A new year brings many opportunities and this is a very important New Year. I’m hoping to complete the construction of Farm Finn and to be able to bring both volunteers and a management team on to the project, thus enabling Farm Finn to begin both working as a Ferme D’Hote and model farm thus begining engagement with local stakeholders in reflecting upon land management practice and climate change adaptation…… and maybe even beginning to earn, rather than spending more money.

 

I went back to UK for Xmas and as is so often the case, I was amazed at how corporate control has covered the country and how far we are from any sort of proximity to controlling almost anything. We are consumers not citizens and the poor quality of our food and the level of control by big food industry…..tbh by Big Industry full stop, is everywhere present.

Farm Finn is for me a way of fighting back. Of being part of a global movement of people trying to resist control away from Corporate control and the resulting impact upon both our individual freedoms and impact upon climate change.

Tbh, it was a complete joy to return to Wafii’s and for him to serve up a tajin of vegitables that he picked straight from his garden. No plastic, no air miles, no carbon footprint. Just local control of food production, keeping money from big business and remaining in the hands of local communities.

What has been great this year is the amount of rain that has fallen this year. As a result of the poor rainfall, even drought of last year, the current olive harvest has been very poor, with current prices being over 50 dhs a litre. Last year it was 35! Unfortunately I’m not able to harvest rain as I lack a roof! But I will ensure that I fill the RW Tank from either the river or the spring, so that we have plenty of water in reserve, come the summer.

The reed bed system is also moving in to place, though we had to stop building for the winter. I think we’ll need to wait until later in the year when we can guarantee weeks of good weather to start and complete the system and link it to the natural pool/reservoir and the rest of the GW and sanitation composting system.

If I am honest, whilst I think I have my head around the GW/Reed bed system, I’m not as sure how to develop the “natural pool”. But what I am learning is that given time and some exploration of the internet, many things are possible.

There is plenty of work still left to do, even on the land, but unfortunately currently we are lacking access to workers, as many of my previous team, notably of labourers, are still involved in kif/hashish production. And even then, it being winter, it’s difficult to get a real rhythm going whilst we move between sun and rain. Thus, it’s possible that we’ll need to wait until the spring to re begin the build of the house.

In the mean time, I’m hoping to get the steps completed and both Waafi and Mohammed are involved in that, as well as completing the several walls that also need repairing. This past week, we’ve managed to complete walls and I left watching Mohammed completing at least one set of steps, though with clouds of snow and sleet looming, we’ll have to see what we get to complete.

What I am hoping to get done though, regardless of wind, rain or shine, is the completion of several swales that will I hope, help us to better manage rainfall and water flow across the farm, using check logs which will help with the formation of garden beds and planting of trees.

What I was able t get done this time, was cutting the poles for the boarder round the farm. I’m very much in two minds about using chicken wire….it just looks “exclusive”, but we need to be able to keep neighbouring goats out if we are to get the garden going.

I’ve also  found some great sites that will help with these developments. Unfortunately nothing has come from my attempts at getting experienced permi’s  to draw up my PC garden plan and as such I’m beginning to plan my own. This has been greatly helped by finding this site which has introduced me to “Companion Planting” and “hot composting”.

To make this happen, I’ve been visiting various places to collect materials; 60 bags from workers at the local dump (40 dhs), I managed to get a car park attendant at the souk to collect 10 bags of vegitable waste (20dhs), and then went to the “mackiner” to collect 20 bags of wood shavings/saw dust (free) and following the program advised by Deep Green Perma Culture Blog, ( https://deepgreenpermaculture.com/diy-instructions/hot-compost-composting-in-18-days/) I’ve got this compost system working….we’ll see what we get.

I also visited the now disused pepinier at Ain Rami. What a disaster. Such high quality f plants and compost available for local farmers, but all gone to ruin following a misadventure in to sharing the business with the private sector. However I was able to collect 5 x 50 kilo bags of compost/soil (10dhs) and I’ll be going back for more.

Whats exciting is that now that I’ve made contacts, I should be able to begin the process of collecting soil and making compost for the land….and thus begin planting within the next few weeks.

What I need to do next is to understand and map out appropriate trees and “companion plants” and understand where to put them….that’s the job for the rest of this month, after which I’ll order trees from Bab Taza and we’ll get planting in Feb. Of course I’m now focused upon what I see in other gardens, including “horizontal Planting” as illustrated here. All really exciting.

Having said that, I’ve been discussing ideas such as “No dig gardening” with the likes of Waafi, Mohammed and Abderkarim and there’s a look of complete incredulity. I like that. I like that we are now in a dialogue and that with the onset of the garden, we will have many more things to talk about and to practically learn from.

Finally, I’ve found a link to a great toolkit for farmers which I’ll link below. I’m hoping it will help both me and eventually help as a framework for working with local farmers.

Anyway, this is where we are re Farm Finn, on January 2017…..watch this space until Jan 2018!