meet the greywater bed, a snippet from last month’s farm tour as we get ready for saturday’s watch party and q&a.
this bit of may’s tour looked at the hazelnut tree greywater mulch bed design.
what happens when we redesign the outflows (wasted materials) so that they stay circulating within the system and meet its needs in multiple ways? in this design by our dear, brilliant friend gord baird, the water from kitchen, laundry and bathtub pipes into four wood-chipped mulch beds planted with four varieties of hazelnut trees. the water filters back into the orchard, producing an increasing harvest of nutrient dense protein, and makes it way to nourish and irrigate the old pear, the bamboo grove, the apple orchard and the grapevine that shades the house. chickens harvest worms from the beds now and then and when we dig out the mulch beds to refill with fresh chips, a rich compost is generated. there is no waste, there are multiple benefits, and the systems grows more resilient and productive each year. this is the sort of simple redesign that will carry us into a thriving future.
our lives are inherently designed, based on root patterns, and when we shift those designs we alter the patterns that repeat throughout our lives. moving into reciprocity with our biosphere is not just urgently needed but profoundly possible. the small work of repatterning from the roots up, it reverberates out in big waves of change.
if you are now itching to know what mistake i made (when we experiment with how we might live so that life flourishes around us, there are always plenty of mistakes!) you might like to become a farm + farmhouse tour patron to access the replay of previous tours and q&a’s in our growing library.
and if it would help you to find ways to live regeneratively if you had supportive community and a vivid picture of how (the practices) and why (the philosophy) then you might love saturday’s event. first-timers bring a friend for free. i look forward to talking with you!