Bold Love Farm

Hi guys, sorry, I'm not there to do my presentation in person,

but my project was to design a permaculture for our farm.

Bold love Farm.

I really can't talk about the farm without mentioning my

daughter Olivia who was the catalyst of it all.

Olivia died in 2018 of a debilitating illness

and when she was gone, my husband and I were lost,

we had lost our focus and our sense of purpose in

life and so we knew we needed a big change.

Um we wanted to quit our jobs and sell our house and just get a fresh start.

So while searching for guidance,

I came up with these three principles lives simply serve others grow food

and these are what have really led us to

buying the farm

serving our community at the farmers markets

and to permaculture

and they remain the criteria against which we make most decisions.

Our vision for the farm is to grow fruits, vegetables,

herbs and eggs to use in the bakery and to

sell at the markets um along with our bread and pastries

and then our sort of big vision would be someday have

a farm store bakery and yoga studio all in one space.

But if we never grow to be that big, that would be okay too. But it's fun to think about

the community of this.

Um farm is really my husband George myself and my son Clay Clay

has always had an interest in farming long before we ever imagined buying one

and he enrolled in Virginia techs agricultural science program.

So you know, he helps out whenever he's home, but he's at school most of the year.

Um,

we've been journaling are chronicling our journey

of the farm on facebook and market.

Um, sorry, facebook and instagram

and a lot of friends and family have reached out to volunteer to help out.

So we hope to use those volunteers for specific projects like

we're planning to put up a high tunnel in july.

Um, but for the most part, it's, it's really, you know, the,

the farm has to be scaled to where it can, it can be run with just my husband and me.

At least for now

This is an overhead view of the farm. It's about 20 acres

and um,

It's really, I did my site analysis on just about half of it.

So just about 10 acres and it's really a very beautiful place,

very peaceful and very conducive to healing.

Um, one of the most noticeable things about it is the views,

especially from the front porch and from the bakery looking down over the pond.

So whenever I'm thinking about our permaculture design,

I'm always wanting to try to maintain the views and the sense of

peace and beauty that the, that the site has

about half the property is wooded.

So that's the half that I left off of the site

design because we really don't intend to do much with that.

I mean, other than, you know, we,

we've made some hiking trails and we've harvested some of the wine berries that,

that um,

that

come, you know, in july.

Um,

So

that's, so that's the part that's not what it is,

The part that I did it for my site design.

Besides the woods and the pond,

the most noticeable other feature is the slope of the land.

And when you look at the topographical lines, you can see that at the high point,

the drive is at the end of the driveway, we're at 750 ft.

And when you get down to the pond, you're at 660 ft. So that's a 90 ft drop

Over about 700 ft or a 13

grade.

So from the beginning we realized that with that kind of a slope,

we weren't going to be doing, um, you know, a traditional rotation of, of,

of annual vegetables because that much disturbance on that

slope of land would cause too much soil erosion.

But even

When we got here,

the cattle that had been here for 30 years had done kind of a number on the land.

There was a lot of areas that were

um, I had no green, you know, no vegetation,

they were just muddy and there were these gullies coming down the slope

towards the pond.

Now that the cattle have been gone for a year, most of the land is, you know,

completely covered with vegetation all year,

but slowing the flow of water is still a significant factor in the property.

Our next door neighbor is a horse farm whose

whose soil is also exposed all year round,

so that flows, you know that soil flows down into our property and into the pond

um through the creek and then we have a number of buildings on the property.

So trying to capture the water off of those roofs would be another goal.

Some other considerations.

We have a septic tank and a septic field, so we don't want to grow trees or anything,

They're like food um or at least not root vegetables.

So we need something else for that area.

There's significant deer pressure with all the woods,

so we'll need a solution for that.

Um there's a lot of grass,

so trying to come up with something more beneficial um is and

how to get rid of all that grass is a factor.

And also the fact that there's only two of us to do all this work.

So those are challenges.

But there's also a lot of opportunities here.

There's a lot of wide open spaces with abundant sunshine.

There were you know, significant um structures already in place here. Um the

um

one of the barns, my husband was able to convert into his bakery,

there's a little corn crib that I turned into a little yoga meditation spot.

My son turned part of the run in shed into an outdoor bar for himself and his friends

and there's also a chicken coop in there

and we get the opportunity to see lots of wildlife.

So all of those are good things about the property.

Mhm.

So as we look at it, these were the biggest questions that we that we have.

How do we stop erosion and slow the flow of water? How can we plant on sloped land?

How can we make growing and harvesting efficient for just the two of us?

Where can we grow traditional market vegetables on the property?

How do we maintain our views?

How do we protect what we grow from the deer

and what can we grow in the septic field?

Those are our biggest questions.

And this is a

copy of the site plan or the working plan that I developed,

which tries to answer those questions in a number of ways.

So first of all to slow the flow of water and erosion, we'd like to build some swales

um

especially where the goalies are already appearing.

And then also we'd like to put a green roof on top of that run in shed.

Some of that buildings are missing gutters.

So we'd like to install gutters and downspouts and then have those

flow into rain barrels to stop some of that flow of water.

And then um

between us and our neighbors farm and along the creek bed.

We'd like to plant water loving plants so we can help

slow that flow as well.

Uh We'd also like to plant a permaculture orchard on the north slope.

Um The idea here would be to plant this in in

like rose to keep it more organized and easier for us to

to care for and to harvest since it's just the two of us.

So we'd like to do rows of um you know alternating fruit trees and um

nitrogen fixing trees.

Um

and then plant

below that the

tribes

and

beneficial plants and some you know um

perennial vegetables as well.

And if we're really organized we could try to do it so that the things

in each row are kind of ready to be harvested at the same time.

So that's an idea we saw that seems like it would help us um

Kind of make it a little more efficient for us.

Although it would take a lot of research to figure that out

on the front end.

We received a grant for a high tunnel.

So we plan to put that high tunnel south of the bakery

along the driveway where it's out of view from the house.

And it also gets a lot of sunlight,

it's relatively flat there and it's easy access to water.

So that seemed like a good spot for that

in the leech field.

We'd like to plant some wild flowers and some cut flower garden um as well

and

to protect all of that from the deer will have to

put deer fencing around the whole perimeter of the property.

So that's our working plan.

Um so far we've we've only been able to put a few things in practice. Um

We in in the spring we decided to try to interest to try to plant some to drill

in some clover to mix in with the to the grass to make it a little more beneficial.

And I was afraid that that wasn't gonna take because of how thick the sod is,

but it did and it's doing well.

And then also when we got our chicks this spring,

I was thinking that maybe the chicken coop in the running shed would be too far away.

But I decided, you know,

looking at it from a permaculture approach to try it first before deciding

that it wasn't going to work and it's worked out really well.

So to me, uh you know, what does permaculture mean?

It's really an ongoing process of improving the lives of people and animals,

the earth and the environment by taking a humble approach to the land,

working with and adapting to what the land

is offering rather than just imposing our will.

And this fits in precisely with our mission of trying

to live more simply serve others and grow food.

So it's no wonder that these principles have led us here to permaculture

Bold Love Farm

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