Our permaculture effort faces a number of challenges most do not – it’s on a hill, in the wind and we have a budget. From what we read in books, permaculture “experts” often remake their sites with bulldozers. We didn’t. They pick places out of the wind. We couldn’t. They have money to burn. We don’t. So ours is realistic and maybe ill-fated, but we continue on.

Our fruit trees were on 75 percent off sale at Ace Hardware. Our medicinals we bought out of the back of a car from a neighbor who specialized in herbal medicine. Our tall fescue between the trees was planted as the house was built to keep the soil from washing out and off the hill. We live in a deer-infested environment so our trees have cages around them.