Google Earth as a Permaculture Tool

 

Yeah I've written one blog post about it already, but by far the most useful tool I've found so far in planning our homestead is Google Earth, and it warrants deeper investigation.

Using its elevation tool   on the bottom right hand side of the screen...

 ...we were able to plot the contour of the property and lay out possible swales and greywater systems with ease. Plotting the pin location using GPS (more later) allowed us to get a pretty good idea where the property lines lie. By downloading the image and moving it into an image editor we could start drawing in where the best possible locations would be for gardens, houses and critter pens.

To make things even more clear, we drew everything on different layers, so we could turn off the imported map layer, save all the drawings as a PNG file with a transparent background, like this...

.... then upload it right into Google Earth as an overlay right back into the original place. So now everything we plotted is in 3D.

Here's the result:

If you click here you can download the full size version to see the details.

The circles we created with the various numbers on them helped us to measure out areas for better accuracy while we were drawing them in the image editor, though once everything was uploaded to Google Earth we could double check it using Google Earth's measurement tool.

Seeing it all in 3D.....

....lets us get a clearer idea of solar angles, waterflow, and where to plot rooms so they don't interfere with the sun. We can plot where the sun rises and sets at different times of the year, and estimate how the prevailing winds will hit the hillside to best plot wind turbine and pollinator attractor locations.

But mostly, this comes in handy for calculating and plotting swales and water distribution along the property for optimal use. Combined with carrying a GPS while walking around the property and observing things first hand, we could get a little more accurate. By standing next to various landmarks and plotting the coordinates (like property pins) you can find them again on Google Earth and fine tune your locations on the drawings. My GPS app in my phone happened to show the locations in the decimal format, but by using a conversion tool from the FCC I was able to convert them back to minutes and seconds so I could find them on Google Earth by hovering my cursor til I hit the right spot and watching the coordinates bar on the bottom right. 

Google Earth also allows me to write notes in the "properties" box when I plot something directly onto the map (using the 'polygon' or 'line' tools), so when I hover over an element, I can get a text popup that describes, maybe, what I'd like to do with that particular area. I can even add photos if I like.

This can come in really handy if you're working from your PC and want to collaborate with someone else. One more feature about Google Earth is that you can export your saved places as KMZ files, send them to collaborators, and they can open it and see the whole map from their own PC.

Don't underestimate the power of Google Earth in planning your homestead. It can save you a lot of time and work.

2016 Summary

Life has a way of slowing down your plans. We never really got around to building, but put in more trees and plants and made some more observations.

Last May we had planned the layout and were ready to hire a local excavator to dig a 4ft deep, 72'x36' area out for the first 2 rooms of the house. We set up a time frame to dig and asked the local excavation expert to let us know ahead of time when he was available so we could be there.  He called and said he'd be ready to do the dig tomorrow, and since we live over an hour from the land, we told him we couldn't drop everything on that short notice, so we'd let him know when things slowed down.

Well, we got swamped with work and grandbabies, eventually I sent him an email asking when he could dig, and asked him to give us a few days notice so we could get sitters. He never returned our email, so we thought we'd wait for the heat to let up and try again when things cooled down and our workload decreased.

September rolled around, and we had taken the grandbabies to the Mother Earth News Fair in Seven Springs Pa. We took the kids to Uncle Mud's booth to play around and learn about cob building. We ended up spending most of our time there because his classes were so informative. Specifically, there was a workshop on using pallets stuffed with mud-dipped straw as walls. Initially we'd intended to do tires, then thought earthbags and strawbales, but now this idea really was appealing.

This is the first and only place I'd ever heard of
 this technique. Essentially, you create a bucket of thin clay 'slip', the consistency of maybe a smoothie, grab a handful of straw, swish the straw around in the clay smoothie then stuff it inside the slats of the pallet. As you fill up the pallet with straw, you use pieces of broken pallet to close off the open parts of the bottom of the pallet to keep in the straw. Let that dry and you have a hundred-pound panel that will make a nice, sturdy, insulated wall and a base on which to apply cob and plaster. Stand them on end on top each other, preferably on a couple of earthbags stuffed with gravel to keep moisture away, bolt them to a post and cover with cob and plaster.

I spoke with Uncle Mud for a bit about what we were planning to build, and his first recommendation was to start small. Good advice. We were beginning to wonder if we would be able to get this thing built living an hour away and Andrea starting a new, full time job in Columbus, and me home with the 14 y/o in K12 online school. Starting out really small had a lot more appeal and is a lot more do-able in the few months' of summer vacation time frame we'll have to work in this spring. So we went back to the drawing board.

The plan now is to make something just big enough for us to 'camp out' in next winter and start some seeds the next spring. Sometimes delay is a good thing.