Hi,
I am just getting started with Permaculture here in the Wet Mountains of south central Colorado. We moved here from Mississippi in October of 2012.

I discovered permaculture several years ago via something else that I was reading online, and thought it made a lot of sense. I've watched a few videos on permaculture, have read Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway, and attended one of his (Toby's) intro. to permaculture workshops in Mississippi a few years ago. I've also watched about half of the free online videos by Dr. Will Hooker who teaches permaculture in North Carolina. I am currently watching Geoff Lawton's videos.

We are at 8000 feet, and the landscape is semi-arid. We have cool to cold nights, and wide temperature swings. Temperatures in Winter can occasionally drop down to 30 below, but usually range from the teens to 18 degrees below zero. So far, I've been hauling horse manure,old hay, and wood shavings to areas that I plan to plant eventually. I've put in a couple of asparagus beds, two rhubarb plants, and a beautiful salvia that is doing really well. I planted a few fruit trees Liberty and Fuji apple, Elberta Peach, and a pear (can't remember name), but none of them survived the winter. I'm going to have to put up deer fences if I'm able to grow fruit trees here at all, and also put in cold climate varieties. Anyway, I'd like to grow a food forest here, and become as self sufficient as possible.