At the start of pool season, Jack got it in his head that we could heat up the water with some combination of pumps and tubing and buckets and fire. He gets a lot of these ideas—they keep him up at night—and sometimes he organically shifts to a new project or else I can redirect his energies, but this one stuck around for weeks. He kept presenting me with new hand-drawn schematics and eventually I had to admit, "I. DON'T. KNOW. HOW. TO. DO. ANY. OF. THAT." Nevertheless, he persisted.

Jack and I wanted to make something for Rose's 3rd birthday, and we settled on this DIY mud kitchen because the girl loves to cook. We used salvaged wood pallets, and a few other inexpensive materials, here’s a step-by-step.

Here’s our Spring, Summer and Fall plans. Feel free to use these plans but note that we are growing in Central Virginia, Zone 7A, so Google your growing zone as these plants may or may not work well in other regions.

On the last day I *went shopping* before quarantining in mid-March, my impulse buy was a bunch of lumber. I remember thinking it might be the last day I'd be allowed out of my house for a while. I called our local hardware store/lumber yard and asked if they were still open. “Today we are, but who knows if we will be tomorrow,” they said, which in hindsight was both true and an excellent piece of salesmanship.

We started this process about a year ago and we’re somewhere around Step 9 here, but this is a basic breakdown of the path we followed, with some links to outside resources as well as more in-depth content on this site. Here’s what we did…

Now that we have our Base Map, the next step is to create a Sun Map. The idea is to figure out the best and worst areas for growing food, and, in our case, siting solar panels.

Map #1 is the "Permaculture Base Map." This is our starting point, a way to get our arms around what currently exists on your property and a baseline upon which to build for the future. Before even attempting this foundational piece it’s important to gather some existing raw materials.

In fiction they like to use the term “world-building” to describe this kind of work. Though every detail won’t and shouldn’t make it onto the page, I think it’s important and useful for a writer to have a sense of the world their fake people live in. It’s equally important for you to understand and envision the world you’re creating on your property.

With new baby Rose on the way, my upstairs office was slated to become her nursery, so Kate informed me that it was time for me and my personal archive of business papers and Phish tapes to GTFO.

In March 2017 we hired our good friends Scott Wilcox and Gabriel Allan (more about these impressive men in a moment) to help transform this villainous outbuilding into a functional lair...