A Dream
I shared this dream with you all in January of 2021.
We’re sitting on the porch by the cabin overlooking the sunset, eating a delicious homegrown meal. Mushroom risotto with fresh herbs, maybe. The sunset is casting honeyed light into the cabin, and we can see the glimmer of the sun on the lake through the clearing.
The bees in the orchard made the honey in this bottle of mead and the water comes from a well that is kept fed by these little ponds. For dessert, we’re having apple pie from the orchard.
Is it possible for life to be this beautiful? I think so. That’s what I’m working towards at least.
Oh boy, I’m still working towards that dream. There’s no porch. There’s no bees. No mushrooms or herb garden or ponds. No clearing either. I do have the vague beginnings of an orchard and a cabin that is still standing though!
The Project
Back in 2020, I completed a class through Cornell to earn a Permaculture Design Certificate. My final project was a 10 year plan for this land. I shared that plan with you all in 2021, when I started this Substack. That was written three years ago, after I’d owned the land for just a year.
Let’s hold this original project up to the light, look at it with fresh eyes and a few more years of experience.
This video is what I’m basing this reflection on. If you want to see major chapters, that’s in this post. No need to watch the whole thing, I have screenshots of each section below.
What Holds Up:
Permaculture Ethics
These values of People Care, Earth Care and Fair Share all hold up well. This is still my guiding force for this project. Rereading them today is invigorating.
One thing I feel has changed about these guiding principles is that I now recognize these are values that guide my life, not just this project.
I dream of raising chickens, having an orchard and sharing meals around a big dinner table with loved ones. Even if that doesn’t happen this year, or happen at Keuka, it’s what I want in my life. This project is still guided by these ethics.
The Site Assessment
You know, the whole first half of the video holds up well. It’s an analysis of the land with Yeoman’s Scale of Permanence. I missed some gullies here and there, but these bubble maps all remain true. That’s the whole point of the scale, isn’t it?
Mushroom and Maple Polyculture
This project still excites me today. To tap maple syrup, I need to be living at the cabin in early spring, when the temperatures swing between freezing at night and thaw in the day - when the sap flows. I’d love to do that soon.
The mushroom logs would be fun to start sooner and just begin to experiment with. These two projects are small enough to start casually. I won’t do them this year, but will do them soon.
What’s Never Gonna Happen:
A Second Home?
At times, I can sense my ignorance around the scale of work ahead. In the video, I mention wanting to build a second home at the north end of the lot. I’m barely keeping the one cabin alive!
I’ll likely never build that house. Instead, I’ll continue to remodel the cabin and add solar and well water. This place will always be a summer spot. It might be a limited winter retreat too. I don’t need to sink a second mortgage into building a second home for a seasonal place. At least not right now.
Instead, I’m focusing on paying off the existing mortgage.
Keyhole Gardens
The effort to clear this part of the forest is MASSIVE. I can’t imagine the work to turn this forest into keyhole gardens right now. That’s not even including the planting, management and harvesting of veggies! Yeah, not gonna happen.
Instead this clearing will probably be a forest garden with fruits and veggie nestled among the shrubs.
What Mostly Holds Up:
Access Issues
I mention the issues with the shared road, which building a driveway should address. It took me a few years of flailing and struggling with these themes to finally realize that a driveway on my property is exactly the solution to most of the problems of access I have.
Contour Gardens
The irony of this plan is that the way I drew the gardens is NOT on contour. I don’t think I’ll have a garden here (or the “New Home Site”). Instead I’d like to build gardens closer to the cabin.
I do want to build swales on contour in the orchard though! That’s a good idea. More on that below.
Pop’s Polyculture Orchard
After spending about three years clearing the blackberry thickets, I can tell you I will not be planting raspberries in the orchard area!
I am starting to envision long swales on the contour lines. They will self-water the orchard along the entire length of the driveway. These can be hand dug once the “clearing” is fully cleared.
I’ll still plant radishes, comfrey and clover along the swales. Later, I’ll add more of the orchard trees I mentioned, which I have started planting already!
Wild Pharmacy
I’m in no way going to attempt to start commercially harvesting wild-simulated ginseng. Big ambition there. This work is so slow and mindful. I’ll have to be living there and spending lots of time in the woods, listening and planting. This is dream territory.
Re-imaging Permaculture Zones
If you’re not familiar with Permaculture Zones, they’re a major pattern to design the efficient use of land. Here’s the zone map I built for the final project in 2020.
It’s pretty complicated, with about 10 acres of land allocated to projects and multiple, disconnected zones of the same category. When I designed this, I started with the cabin and shed. Then I filled in random zones like a coloring book.
Here’s what I imagine the zones looking like today.
15 Acres is a lot of land! This map has half of it totally unmanaged. In designing this, I started with the remote zones and worked my way back to the cabin.
8 acres of Zone 5 - Wild Land
3 acres of Zone 4 - Cultivated Woodlands (mushrooms)
2 acres of Zone 3 - Orchard
1 acre of Zone 2 - Forest Gardens (minimally managed)
Less than an acre of Zone 1 - Herb gardens, flower gardens around the cabin
Zone 0 is literally the cabin
What’s Next?
Well, this year’s projects include the driveway and replacing the cabin floor. Plus whatever fun surprises come my way when I get up there in May.
A project I’m looking forward to doing that was not a part of the original project is slowly walking through the land and mapping things in GaiaGPS.
I currently do this in Colorado, mapping the interesting shacks and benches I find hidden in the woods of our local ski resort. Or here’s a map I made for a hut trip
This year, I want to go on a hike and mark the gullies, special trees like hickory and ancient oaks, and fresh water springs. As I walk, I drop pins and build an interactive map to have as reference for years to come.
This is a lifelong project. I’m glad it’s moving slowly and the plan continues to evolve.
Hey! If you’re new here, this is West Bluff Food Forest. I'm building a permaculture orchard and cabin home in the Finger Lakes region of New York. I write about the lessons I'm learning and update you along the way. Please subscribe if you don’t already.