Permaculture Day 4

Agroforestry & Aquaponics

1/29/09

woke up before the sun... always a treat, i was the first to step into the community center today, so i took the opportunity to enjoy prepearing some ginger ylang ylang tea. verynice... followed by some quick yoga and pleasent sit under a palm facing the rising warming sun.

well today we started out with a vizualization activity, we alll closed our eyes and imagended we were tree seed. Ben the head director of the programe walked us through the stages of the seeds growth from sprouting its tap root all the way to droping its firts fruit. I was a mango tree, which there are tons of different mango treeson the farm and big wild mangos all over the island, but i will have to be patient and wait to May when we can start to harvest the beautiful gift from the trees. Excited for that.

Next we started to talk about and take notes on Agroforestry. In a nut shell, Agro foresty, is the combination of foresty (tree farming) and agriculture (crops & animals). It is the stacking of functions, which is a big concept in permaculture.

Benifits of agroforestry : Multiple crops, and and uses to attain economic and viable wealth on the same piece of land at the same time. The trees can shade the crops and animals, can fix nutrients into the ground, can provide a wind break, can help preserve and regenerate the soil, it is culturaly compatable, helps creat local based economies, can creat farmer co-op's.

The trees them selves can be used for: timber, firewood, pulp, forest establishments, gums and resign, oil,'s.

Main benifit: FOOD; nuts and fruit!!!

In agroforesty it is wise to try and cultivate the multi purpose species. For example the Coconut palm is often referred to as an allstar tree, for its many uses. I invite you all to discover its many uses, along with bamboo. i would list many of them right now but i am pressed for time. I will try to come back at a later point.

Next i met up with my focus area instructor, to go over some questions regarding the topic. Each one of us students was asked to pick a focues area to spend extra time in studing and getting a deeper understanding of the topic. each topic has a week set aside to be taught, but we needed to choose one to specialize in. I chose to pick renewable energy.

So i am now in the process of learning the basic of how electricity works, and am going to apply it to my final project, which is to research, consult with client, order parts and then instal a solar elsectric system, to a structure that is just about finished up. Very excited about this project. I feel it will i will gain a foundation of understanding how a solar energy system works, and the confidence to apply it out side of the farm. I will be posting more about my progress very soon.

Then after lunch we took a field trip to the UVI University of The Virgin ISlands to check out their Aquaponics system.

Aquaponics is a hybrid sytem, meaning it has fused two individual sytems to create one that involves both. Aquaponics is the combintaion of aquaculuture (fish farming) and an hydroponics (soil-less plants).

Let me break it down for you... Aqua ponics uses's the fish poop as nutrient additives in the water that flows in this big banks that plants float on. The roots soak up the poop nutrients and uses them to grow. the water is then filtered back into the fish system.

This relates to permaculture in the following reason. mainly the stacking of functions. bringing two sytems together to help each other out in a benifical manner.

Awesome sysytem, sopposedly their is a completely organic aquaponics system thats is pumping out fish and produce in hawaii.

This Type of multi farming can produce some nice income as well.

And after that we played a few games of Ultimate Frisbee. Awesome excersize and a good time.

Thanks for reading everbody.