Permaculture Design on Limestone Hillside, Swales, Guilds and a Working Production Garden

This is a walking tour of Bethany Farm, our three-acre permaculture property in Loudoun County, Virginia. We filmed this the morning after our Loudoun Spring Farm Tour to show what a real working permaculture system looks like in May, not a rendered design, not a finished paradise, but a living, producing, evolving farm that we are building season by season. On this tour you will see our production garden with strawberries, asparagus, comfrey guilds, fava beans, brassicas, Japanese cucumbers, stinging nettles, and our first broccoli heads of the season. You will also see our limestone hillside, which sits on a karst formation and was not considered arable when we arrived. We hand-placed stone steps from the hillside itself, dug swales by hand to capture runoff and stop erosion, and are building guilds and food forest plantings along the contour lines using an A-frame to find the level. We also walk through our active research beds where we are trialing compost tea applications on tomatoes alongside nitrogen amendments and a control group, part of our ongoing SARE-funded agricultural research. This is permaculture design applied to real land with real challenges, limestone bedrock, deer pressure, sloped terrain, and a family of eight doing the work. 0:00 Good morning from Bethany Farm 0:45 The herb gardens and kitchen potager 2:10 Production garden walkthrough 4:30 Strawberries, comfrey guilds and asparagus 6:15 The research beds and compost tea trial 7:45 Climbing the limestone hillside 9:00 Swales, berms and contour line project 11:20 Cover crops and deer pressure 12:30 What's still available from the farm tour We help families grow their own food, and medicine and find God in the garden at 🌻 Permaculture Gardens https://bit.ly/Permaculture-Gardens-W... 👉 Learn more about our garden planning tools here: 1️⃣ Simplify Your Garden: We know that growing your own food is often complicated – but it doesn’t have to be. Test drive our permaculture garden app called, SAGE! https://bit.ly/GET-SAGE 2️⃣ Like learning gardening 'old-school' style? Get our new Permaculture Gardening book! https://bit.ly/Get-the-Permaculture-G... 3️⃣ Start a garden from kitchen scraps. Join the Plant Your Pantry Challenge! https://bit.ly/PYP-YT