Designers in mags and permaculture

One of our fav designers paid us a visit this past weekend. Julie deLeon and Bill worked together for years and they still collaborate on many projects. She is also a dear friend. Julie is portrayed in the recent edition of Chicago Home and Garden. Her new design firm Groundwork is up and running. She even mentioned Grow Modular as one of her fav's in the article.

She joined us on a day trip to Westby, WI for a day long presentation by Mark Shepherd, the guru of permaculture. We were awed by his knowledge of design, ecology, plants, water conservation, farming and environmentalism. Mark was helping the farmers of Ella Bella Farm craft a farm design in their ~15 acres of former CRP ground. He takes the typical farmer's ideal of flat, empty farmland and turns it into swales, trees, berries and alley cropping. It is a lot to get one's head around. We learned a lot and are not looking at our hilly farm in the same way!

We spent Monday (I took a vacation day from non-farm job) running drip tape in the garlic beds.

We aren't J.D. name brand folks but the drip tape is good stuff.

3 rows per bed = a whole lotta tape. We only got the fields half done!