Drainage

A couple of things have had me pondering drainage lately.  When I dug the grave for Rob Anybody I was happy to  notice that the soil around here is full of clay - great for building with cob!  The other thing is that it has rained a lot here lately.  First it snowed, now it is raining.  Road closing amounts of rain.  The Huon River is swollen and running fast.  The combination of clay soil and huge amounts of water is basically sodden, puddly, water-not-going away ness.  For a cob house this is not good!

There are a couple of things I can (and will obviously) do to prevent the water damaging my house.  Good drainage in my foundations is one of them.  I plan to dig a deep foundation trench, lay gravel, ag pipe, more gravel then larger rocks and then the foundation.  I'll slope the trench so that it follows the natural downhill of the slope and runs into the creek that borders the  property.
I will also probably dig some french drains further up hill of the house to guide the water away from the house and to a more useful place.  I'll try and build the house as high on the block as I can , but also don't want it too close to the road so there will be a balancing act there. 

Another vital part of it will be making sure the stem wall - the part of the foundation that is above ground level and forms the "boots" of the building - is high enough that any water splashing off the ground doesn't get the cob.  I will also include a damp layer in the foundations to stop rising damp.  I will have eaves that extend a good way out from the walls too - generally a standard feature of Australian houses any way - and will be collecting rain water for drinking so any splashing from water off the roof will be minimal. 

The clay soil, while being great for building a house, will also be crap for the garden.  It will need lots of compost and aerating for it to easy to grow anything.  The Lancre Witch has suggested that we slash the grass (which is currently about waist high) and leave on the ground as mulch and do that over the next few years as the building process gets going so that the as the grass breaks down it is nourishing the ground underneath.

Garden list

Fruit
Avocado
apples
apricots
pears
oranges
lemons
limes
quince
cherry
passionfruit
peach
plum
kiwi fruit
strawberries
raspberries
currents (red and black)
cranberries
tomatoes

Vegetables
Potatoes
silver beet
broccoli
carrots
cabbage
zucchini
pumpkin
corn
cauliflower
asparagus
beans
pea
onions
garlic
chilli

Herbs/spices
parsley
cinnamon
allspice
pepper
mint
thyme
tarragon
rosemary
oregano
basil
fennel
vanilla

nuts (also for the wood)
hazelnuts
chestnuts

Things I would love to have
coffee bush
tea bush
grains like amaranth, rye or barley

Trees/flowers
silver birch
lavender
chamomile
daisies
nastursium
calendula

Jackie French's garden

http://www.jackiefrench.com/garden.html  Looks like that.  I love it.  I read her book "Backyard Self-sufficiency" last night and it is brilliant.  Previously I had only read John Seymour's self-sufficiency books and they are very different.
Jackie does gardens that require work to set up, planting and waiting and caring, while I am young and active, but by the time I am too old to prune trees, mow lawns, pick fruit from the tops of trees etc most of the garden should look after itself.  By planting groves of trees and creating an artificial forest that nonetheless takes advantage of the way actual forests grow she has managed to grow coffee bushes, avocados, bananas, and many many other plants in a similar climate to here (if anything more extreme as she quotes temperatures as low as -9 C and as high as 52 C) that I never thought I would be able to grow.  In my visions of the future things like that were things that would have to become very rare (or if TEOTWAWKI happens as I think it will non existent) and to think I could still have avocados, as a regular thing not a treat!  Even now they are a treat but it is concievable to have them all year round planting and gardening the way Jackie French does...  Unbelievable. 
The other brilliant thing about it is that it matches the type of garden I see in my head.  I have such a clear picture in my head about how my house looks and how the garden looks.  Now I have a block of land it is even clearer.  And a garden as productive as that that looks like a jungle just fits.  It matches a vague memory I have of my great grandmothers garden.  I can't have been any older than 4 but it was wonderful - full of little nooks and crannies created by well established plants and a wonderland for a small person. 
I just have to get over my gardening block.  I have always read gardening books and been totally overwhelmed.  Crop rotation, companion planting, fixing soil, rules about what works and what doesn't...  just completely outside my realm of experience and completely intimidating. 

So my gardening block is slowly melting, and my head is full of ideas.  Into a delirium of lists and plans - but I'll put those in a seperate post for ease of finding :)