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I’m new to permaculture and I’m interested in creating a food forest. I saw the term here plant guild and it seemed to mean the same thing she does in her video about not monocropping. She explains the need for different canopy layers and how plants access nutrients at different root depths.

I have read a lot of discourse that permaculture is less intensive and less expensive than traditional farming, it’s softer on the land with excellent sustainability, and puts farmers in a role of stewardship rather than lordship.

While all of this may be true, I want to reiterate to the newbs: permaculture is NOT cheap.

You will pay in money, time, labor, or all three!

Money: this is obvious. Anything you trade for something else, whether it’s cash, crypto, supplies, vice, crops.

Time: not just time spent on projects, but also waiting for things like perennials to bear fruit, driving around to pick up free supplies, shopping, research, learning and planning.

Labor: all that energy executing your beautiful and meticulous projects, wear and tear on your body.

We dug out hugel beds a few weeks ago, and decided to rent an excavator (money) to save us the many hours (time) and wear on our bodies (labor).

I spent many hours starting seeds (time + labor) to save myself from driving around and spending extra on seedlings (money)

If you want to get a headstart on that food forest, you’ll be paying extra for older fruit trees.

Hey, these rain barrels on Craigslist are free! But they’re forty miles away, and they need spigots and screens.

If you can’t wait for your seeds to sprout, you will spend money on seedlings from the store.

If you are injured, busy, or otherwise incapacitated and can’t complete your projects on your projected timeline, you either have to wait or outsource the work – usually for pay!

Your zero-cost chipdrop ain’t free – you’re spending time and energy moving it!

Every part of a permaculture system requires input. It is a tremendous amount of upfront investment, whether it’s time, energy or money or all three.

I write this because we are in year five of a small, subsistence permaculture farm, and in the beginning, getting everything established was backbreaking. I was pulling my hair out in years one and two, because I thought permaculture was supposed to be easy, and inexpensive. And it can be! But you will pay somewhere.

Year five, I’m sitting here eating fresh strawberries and appreciating the view while the chickens till the soil in their tractor, the honeybees forage in the food forest, and the rabbits make beautiful fertilizer from garden scraps and yard trimmings. We harvested rabbits yesterday and moved the meat birds from their brooder. Everything is working. Is it done? Hell no. Far from it. I have another two acres to convert to food forest, and I want to stock our pond, and set up a deer stand, and get turkeys, and ducks, and….

Is it cheap? Only as cheap as you want to make it. Is it worth it? Yep. Every hour, every penny, every back ache. One day you’ll sit back and go, “ah. This is what it was all for!” I don’t even want to go on vacation anymore. Everything I need is right here.

So for the newbs, don’t get frustrated, it’s all part of the process. Don’t be afraid to take it slow. Let permaculture teach YOU! And remember, you will pay somewhere. You get to choose where!

I’m in the early stages of planning for a fruit tree guild on my property. On the northern side of my yard I’ve got 3 fairly large redcedars that I would ideally like to heavily trim or get rid of two of them entirely to free up some more space.

I’ve read some conflicting articles about how redcedars can affect the pH of the soil, but I’m assuming that maybe some of those articles could be conflating redcedars with true cedars. Does anyone have any experience with this directly?

I was also wondering if redcedar could be used as the foundation for a hugenkultur mound once the limbs are aged a bit. Would this be cause for concern with apple trees growing ~20ft away?

I’d also take any and all words of wisdom from any fellow zone 7 folks, this will be my first big gardening adventure here. Thanks so much in advance! ☺️

It looks like some kind of grape vine taking over my evergreen tree. I’m a new owner here… apologies if this isn’t the correct place to ask