An Update on our Trees and Swales

Posted on December 28, 2018 by Damian Lester

The Water-Harvesting Earthworks: We tend to get the majority of our yearly rainfall in short bursts–and typically only a few of them per year (average annual rainfall is 4.5 inches). Typically, when it does rain, that water runs right off the land, causing erosion on it’s way down to the dry lake bed. In order to grow useful trees and shrubs that will produce food, shade, and create a wind buffer for our permaculture system, we have been turning our land into a sponge to catch and soak up that rainwater when it comes. Doing this can take different forms, but as Brad Lancaster puts it, we try to “slow it, spread it, and sink it” — we slow the water down and pacify it by intercepting it’s straight downhill path, allowing it to spread out and sink in along level contour lines giving moisture to as much of the land as possible. I discussed our permaculture design in great detail in the early posts on this blog, along with maps, charts and photos of the beginning.

img_20180109_065336291_hdr In 2013 I got my Permaculture Design Certification and immediately began designing our little 1.25 acre piece of family land, after spending about a year carefully working on the design (and making sure we would cause no harm or disruption downhill from us) we started hand digging our contour swales whenever we had a spare moment. We had had one or two work parties with friends and hosted some amazing volunteers on the land who were excited learn about what we were doing and to help put the system in. I did a lot of digging at night by the light of a headlamp in the summer, when the daytime temperatures were too hot. Our digging here is easy, and the work was extremely enjoyable. It felt creative and saturated with meaning after having visualized every aspect of our design to that level of img_20180109_065757837 detail. It was an amazing joy to be moving slowly and steadily towards a beautiful goal… just the kind of soul medicine I was needing.

The Earthworks were mostly completed by IMG_20180109_064751466 2015 (though we are still making additions and tweaks to the system). It has been a thrill to see them work whenever it rains hard enough to get the water flowing! Although there have been many smaller rain events that img_20180109_064929223 allowed us to soak in lots of water in the upper swales, it wasn’t until this fall (October 2018) that we got to see the whole system of earthworks fill to capacity and overflow. Through the early hours of the morning we got 2 1/2 inches of rain and all of the swales filled and overflowed in a pacified, orderly way, while elsewhere in the Joshua Tree area huge erosion gullies were formed, and roads were buried in mud. Going through that experience really underlined the importance of doing this work. Each of those mud flows that buried roads were, at least in major part, a result of the hardscape humans have been creating in this area–rooftops and deeply carved gridlines of hard, compacted roads through the fragile desert that intercept the natural, meandering washes and channel the water into fast, cutting, destructive flows that don’t allow much of the water to soak in and support plants and wildlife. With permaculture design we are working to reshape the already damaged, compacted areas of the landscape back into a sponge, and making use of that increased moisture to grow high-value, desert-hardy (mostly native) food-producing plant species that could become the basis for a truly local and sustainable food culture out here in the Mojave Desert.

Propagating Honey and Screwbean Mesquite seeds

THE PLANTS

Mesquites are the most important food producing trees of our ecosystem that not only provide protein and carbohydrates, but also taste sweet and amazing. We found that the local-native variety of Honey Mesquites were not available in nurseries, so we started harvesting seeds from the ancient-local groves and propagating our own. Drawing inspiration from the Joshua Tree National Park Nursery, we started growing trees in 18 inch deep, tap-root-friendly tubes.

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Maya getting ready to plant

Our little nursery has been an amazing success, supplying almost all of the plants we’ve needed for our project on our shoestring budget. Also, the local-native trees and shrubs we’ve been growing have turned out to be a hot commodity in our community, so we immediately had a little side business growing extras for friends and neighbors. (This fall’s batch of trees sold out in about three days… Clearly there is room to grow on this front if we decide that it makes sense for us in the big picture).

We planted pretty densely along the swales. I’d rather plant more trees now, with the option of thinning the weaker trees out at a later date, rather than risk not having enough density to create good wind buffering and lots of shade for the system. The majority of the trees have done very well and grown rapidly, but a few have been slow and stunted, either by rabbits being able to penetrate inadequate protection or maybe genetics, or from competition from the nearby wild plants… we’re still not sure. The engagement with the land in such a deep way has been rewarding throughout the process. We’ve celebrated every new shoot of green growth and it is SO cool to get to watch the land slowly change! This last summer we picked the first mesquite pods from some of the more advanced young trees. Even though we grew all of our baby mesquites from mama trees that had sweet, delicious pods, we really didn’t know what to expect from their offspring, but so far they’ve been excellent!

Before and After Shots: 2015 and 2018

: 2015

: 2018

: June 2015

: October 2018

: 2015

: 2018

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Notes About our Watering Strategy:

Our ultimate goal is to have an extremely drought-tolerant, shade producing, carbon sequestering food-forest that is almost entirely irrigated by the rain. To this end we’re trying to train the trees to grow deep roots that are positioned to take advantage of the rainwater that our swales soak in. Each tree was planted with a deep water tube that goes several feet down towards below the bottom of the nearby swale– training the roots towards the rainwater source, rather than just hanging out at the surface where the soil dries out quickly in the sun and wind. Our local botanist-hero Robin Kobaly taught us this technique, and we have adapted and hybridized the concept within the context of our design.

What We’ve Planted (and Why) as of December 2018:

In and around the swales:

*Honey Mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa)(Sweet, nutritious pods can be ground up for flour)

*Screwbean Mesquite (Prosopis pubescens)(Same as above)

*Velvet Mesquite (Prosopis velutina)(Same as above)

*Chilean Mesquite (Prosopis chilensis)(a thornless hybrid, common in nurseries)(Same as above)

*Blue Palo Verde (Parkinsonia florida)(Sweet green peas in the pod in late spring, and dried beans in the summer that can be stored year-round)

*Mexican Palo Verde (Parkinsonia aculeata)(Same as above)

*”Museum” Palo Verde (a thornless hybrid)(Same as above)

*Pistachio (Pistacia vera)(surprisingly draught tolerant!)(nuts)

*Jujube (Ziziphus mauritiana)(need to get greywater)(delicious fruit)

*Pomegranite (Punica granatum)( these are better to have in a greywater-fed “oasis zone” situation)(fruit)

*Fourwing Saltbush (Atriplex canescens)(easy, beautiful, edible leaves as a cooked green)

*Quailbrush (Atriplex lentiformis)(same as above)

*Wolfberry (Lycium andersonii)(MY FAVORITE!! sweet and tart red berries)

*Silver Cholla (Cylindropuntia echinocarpa)(yes, this is a FOOD PLANT–the flower buds can be eaten after being de-thorned and boiled)

*Jojoba (Simmondsia chinensis)(not edible, but oil is great for skin)

*Desert Hackberry (Celtis pallida)(growing REALLY slow)(supposedly berries)

*Prickly Pear (genus Opuntia)(amazing, potent, sweet fruit. We love these and are going to plant lots more! Don’t be fooled into thinking they don’t need rabbit protection)

*Bladderpod (Isomeris arborea)(Beutiful plants with flowers and seed pods are edible when cooked or pickled)

In the greywater oasis zones: (more about the greywater system in future posts)

California Fan Palm (Washingtonia filifera)(these will eventually produce delicious tiny date-like berries that make an AMAZING sweet beverage)

Black Siris Tree (Albizia odorotissima)(very fast growing nitrogen fixer–used for shade and eventually as a “chop and drop” support species for the other plants around them)

Black Locust Tree (We have one of these growing and the seed came from a very special permaculture site called Quail Springs Permaculture).

White (Fruited) Mulberry (We were able to get one of these going from a cutting. Very excited to see if we can get both shade and fruit production with it)

Plants on our Wishlist: (hopefully) Coming Soon:

*Lots of olive trees

*More Pistachios

*More Wolfberries

*Holly-Leafed Cherry

*Desert Almond

*Lots more Prickly Pear

*More Bladderpod

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My advice for others interested in doing this work:

*Get a Permaculture Design Certification: This is an educational experience that will rock your world and enrich your life in so many ways, empowering you to “be the change you want to see in the world.” We need legions of trained, competent permaculturalists working to heal and re-design every damaged ecosystem on earth. If this work calls to you, come be part of the first Permaculture Design Course ever to take place in Joshua Tree. It will be happening this March at the Harrison House and will be taught by Warren Brush, one of the most inspiring permaculture teachers on the planet! Click Here for more information.

*Do this work in areas that have already been damaged by human activity. Please don’t plow up your wild backyard to put in swales etc. Places where cars or OHVs have driven in the past are perfect candidates. The Mojave Desert vegetation can look very nondescript or even dead for long periods of time, only to burst with life and beauty when the conditions are just right, so don’t be fooled into thinking you need to tear out the humble-looking, but ancient plants on your land to put in more “flashy” species. That would be a tragic mistake!

*Be careful!!! Unless you have done a lot of careful study of your land and permaculture design, and you really understand the micro-watershed you’re land is a part of, hire a trained professional to design/install your earthworks. Water is such a powerful force and will surprise you with its magnificent intensity at times. Please don’t flood yourself out (or even worse, your neighbors) with bad design and implementation!

*Don’t ever skimp on rabbit protection. Trust me, you DO need rabbit protection for all of your baby plants, with very few exceptions. Make fences 3 to 4 times as wide in diameter and twice as high as your initial instincts tell you to. Otherwise, don’t even bother planting. (NOTE: higher elevation residents might need to think about deer protection too).

Thanks for your interest, and stay tuned for more updates about our vegetable-growing adventures, chickens, greywater systems, etc. Please do keep in touch and let me know what you all are up to. Let’s keep experimenting and learning from each other!

Trees for fall planting are here

Posted on October 3, 2017 by maya@opuntiagardenfarm.com

This year’s trees are ready to plant!

We have: Local Honey Mesquite (29 Palms and Morongo Valley), Local Blue Palo Verde (Joshua Tree), and Desert Wolfberry -Lycium andersonii (parent plant not local, but it’s a native species).

We gathered the seeds for these trees ourselves and grow our plants in tubes to facilitate a healthy taproot and rapid growth. These are wonderful desert-adapted trees, if I say so myself, but be aware that our local varieties have big thorns, so not ideal for every location.

They are $20 each.

We can deliver by bike in Joshua Tree (2 tree minimum) or you can make an appointment to come here.

on feeding a family

Posted on March 19, 2017 by maya

When it comes to feeding myself and my family, I have high ambitions. I want us to eat super nutrient-dense meals based on fresh vegetables. I want starches to mostly come from perennials (tree food). I want high quality meat & fat, bone broth, and ferments. And I want all this to have variety, taste really good (so my 5-year-old will eat it*), be simple & quick to prepare, and not cost 90% of my household income. Do you have similar ambitions? But it’s hard! It got to the point where deciding what to make for meals each day was a significant source of stress. Stressing about the abundant, high-quality food we get to eat is embarrassing. Talk about first-world problems. But if you are the primary cook in your family, I’m sure you can relate.

For some time now, I’ve been trying to crack this code and design a system (it’s always about designing a system in this house of permaculture fanatics). I’ve been watching my new neighbor/old friend Sarabeth feed her hungry family of six, one-pot, gut healing, meals three times a day (outside on her camp stove, no less! My hat goes off to you, Sara!). One day Sarabeth casually mentioned that they eat eggs for lunch everyday. That was an ah-ha moment for me, having lunch be the same thing everyday. Back in the fall, Damian & I started having a big green smoothie every morning, and it made a huge difference in my day -because it has a ridiculous amount of fiber and micronutrients, so feels great in my body, and also because I no longer had to decide what was for breakfast (a teacher once told me that “trying to decide” is basically the worst mental state you can be in). If we have our smoothie for breakfast, and eggs for lunch, we can eat some meat with dinner and all I have to decide is how to flavor my meal! I don’t know if I’m accurately conveying what a revelation this is for me.

In case you are curious, here’s how it plays out:

Breakfast for me and Damian: Giant green smoothie. Oliver is not yet a fan of this smoothie, so he gets some combination of fruit, nuts, yogurt & sometimes grain.

Lunch: best eggs in town (from our permaculture chickens)! I usually serve them fried or poached on a bed of arugula salad (from the garden). Oliver will eat arugula if there’s a balsamic dressing, so that’s nice. In theory a dried fig and a sprinkle of nuts in the salad are enough carbs, but in practice we usually want a little more and will have a chunk of acorn bread or a little rice. My other go-to egg meal right now is what I call “picnic” I boil the eggs and pack containers (or small plates) of olives, cheese cubes, carrot sticks, toasted nuts, mesquite crackers, sometimes hummus, sometimes nori… you get the idea. It tastes better outside. (apologies to my readers who are currently buried in snow). I like the idea that I can do quiche or okinamyaki or any number of other egg dishes, if I get sick of eggs as themselves.

Dinner: I like to make a potroast or roast a whole chicken and then eat it over the course of several days. Sometimes we’ll do ground beef patties or a can of sardines or a fish curry (in which case we eat rice). With some cooked sweet potato or winter squash and a big pile of sauteed greens (from the garden), some kraut, and a cup of broth with miso, it doesn’t take much meat to feel satisfied. If I’m feeling creative I’ll take the meat from the chicken or potroast and saute it with some aromatics or make a sauce so it tastes Mexican or Indian or whatever. These meals feel easy to put together and taste really good.

I’ve always tried to meal-plan, but the world of recipes is overwhelming. I really like this structure and how it goes along with the permaculture** principle of “limitations create abundance” this framework with a few fill-in-the-blanks to allow creativity (or stay super simple if I’m busy or tired) feels like I’ve finally cracked the code. Eating only a modest portion of meat at one meal a day helps our budget a lot. Having a huge garden and laying chickens makes a huge difference too.

*A note on kid eating: Oliver won’t eat a big pile of sauteed greens, but he’ll sometimes eat a few bites. He eats the seaweed in his miso. He’ll eat carrots, and piles of sauerkraut and sometimes broccoli… generally I just serve up nutrient dense food that tastes good to me and don’t sweat it if he doesn’t eat parts of it.

**sorry I keep preaching permaculture, I can’t help it.

Chickens and Welcome!

Posted on March 15, 2016 by maya@opuntiagardenfarm.com

Welcome to our new website! Keep an eye on us here to see our latest projects and offerings from our little patch of high desert abundance.

A few weeks ago I got a call from the post office that our 50 day-old chicks had arrived. My 4-year-old and I rushed over there to usher the peeping box of cuteness to their new home. Everything has gone well so far and the chicks have transitioned from a cardboard box, to a henhouse, to a “straw yard” and are growing fast! We have Cornish cross -the classic fast growing meat bird, Pioneer -a fast growing dual purpose (eggs and meat) bird popular among permaculture folks, and Buff Orphington -a gentle heritage breed, also considered dual purpose. In a few weeks we’ll be eating home grown meat, and in a few months we should have plenty of eggs. We don’t know yet how many roosters we have, but I’m hoping it’s about half, which would leave us with about 15 laying hens, that’s just about right for the size of our current hen house and will provide about 7 dozen eggs a week. plenty for our family and enough to share with neighbors.

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on walking

Posted on January 22, 2016 by maya

my family is pretty big into health. lately we’ve all been reading a ton of the lovable biomechanist, katy bowman. her book, move your dna, is definitely worth the read, but she has other books, a blog, and instagram, too. her advice is pretty much what we’ve been hearing from every health advocate ever; being sedentary is really, really bad for you. moving your body in lots of different ways for lots of the day is good for you. not exactly earth shattering, but getting more movement into my day has proved harder than i thought. i had this idea that since i do a lot of my living outdoors, i’m ahead of the game on the movement front. that may be true if i’m comparing my self to other people suburban america, but not so much if we are comparing anybody else in the world. i walk from my washer to the laundry line, i dump a 5 gallon bucket of greywater a few times a day, move hoses, and randomly putter on the property. but when i got a pedometer at the beginning of january, i discovered that even a more active than average day for me is less than 7000 steps. most days i top out a little over 5000. you’ve all heard of the 10,000 steps thing, right? i’m pretty sure that when i lived in vancouver i got a lot closer to 10,000 steps without even trying, because i enjoyed walking the half mile to work, and it was the path of least resistance to run errands by foot & public transportation. here, i walk around my property, or will go for a hike nearby, but never walk for transportation.

yesterday oliver (age 4.5) and i decided to have an “adventure” by walking to our weekly homeschooling gathering. we made snacks and filled up our camelbaks and ventured out to trek the 1.6 miles. we both enjoyed the stroll very much and now i’m just kind of embarrassed that after living here for more than 10 years, i’ve walked to town only one other time. and that walking a mile and a half felt like an adventure. it’s just weird that using our legs as transportation has gotten so novel. i think i might even prefer walking over biking here. because soft sand and steep hills are no problem when going by foot, we could take a more direct route, and didn’t see a car the whole way. oliver had no trouble walking the whole way on his own, and had plenty of energy left over to play hard with his friends for several hours. maybe we’ll get super ambitious and walk to the library one of these days, or the post office! look out world!

there’s a way that walking for transportation here feels like a radical act. i guess because NOBODY does it. there are a handful of people who bike, and we are generally seen as either impoverished or crazy. people seen walking are assumed to be even more impoverished and/or crazy. honestly, if i see somebody walking along the street here, my first thought is, i wonder what’s wrong? should i give them a ride? but there is something liberating in leaving the car keys in their basket and just walking out the door to go somewhere. plus we can feel super smug about the fossil fuels we aren’t burning and the long term health benefits of fresh air and exercise. holding hands and conversation is easier when walking than biking or driving too.

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First-Year Changes Seen From Above

Posted on June 13, 2015 by Damian Lester

Here are “before and after” satellite images that show evidence of our progress as of last winter thanks to Google Maps. Can’t wait till they update them again, because we have done a lot since then!

2013

As of December 2014

my letter to caltrans

Posted on June 7, 2015 by maya

Dear CalTrans,

I am writing to request a widening of the shoulder to 4 feet on Sunburst Avenue in Joshua Tree. I am a mother of a preschooler. I live just off of Sunburst and the recent tragic death of Tim Kelly as he was cycling North on Sunburst happened less than 1 mile from my house. I believe biking is an excellent mode of transportation. It cuts down on traffic congestion, creates no fuel emissions, limits wear and tear on roads, and promotes an active, healthy lifestyle. I have invested in a mountain bike and bike trailer for my four-year-old son, and we often ride the 2 or 3 miles to play at Sunburst Park or attend Story Time at the Joshua Tree library. Every time we go anywhere on bike, we suit up with helmets, safety vests, and and a big orange flag. But even with all these precautions, I don’t feel safe riding in the road. There is simply not enough room for a car to safely pass a bike because there is no paved shoulder. I ride on the dirt shoulder going down the hill until we get to the paved bike path between the old elementary school and highway 62. But the dirt shoulder is soft sand and hard to ride on, it’s nearly impossible for me coming back up the hill pulling a 40lb kid trailer. A widened shoulder or extension of the bike path would make walking and biking between the community center and elementary school much safer, and I believe a lot more people would choose to walk or bike their kids to school if they could do so without fearing for their lives.

Thank you for your consideration of this topic, and thank you for all you already do to help our community stay safe.

Sincerely,

Maya Toccata

Joshua Tree, CA

chestnut applesauce cake (tree cake 2.0)

Posted on March 30, 2015 by maya

you may remember last year i made damian tree cake for his birthday. this year i discovered chestnut flour. have you ever had chestnut flour? it’s so yummy! so sweet and mild! it’s a gluten-free baker’s dream. i got super excited about chestnuts after reading mark shepherd’s book, restoration agriculture. chestnuts will save the world! don’t worry, mesquite will save the world too. think of mesquite as desert chestnut… i don’t hear paleo and gluten free folks raving about chestnuts, but i’m pretty sure it won’t be long until they do. we just need a celebrity chef to make a chestnut bacon doughnut or something and next thing you know it’ll be chestnut everything in all the health food stores. right now it’s still a bit hard to find. i found some chestnut flour at whole foods, and found super affordable bags of organic peeled chestnuts at the korean market. i also found acorn flour at the korean market, which was quite the thrill, let me tell you.

so, the cake. it was so good! so so good. it was very easy to assemble, it held together well, rose nicely, had a moist crumb and great flavor. and the whole double recipe was devoured in minutes. with such wholesome ingredients, i’m thinking of making another just for snacking. sorry i didn’t take any pictures. we ate outside and the sun went down so it was too dark for my crappy phone camera.

chestnut acorn applesauce cake

adapted from fanny farmer’s applesauce cake

1/4 cup melted butter of coconut oil

1/2 cup coconut or date sugar, or honey

1 cup apple sauce

2 eggs

1 1/2 cups chestnut flour

1/2 cup acorn flour (available at asian markets)

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp cinnamon

mix it all up, pour into a greased 9in pan and bake at 350 (in the sun oven, of course) for 40 min, or until a toothpick comes out clean. top with whipped cream if desired.

productivity and parenting

Posted on March 7, 2015 by maya

i recently read a great article about the importance of morning routines on productivity. it echoes and consolidates pretty much all the advice i’ve ever heard about feeling good and getting valuable work done. i’m very much a morning person and have designed my workdays to end at 2pm because my effectiveness pretty much falls off the cliff by 3. so if i was to be my own productivity guru, i’d recommend i get up at 6, exercise, “clock in” at work, then do a bunch of home projects and be officially done with everything goal oriented by 3. the afternoon and evening would be chill, and i’d go to bed early. sounds great, the only trouble is, i have a 3 year old. maybe that’s a big excuse, but i really don’t hear much helpful advice when it comes to being productive while being a full time parent. here’s my situation, tell me what you think:

i work at my job (from a home office) 2 mornings a week while damian is officially on parenting duty. damian also takes oliver for an hour a day while i exercise (in theory this happens everyday, anyway…). the rest of the week i’m full time parent. it’s not that damian doesn’t do any parenting other times, but he mostly works (he’s a permaculture designer and musician) and cleans up after us. as you may be aware, the kind of distraction free focus that productivity experts recommend we create and guard every day is not exactly possible with a 3 year old present.

oliver generally sleeps from 10pm-6:30am and naps from 2:30-5pm. in theory, i could be productive during this nice big chunk of nap time, except that is the time of day that i am the most brain dead. i need a lot of sleep, so if i got up before oliver, i’d need to go to bed before him also, which is not possible most nights because my husband is a musician. i’ve tried napping when oliver naps in hopes of getting up crazy early, but i either can’t fall asleep to nap, or if i do nap, i can’t fall asleep at night, so i’m back to square one. i’ve tried forcing oliver not to nap, but he’s just a wreck all afternoon and is so overtired and miserable that bedtime is long and painful, and he still gets up at the same time in the morning so that extra hour in the evening doesn’t really help me.

i’d love to have productive chunks of time every morning without my kid. i often have more work than will fit into my 8 hour workweek, and i usually end up doing it during nap time or evenings, even though i’m less efficient (sorry grace). and of course there are the 50 million personal projects (like writing blog posts! and designing our chicken tractor!) that i feel like go forever without any progress whatsoever.

so, what do your mornings look like? do you have any tricks to getting anything other than parenting and a couple loads of laundry (if you’re lucky) done in a day?

First-year swale photos!

Posted on February 3, 2015 by Damian Lester

The Pistachio Swale

The beginning of the “pistachio swale”

Adding a deep layer of mulch.

My helper showing off our work. The pistachio swale extends all the way to the road.

Pistachio swale where it connects to the road.

Mulch and woody debris.

Digging, mulching and phase-one planting on pistachio swale completed.

The Driveway Swale

We had a great work-party with our friends one late afternoon in May to get started on the “driveway swale”. It was very compacted digging because it literally was a driveway, but soon it will harvest water and grow trees!