The Big Idea: An efficient, eco-friendly homestead takes good planning and years of work to become stable and self-sufficient.

• Modern, industrial agriculture is incompatible with a rapidly growing population and resource depletion.
• Well-designed permaculture systems promote biodiversity and restore land back to health.
• Nut trees are the core of good permaculture.
• A nut tree is simply more effective and efficient at converting sunlight and rain into value, over the long-term. A nut tree orchard is also a pasture, a game reserve, a shelter for understory berries, and a site for medicinal plants.
• (See chapter 2 for seventy two permaculture design principles.)
• Before you begin, do a deep site analysis, observing water, sun, temperature, soil, topography.
• The purpose of a plan is to avoid huge mistakes so you can know where to experiment.
• Understanding and shaping water flow and storage is fundamental to your farm.
• Understand keylines, swales, and ponds.
• Overgrazing in the 19th and 20th century has destroyed most of America’s rich topsoil.
• Strategies to rebuild your land’s topsoil:
  • Compost, urine, humanure.
  • Biochar.
  • Fungi.
  • Remineralization.
  • Cover cropping.
  • Tall grass grazing.
  • Subsoil plowing.
  • Keyline agriculture.
  • Deep root perennials.
• Strategies for growing food:
  • Plant permaculture guilds.
  • Start a forest garden.
  • Emphasize perennial plants.
  • Know which foods should be staples (rice, meat, eggs, fruit, nuts).
  • Until your systems can produce staple foods, vegetable gardening will comprise the bulk of your yield and your work.
  • Among your annual vegetables, emphasize reliability and calorie foods such as potato, winter squash, cabbage, garlic, and carrots.
  • Learn to preserve food via kimchi and sauerkraut.
  • Emphasize crops that also provide medicine or rebuild the soil.
  • Fungi are very underrated.
• Fuel and shelter advice:
  • Learn how to use wood as your main fuel and heat source.
  • Biochar has been used for thousands of years to amend soil.
  • Passive solar home design uses large, south-facing windows to trap the sunlight and warm the home.
  • Good home design considers sun, water, wind, surrounding landscape, elevation, views, noise, and road access.
  • Solar south is not always the optimal solar orientation. On a west-facing slope, a home has a late solar day.
  • Foundation advice: extend the foundation wall higher, go deeper for frost stability.
  • Roofs should be steel or slate.
  • Normally, go with a cheaper and faster stud wall frame home. A timber frame is prettier, though. You can do a hybrid if you like.
  • Never use spray foam insulation. Use cellulose for ease of use, low toxicity, sustainability, resistance to mice, and reusability.
  • In terms of insulation, a few large windows > lots of small windows.
  • Use daylight or LED for lighting.
  • Consider getting a landline for phone service.
  • A wood stove can serve many functions: space heater, water heater, stove, and oven.
  • Good home design can reduce the need for heating, A/C, and fans.