"The yield of any system is only limited by the creativity of the designer." Bill Mollison, founder of the Permaculture Movement
I love that idea so much, Ill write it again!
"The yield of any system is only limited by the creativity of the designer."
There is the idea in permaculture of Stacking Functions. How many functions can one thing be employed to do. Chickens give eggs. Sure. But protein is only one function. What other functions or yields can they provide. Well, they can scratch and turn or prepare the ground. They can provide insect and weed control. They can also produce chicks, if a rooster is present. Considering how to utilise tertiary functions of something we work with enables our systems to be more flexible and resilient.
I also think of my deep bedding chicken house. Sure, the main function is a comfortable, safe, clean, and healthy place for the hens to live, where they can produce eggs for us. But the design of the system enables us to capture the manure and have the hens themselves turn it into rich compost right below their feet. The secret to this design is to have at least 2 ft or 60 cm of balanced organic matter (enough dry brown carbon to absorb the rich nitrogen of chicken poo, garden waste, and kitchen scraps) to heat up and create compost. This is the topic of another post (one of my favourites), but for now i just mention it to make another point.
The deep bedding chicken house produces eggs and ready made compost. But it doesnt stop there. We use it seasonaly to house goats that are being weaned from their mamas. And we also house baby pigs in there until they get big enough to start eating the hens!!! So it provides another yield of temporary goat and pig housing.
How much more creative can we get with the yield. One time, we buried 100ft of black water line in the deep bedding chicken house and hooked up a shower head down hill from the chicken house. This provided three months of hot water for volunteers on our farm.
We grow passion fruit and squash vines up the chicken wire walls of the house.
We have a worm bin protected from the chickens, that is fed by their manure while they sleep.
We capture rain water from the roof for the chickens to drink and for irrigation.
We use it as a teaching tool for our permaculture courses.
And now its fodder for a SteemIt post and hopefully inspirational to someone on here who runs with the idea and makes it even better.
This is yet another yield of our crazy composting chicken house.
So now we are talking about loads of functions from one chicken house. And we could keep going. ITS ONLY LIMITED BY OUR IMAGINATION.
This is one of the most inspirational and exciting principles because it invites us to get crazy and creative. Make sure you obtain a yield in any system you design. And you have to us that yield. A yield doesn't exist until you make use of it. And make sure you stack functions.
How do you stack functions creatively?? I would love to hear more...
And as always, this list of 12 Permaculture Principles was given to us by the great David Holmgren, co-founder of Permaculture. https://permacultureprinciples.com/
NOTE: This post is proudly filled, COMPLETELY, with original writing and photos. ENJOY!
