Permaculture shared...

In March 2019, Manon does a week-long permaculture course with Permalab at the Oasis de Sérendipin the Drôme. Nicholas does the same in September of that year. There he meets Floriane and Colin (photo), who come to join us in Echarleyre in early 2020 to help us create the permaculture design—a concrete concept—for the terraces around the house and to implement part of it. Following the covid lockdowns, we benefited from their precious presence for 14 months, instead of the planned 3 months!

Observe, observe, observe… difficult for Manon who has little patience and wants to start implementing already the day before yesterday. We delight in identifying the wild flora, everything that grows spontaneously on the terraces, using Gérard Ducerf's encyclopedias of bio-indicator plants. We study the watershed, how does rainwater flow, how much and when? The spring water, the springs, how to optimize it? We take soil samples in jars to let them settle. Then there's the prevailing north wind, the wild south wind. How many hours of sunlight and where? Access points, the pond, compost and chickens elements… There's also the creation of a mind map, a cartography of our heads and hearts, trying to sort our wishes and needs, and their priorities over time.

The house comes with 10 hectares of land, mostly mixed forest on rocky slopes that we leave untouched except for occasional wood harvesting. About half a hectare around the house, located on terraces supported by dry stone walls, will be included in our design. Finally, we produce a drawing with the necessary and desirable elements, as we conceive it at that moment, together. (A permaculture project evolves perpetually.)

Before welcoming Floriane and Colin, we repair our house and the Chez Swan gîte. Then we have a large spring water reservoir (40m³) built in addition to the existing one (20m³), install indoor dry toilets and their compost system (and remove all flush toilets), and have photovoltaic panels and two wood-burning stoves installed (the only heating for the buildings).

Once the design is finished, we plant about a hundred trees and shrubs (2020-2022). Colin digs a pond and we continuously improve the use of spring and rainwater, while connecting our hamlet to the village network to secure its water supply during the increasingly dry summer period.

In 2022, we create Le Greffon, the second gîte, adjoining our house. The insulation is wood wool, the joinery is chestnut wood, and the dwelling gets its own wood-burning stove.

After Floriane, Colin, and their dog leave, we add a traditional large-game wire fence with chestnut posts to prevent wild boars from overturning the plantings. Suki, our beautiful stray cat, doesn't seem to have the same effect on the wild pigs as Karadoc, the gentle border shepherd!

In 2023, we add a seedling greenhouse, a pergola, and a chicken coop. We now pamper the chickens together with Marijke, our neighbor who also practices permaculture. The chicken coop is next to her garden, on our land below the path. She designed it. It's a bit far from our house, but comfortable for the good sleep of our guests who won't be woken by Bob, the handsome white Marans rooster.

Winter 2024-2025 we plant fruit trees again, replacing and adding to the existing ones. The project is always evolving; we are currently working on soil improvement in two vegetable gardens and a potential aromatic garden. The remaining 9 1/2 hectares of land are preserved as more or less wild forest. Part has steep slopes, rocks, streams, and trees; other terrace plots have been planted with Douglas firs about fifty years ago, or have been rewilded for thirty years.

Permaculture is learned slowly.  We are not as available for our project as we would like to be. But the project progresses steadily with, always, the help of Colin, now self-employed with Les Jardins de Colin, and Floriane when she's not at the stove of L'Arbre Vagabond. We are also supported by Dominique, a tremendous force in intelligent outdoor management, including firewood, and more recently by Jonathan, a brilliant nurserymanfrom the hamlet of Les Lattes across the river.

During your stay, if you wish, we will guide you around the land  and explain our choices and successes (and our mistakes too)!

"Permaculture helps us to bring, modestly, coherence into life. It encourages us to find our personal reason for being, our mission, our ecological niche. To step into our own life! Every person should be able to find their vocation, their place in the landscape, in the garden, in the family, or in the organizational chart. Understanding and finding one's place is a journey both simple and profound."

— Louise Browaeys, from her small but richly informative book Permaculture au Quotidien