equipment, tips on common mistakes to avoid. Chapter 7 is on resilience and regeneration for the long haul, including intergenerational success, children on the homestead, and more.

The whole book is thoroughly researched, clearly written, and will be tremendously useful to all who use it. For more, see Ben’s website https://www.wholesystemsdesign.com/