Born in 1991, I got dragged around a lot as a child by my footloose parents. I grew up in the Netherlands, Maine, Oxford and Nova Scotia. I also spent several chunks of time on sailboats. My family has now settled near Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. I am currently a student of Geography and Sustainable Development at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.
I first heard of permaculture at the age of 13 when an architect neighbour lent me a copy of Mollison's "Introduction to Permaculture". I got terminally infected, as Geoff Lawton puts it. For a long time, I didn't act on my convictions because school has a way of draining your energy. Just before leaving for uni, I finally gave myself a kick and sheet-mulched a 40x40 foot area between the house and the road and developed a plan for the rest of the property.
The next summer (2011), saw me develop the garden with mainly annuals as well as some perennial flowers. I spent a lot of time observing how plants grew, how big they got, how they interacted. I built a swale to take greywater from the house and release it above the garden. We also put in a rainwater collection system for our large 20x40 boatshed. Adjacent to the garden, we have a greenhouse where my parents are now growing winter greens. On the acre and a half of grass behind the house, we have 2 donkeys on a paddocked pasture and about 10 chickens in a movable electric paddock. 4 american persimmons and 2 american chestnuts have been planted into the grassy area. A hedge to the West has jerusalem artichokes, sea buckthorn, hazels and sand plums. The final 5.5 acres of woodland provide beech, ash, poplar, fir and pine for firewood as well as feral apples. The donkeys have a fenced path into the woodland.