User:CQ/THD

THD is an acronym for Turkey Herding Deer, the name of a developing eco-farm in Southern Illinois, USA. owned by my friend Crystal. I am collecting research materials and resources for a long-term project to plan and build the eco-farm which we hope will someday turn into a full-featured ecovillage. This page is here to document our adventures. .

Other Sites
THD EcoFarm and Agroecology online:
 * THD at the Ecovillage Wiki
 * THD at LocalHarvest
 * CQ at ASAP
 * CQ at WikiEducator

Learning resources
Renewable energy

Wikipedia
Portal:Agriculture
 * Agriculture
 * Agroecology
 * Agroforestry
 * Cultivation

Wikiversity
School:Agriculture
 * Agriculture
 * Agroecology
 * Agroforestry
 * Cultivation

School:Engineering
 * Renewable energy systems

About THD
The purpose and mission of Turkey Herding Deer eco-farm and research center is to demonstrate how Humans can create a built environment that interfaces well to the natural environment. The facility is to become a testbed for study, demonstration and experimentation:
 * Keyline Design principles and cultivation
 * Discovering Wildlife and responsibly managing its habitat
 * Understanding the edge effect between developed and wild environments
 * Demonstrating Green building and Agroecology
 * Developing Renewable energy resources (solar, wind, hydrodynamic, geothermal)
 * Hydrology and watershed management
 * Permaculture, organic farming, community-supported agriculture, etc.
 * fully open to ideas

The plan is to engage the THD land in a long-term program of soil-building, permaculture, watershed management and an array of other Earth-friendly practices that could make the place a prototype for the future of land use and community development. The vision includes a program in which interns learn about organic farming, bioneering, animal husbandry, conservation, ecosystem study, communal living, etc. Grid-independant housing and accomodations are to be built according to developing ecologically sustainable standards aligned with current university research programs.

Where on Earth is THD?
The THD land is located near the headwaters of a major branch of Casey Creek near Texico, Illinois - USA.
 * Latitude: 38.428748
 * Longitute: -88.917031

Who's who
A few people I've met or plan to meet and their organizations:


 * Dan Anderson is the director of ASAP - the Agroecology / Sustainable Agriculture Program of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign


 * Wayne Weiseman of Dayempur Farm in Southern Illinois, a land-based, self-reliant community project combining organic crop/food production, ecologically-built shelter, renewable energy, appropriate technologies and educational programs. Wayne is director of The Permaculture Project


 * Henry Brockman and his whole family began raising organic vegetables in 1993 near Evanston, Illinois. Terra Brockman (Henry's sister) is the director of The Land Connection and was instrumental in forming along with ASAP and other organizations, Illinois FarmDirect - a CSA network for Illinois, USA


 * Bill Wilson is a communitarian, permaculturist, sustainability advocate/educator, life coach & mentor with about a 30-year history through The Stelle Community a remarkable intentional community in the cornfields halfway between Chicago and Champaine-Urbana. He is also a founding director of the educational, non-profit organization Center for Sustainable Community located in Stelle. (Stelle rhymes with "bell")


 * Aurora Farm Foundation - Barbara M V Scott and Woody Wodraska teach about biodynamics, composting, land stewardship, seed collection and preservation and lots of other things. One of their goals is to help start the "university of the future" based upon the spiritual connection between Human communities and the Land.


 * ... list is growing

Funding opportunities
I've joined the Research grant collaboration group.

North Central region SARE - Funded by the USDA, the national Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program supports and promotes sustainable farming and ranching. (FY 2008 cycle begins in August 07)

USDA Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service:
 * National Research Initiative Competitive Grants Program - doc - pdf
 * Ecological Goods and Services Working Group

Hydrology
...Its overflow decends down a water course to the main creek at 480 feet at the back of the farm about a quarter of a mile behind us. A fishing lake is also formed below by an earthen dam with a level of about 520 feet. These reservoirs and their associated water course flow down one of five gorges that run from the front of the farm toward the back. A major tributary of Casey Fork Creek runs West to East exiting the property at about 460 feet. Total surface deviation is thus right at 100 feet. The rolling land is ideally suited for micro-hydroelectric generation and Keyline Design.

Some people in Dix (including the town's Water District) regard the watercourses as "ditches" and "drains". We hope to change this outlook by helping to form a watershed commission for the Casey Fork/Big Muddy system. Of all the Watersheds of Illinois, it is among the least represented, though cities and towns like Mount Vernon and Kell get their drinking water from Rend Lake downstream.

I was standing in the place where we ford the creek facing West when I took the picture to the right. What you see is the affluent end (top) of our quarter-mile long stretch of the western fork of Casey Fork. This ford will become a combination filtration dam, bridge to the back acreage, and USGS guaging station as we procure funding from state and federal agencies that care about water quality. We hope to discharge nearly drinkable water at our Eastern effluent by carefully managing our tributary substreams and our part of the main watercourse. We hope to demonstrate good ecosystem management, releasing all of the documentation of our work and progress as Open Educational Resources to raise public consciousness about water quality.

Cartography
I have had an interest in map-making since I was a small child hearing of Amerigo Vespucci and Magellan in school. There's little that is more fun to me than romping around in the woods finding interesting topographical features, wild plant and animal species, following deer trails and other such learning activities. It would be great to use some sort of handheld device to record my adventures and upload them at the end of the day to a sofware model of the EcoFarm.

As an educational facility, THD is poised to become a fun place to explore. Besides the practical reasons for producing maps, we are also taking into account the "Edu-tainment" aspects of Ecotourism and Agritourism as we refine our mapping project. ARDF is a lowcost way to identify "points of interest" such as the above-mentioned filtration dam and the epicenter of the planned Biodome to be build much later on in the horseshoe bend in the main creek. The Amateur radio group at Wikiversity is planning a series of learning projects and resources for amateur radio direction finding that can be used anywhere on the planet. At THD EcoFarm, we havea plan for the planet...

GIS Modeling
Geographic information systems go far beyond simple mapping. The map to the right is a first pass at producing a full-featured topographical map for use as the substrate of a GIS and Hydrology Model. I hope to build a georeferenced relational database that provides latitude, longitude and elevation for a set of points of interest all around the property. These points will represent all sorts of features - existing, historical and planned.

Four major zones can be seen in the composite map:
 * Southwest (lower left) - The permaculture zone is about 55 acres of cleared land that has been fallow for nearly 25 years. The topography and soil conditions make it a ideal place for demonstrating Keyline Design and soil building. A Welcome center and Eco-friendly RV park is planned (shown as small squares by the road).
 * Southeast (lower right) - A Circa 1900 interpretive farm and homestead is one idea for this zone. Interns will use technology, farming and forestry techniques from the turn of the last century. Antique steam engines, primitive electricity generation, human-powered equipment and other innovations from the period will be demonstrated in a live authentic way.
 * Village core (center) - The main lake and residence zone will include a large modern wood and metal working shop, recording studio, network operations center and other key facilities.
 * Ecological development zone (top) - The "back 40" includes Casey Fork Creek and a south-facing slope which is well-suited to building a line of solar-powered partially underground housing units - perhaps one of the US's first "Eco-tels" (Eco-hotel).

Data modeling will help with wildlife and natural resource inventories, ecological impact studies, hydrological dynamics and design, facilities planning and maintenance, permaculture yeild prediction and a host of other geo-ecology applications.

Keyline design
In a ridge-valley system, a keypoint is generally the single point having the most hydrologic energy of all points between the highest and lowest elevations of an identified system. This point is characterized by the dynamics of the overall topography during a downpour as surface runoff collects along the two ridges forming a channel or watercourse somewhere along the valley floor. The keypoint is the precise point where a singular channel becomes evident for water exiting the valley toward it's draining watercourse, usually a creek or tributary headwater. The keyline is a line that tracks the elevation of the keypoint in both directions to the two ridge lines that enclose the valley.

In the map above, notice the 550 foot elevation line that traverses the lower part of the map in the cleared southwest part of THD. This line is a fairly close approximation of a continuous keyline for a system of four ridges and three valleys that form. I'm working on a paper for the ASAP site that will use THD as an example and demonstration for the complete generic keyline design for planning dams, planting and grazing zones, roads, buildings and other features of the sustainable biodynamics testbed (permaculture zone).


 * GEOGRAPHICAL AND TOPOGRAPHICAL BASIS OF KEYLINE by the late Prof J. MacDonald-Holmes, Dean of the Faculty Geography, University of Sydney.

Praxis - theory and practice
I, (CQ), have a set of theories and loose disciplines (oxymoron?) of how to test and prove the theories that I consider to be possibilities in the solution of what can be called wicked problems. I favor the process of Successive approximation and incremental progress toward problem-solving and critical thinking. To accomplish things (in this world), you must be extremely patient. Nothing happens overnight, unless of course you are a Rock Star or a very well-known Athlete. Farming is often a thankless set of daily tasks - toiling in the Hot Sun or in the bitter cold of Winter. But what THD is about is "saving the planet" and I (deeply within my heart) know that I (and my gf) are not alone in the quest to direct the resources on this fine land toward something that is truly sustainable, in every sense of the word, implementing a "this-century" focus on things that simply make better sense.

Sustainability as a term is already losing meaning. I don't purport to know about Soil science, Animal husbandry, Wildlife management, Hydrology or even pine straw mulch, but i am learning. I need people around me that are:
 * curious
 * disciplined
 * ethical
 * dedicated
 * creative
 * hard-working
 * resolved

I welcome (and so does Crystal) anyone who is willing to get some hands-on with a real piece of ground that is second-to-none as a Planetary Sweetspot which you will quickly see, if you come to visit. Please talk to us!