Cairn Of Dunn Croft is a 5 acre permaculture smallholding in Caithness, in the far north of Scotland. In 2018 we bought a croft with a derelict house and barn. This channel documents its transformation to a permaculture paradise. A mosaic of food forests, pastures, ponds, swales and livestock systems. We use permaculture design to build a croft that meets virtually all our needs, beyond sustainably. We don't aim to be low impact, we aim to maximise our impact on the land by becoming truly regenerative.
It's not just our home, not just a business, a croft, a garden or a demonstration site. It's a permaculture life.
I am so very glad the algorithm found me your page! I am a novice Permaculture designer, who lives in the New England area of the US, and we have a very similar situation as you seem to, where we need swales in some seasons to keep enough moisture in the ground for our trees, but in other seasons our land quickly becomes a super saturated bog.I had only seen swales used best to redirect runoff for flood control, and often we need to decide to either worry more about our land turning into swamps or our trees drying up. Your design lets you have both the ability to catch water and have excellent drainage when you most need it in the same system, and with a simple bit of plumbing! Would this system work in places where the ground freezes, or would the freezing and thawing cycles eventually be too hard on the plumbing?
I know monk pipes are widely used on dams in extreme cold environments, so I'd not worry about it on a swale which will never have the same kind of water forces. Plus, the pipe drains freely in winter when freezing would be an issue anyway.
YT algorithm just served up your video. Thanks for this very articulate explnation. We put in a RMH in 2018. We did the half bell style. Under the mass is a chamber. It works pretty well. It's less mass, but it heats up quicker. Also, the heat slows down in the chamber. We were lucky because the room its in was a carport, so it has a cement floor and the first three feet of the walls were cinder block. The electric outlets and wires were already three feet up the walls. So far it has performed as promised. In the winter it's the place to be! The only downside is that we didn't put a finish on it. For six years it shed sand and clay all over. It was extremely messy. This summer we decided to put a lime plaster on it. Before we did that we have been reshaping it a bit. We cobbed in a wood back and a bit more protection around the barrel.. I also filled some holes my kids made. :) The only other realy "downside" that we didn't anticipate is that there is a trade-off. Because it's a rocket stove it burns wood very fast. If you stuff the burn chamber, it will be totally out in 1.5 hours. It is difficult for my wife to keep up with feeding it during the day. The tradeoff is that if you do, it will continue to radiate heat for days.
I use 110mm drain pipe, intended for household sewer line. I used to use the orange, but now use the grey pipe instead because it holds up better to UV. It's available from most places that sell building supplies.
I really wish my parish council would listen to your videos. My home village, Fleckney has 5/6 streams; and had a very good system of an artificial brooke, large pond and 3 meers distributing onto berns ending in watermeadows all tied in to manage it. It work so well people forget it was doing a job... They oked new housing on top one spring, and over 3 of the watermeadows without sorting something new. And one the developer even build a fence across the broke 🤦 The village is now in island most of the year, and the flood damage is ridiculous.
As you mentioned the willow dome, a thought came to me, inspired by your log steps in this video… could you potentially have someone drop a big round bale of straw in the middle of the dome? You could stand on it to weave it all together, then use it as mulch when you’re done. Thanks for the inspiration, I need to tackle my 30ft long willow tunnel this year with room to drive the tractor through!
How long would dehydrated bacon last in a Mylar vacuum sealed bag stored in a backpack on a camping trip? And same question for Biltong. I hear so many mixed things online. Some say several days some say months
I'd be wary with any pork product. Personally I take frozen meat (raw or precooked depending on the trip) inside an extra thick, tight fitting pot cosy.
The Mormon Tea version of broom shrubs like these are native to the southwest US and it certainly has an interesting history in the west as the Mormon settlers used it as a rudimentary “energy” drink as well as keeping scurvy away. But the “Scotch Broom” variety is invasive to the northwest US. Mormon Tea is a native US broom plant and is not an invasive. We had it in the High Sierra and it’s lovely. I love the Broom all through the highlands, it’s less pokey than gorse. 😅
One advantage of gorse over broom: the very prolonged flowering period, benefitting bees and other insects due to their especially nutritious pollen. 😊 Also, in the Northern Isles gorse will survive while broom struggles.
I'm just making a small pond about, 8 by 6 ft. I have it dug out and have no idea how to seal it. Can anyone help me? I'm in East Tennessee and I have clay rich soil. Thanks in advance! 🙂🌞
Great goat food. They eat it year round. They love the seeds as well. But massive fire hazard here in central Portugal. We have scotch broom, and the native Portuguese broom…
Highly invasive and listed as a noxious weed in my region (US Pacific Northwest) and can also cause serious issues with sparking and spreading wildfires due to their high essential oils content. Agree, it’s great as a nitrogen fixer and quick establishment of a windbreak, but unfortunately not a great species to use in all regions or contexts.
We've got more whin bushes than broom down the coast from you. They're quite pervasive and difficult to remove. They're often burned, every five years or so, by the farmers around here. If they're not burned, eventually a few trees begin to sprout amongst them.
In the US broom has some serious problem characteristics, including fire hazard. Not a knock on using it in Scotland, just one of those notes about the need to be aware of site appropriate choices.
I'm currently putting in a windbreak system myself on a site that is quite exposed probably nowhere near as much as you but we are 220m up. I've gone for more of a shelterbelt so its designed to be 12m thick minimum. And its all planted at 2m ish spacing so nowhere near as dense as yours. My solution to the exposure so far has been to use tubex tubes that I've managed to get second hand for very cheap. 2 thirds of the shelterbelt was planted up last year and now the trees are poking out of the tubes (and sufferig) I'm beginning to wonder if I should have gone for a denser planting given the exposure. I'm definitely interested in the broom idea. There is some broom on the land and it clearly is doing well. How would you go about direct sowing? Mini cultivator maybe? just scatter the seeds in the grass and see if the broom manages to take?
I'd probably try mulching out small areas over winter with sections of tarp, or failing that a little localised cultivation in the spring to give the seeds half a chance against the grass. In terms of trees, we've had a lot of success with alder. Very wind hardy and doesn't mind grass competition.
@@CairnOfDunnCroftPermaculture should have thought of mulching!! Yes I think I'm going to try this. I'm getting some Italian alder this winter too! Been watching awhile and pinching your ideas :) One thing with the direct sowing is I'm wondering if the broom seeds need some pre treatment. A lot of tree legume seeds need a scarification treatment. I'll have a read.
It is just a tree. Why is there no outcry for the killing of the unborn? That shows how spiritually sick and lost England is. That reminds me the fight over the toilet paper during lockdown. 😢😢😢😢
I noticed your comment something along the lines of "it's easy to get discouraged". It's easy to focus on work that still needs to be done rather than recognise achievements and I know gardening/farming can be hard sometimes when you sink a lot of effort into something and then it fails for one reason or another. Can be the worst if something fails and it's not even clear why. I hope all is well and you can continue with this great project. Take care of yourself and try and get help from others when you can 🙂 it can make these things more fun and rewarding
Am I right in thinking that the plaited sections will pleach together at multiple points, growing into one conjoined arch that really cannot come apart?
Haha they did! The one was obviously really interested in what you were up to 😂 an untapped permaculture audience perhaps?! I've got chickens and they always want to know what you're up to in the garden although I think it's mostly because they're seeing if the work is going to produce anything tasty for them!
Thanks for checking for wheelchair space. 🙂 Tents to be the right amount of space for parents with pushchairs, and people using crutches or walking sticks too. 🙂
It just makes sense, when designing things that should last centuries. It's easier to think about those things from the beginning, it's a lot harder to retrofit them usually.
That downed willow demonstrated hedge laying ;) One reason that this video is particularly interesting to me is that my site is an established woodland, that I'm working to tweak in exactly the manner you're discussing throughout.
Love getting inspired from exploring like this. I adore that first and it really reminds me of the coastal forests in California. The scenery is beautiful. Great for photography!
Really interesting and useful film, e.g. ref marestail, beech leaves, birch bark and rosebay willowherb (plus all the others). Thank you to you both for taking the time. What an amazing woodland and landscape. I've shared a good few of these tips (and your video) with friends on Facebook.
Why not embrace that invasive pond plant. Let it grow. Then remove it from the pond and compost it It will produce tons of biomass for you and break down quickly. Also here’s an idea for you. Set up a domestic scale anaerobic digester. You can then use it as feed stock to produce gas for cooking heating and electricity generation. And it will produce a by product of organic fertilizer. 😊👍👌
It's tenacious and extremely difficult to remove. It completely chokes out ponds and depletes the oxygen for other life. I have a few plans for it, one being as worm farm feedstock. But really, my aim is to remove it then create conditions that make it impossible to regrow in my ponds. It's here, and can't be eradicated. But I believe management is possible. Biogas is possible here, but only in summer unless the system is heated. I may well end up with a small system eventually, but it'll be for fun as much as anything.
About 15 mins in and loving seeing that environment through your eyes, very informative and interesting. :) (And, for the algorithm: 🌲) P.S. Are you familiar with Atomic Shrimp's channel? He does a lot of foraging and exploring the landscape-ish content and I'd love to see a collaboration of some kind between you two, an 'in conversation' type thing or a joint walk in a new-to-both-of-you place to see what you spot and deduce between the two of you...
Sorry to hear about your allergic reaction. I would be absolutely gutted if something like that happened to me. Those mushrooms are a godsend. This entire are is absolutely gorgeous. Natural diversity wherever you look. Once tweaked into a food forest system it's going to be that more incredible.
@@CairnOfDunnCroftPermaculture My vid about "day in the life of a rocket mass heater" is doing well. I would like to see you make a review video that fits into about three minutes. When i talk about your vids, my focus is on "replace a conventional wood stove and crappy couch ..."
