From Old Farm to Terraced Permaculture Paradise

What's going on growers? It's James Frigioni coming to you live from Jersey. This video has been 10 years in the making. Today I'm going to show you how I took an unproductive sloping hillside and turned it into my dream terraced landscape. Let's go! About two months ago I shared with you that I recently bought this 10 acre homestead in South Jersey and I've had some history with this particular place. For almost the last 10 years I have been coming to this farm once a week to help the previous owner maintain the farm. Years ago there were a few productive trees like there was a peach tree that we used to get fruit from but as he got older and less mobile we spent less time maintaining this place and as a result the property started to deteriorate. When I purchased the farm it had essentially been neglected for over a year and a lot of the fruit trees were struggling. I'll put some shots in right now of what the place looked like. You can see there are some fruit trees growing but I knew I can make a lot of improvements to this place. Sadly the previous owner passed away which was unfortunate for me because we had developed a good friendship but I told him before that happened that I was going to turn this place into a garden paradise. I knew that this place was already a paradise in itself just naturally but it wasn't designed. Things were put in to fill spaces but there was no like take a step back master plan design element when it was first developed. Nothing like maintenance or irrigation or even variety selection were taken into account when setting this place up. One of the things that I didn't like was that there wasn't any flat ground not even a spot on this whole open acre. You were either walking up a hill down a hill or you were walking like sideways of the hill and it was sort of imbalanced. Even driving the tractor was annoying because again either up down or driving the tractor on a slope perpendicular to it it's like almost kind of dangerous. I was thinking we got to do something to make this better. Years ago before I bought this place I had been envisioning a future garden here and how I could step in make a temporary disturbance like Joel Salatin talks about one of my all-time heroes and potentially set myself up for the next 30 50 or 100 years. Knowing that I would reshape the land I decided to give away all the fruit trees that were here to a local farmer. He only lives about 5 or 10 minutes from me and he's around the same age as me and he needed some fruit trees so it worked out perfect. He just came over brought his tractor dug up a lot of the trees and then planted them over at his farm. This made me feel good even though they were just standard varieties of fruit trees and there wasn't anything like particularly special I still I mean no one likes getting rid of a tree so it felt good that I was able to bring them to a new home. Here is a shot of the place when I first got the property. There's a lot of overgrown trees and the place is just overgrown in general plus there's fencing everywhere and here is a shot of the open area after I removed the old fencing and after all the old fruit trees were removed. You can see in the top right side of the screen that's where the top of the hill is and everything sloped down from there. I didn't mind that this open area had a slope to it. I was actually kind of happy that it had a slope because sometimes a slope can add some character to a property. The problem was when it rained water would come down the slope just wash past the fruit trees downhill like water does and eventually it would just find its way into the woods and off my open area. I did not like that. As a gardener and especially as a permaculture enthusiast I know that water is number one. It's key. Nothing happens without it and we have a saying in permaculture when it comes to water and when it comes onto your property. What we want to do is we want to slow it, spread it, and sink it. What essentially that means is we want to take the water that's coming onto the property. We don't want it to be rushing. We want to slow that water down gently and then we want to spread it over a whole open area. Then we want to sink all the water in that we can. This way we get the most out of it as possible. In a previous homestead video I made probably like two months ago now I talked about the idea of terracing the hill. This way I could get a number of flat pieces of land at different elevations. This would help with water, would help with access, and would also hopefully increase my overall square footage of usable land on this open area. Plus I thought it could look absolutely beautiful. What I did was I called a local excavator, told him the plan, and here's how it played out. When he came I told him that it was probably about an eight to ten foot change in elevation from the bottom of the hill to the top and I told him I wanted about three to four terraces with anywhere from like a two to three foot change in elevation from one terrace to the next and I wanted the terraces to be anywhere from 25 to 40 feet wide. Well the day came they turned the engines on and started to move some earth. At first I was a little bit nervous because it's all sand here. I was hoping there was a good amount of decent dirt underneath all that sand. This way the terraces could help hold some of their shape. He started at the highest point and right away I saw some decent dirt and was hopeful this whole thing would work out. He began by creating a flat spot at the top of the hill to form the top of the first terrace. He used a backhoe to help get the initial shape of the first terrace and to move some dirt behind him. Then he continued that same pattern of pushing the dirt down the hill with the bulldozer and then getting the initial shape with the backhoe while dropping some more dirt down the hill. The first day a lot of progress was made and I was starting to see the vision come to life. The next day he came back out and continued working on the terraces. I was getting so excited as I started to see more and more open areas of flat land that would be perfect for planting fruit trees, putting in raised beds or anything else that I would want to add into the garden. By the end of the second day it was becoming obvious that the greenhouse was in the way and that I needed to move it in order to shape the land correctly. I reached out to a few friends and four of us were able to lift up the greenhouse and move it to this temporary location after we took the stakes out. It really wasn't that bad. I think we moved it about 30 feet. We could just lift it up, walk it over here and then drop it back down in this temporary level location until I give it its final resting place. The day after they continued shaping the terraces and with every push of the bucket the design came together more and more. He went back with his bucket on the bulldozer and smoothed out the small slope on the terrace and then I had him level the area at the bottom of the terrace to give me some more flat space. This way all of the open area is flat. Now it's time to show you a before and after shot of this place. One great way to do this is with the drone. Here's a shot of what the property looked like before I removed the fruit trees and some of the fencing. It is time for the big reveal though. BAM! Isn't that just unbelievable? Look how incredibly different it looks. The shape, the pattern on the landscape. I'm in love with the it looks and how functional it will be. I think it will be breathtaking. Even now flying the drone up the terraces it just looks inviting. It looks like how I always hoped it would. I want to show you some live shots to give you an idea of how much more usable space that we now have. I mean it's essentially all flat. This is going to be way better at holding water, way safer to work on and I would say we either triple or quadrupled our overall usable space in this area. You'll see as I start walking down these terraces these things are large and I'll give you some different angles to show you more in detail what it looks like but I'm telling you I mean the opportunities are endless. It's all flat. It's all level and the only slopes we have are these small little areas right here and they're only about two or three or four foot in length and the elevation change is only about two or three feet so essentially we're only losing a small amount of space in this whole open acre that went from sloping almost unusable hillside to magnificent, expansive, beautiful looking terraces. I'm walking the length of the longest terrace right now. This thing is 265 feet in length. I was able to measure it with this wheel measuring tool right here. It works fantastic actually and I'm at the edge of one of the terraces. Over here you'll notice this is where the other terrace goes to. This one's 225 feet so they are very very long and you'll notice right here what we have is just a gentle slope. It's about two to three feet in length and only about a two to three foot change in elevation and this terrace right here is 30 feet wide. As I step back you'll notice the whole thing is level so we have a bunch of different level terraces at different elevations. It's going to give us so much open space to plant. The opportunities are absolutely endless. I'm going to be planting a lot of fruit trees on the front side and then in some of the other locations we might have like a patch of corn or some kind of annuals like a field and then we'll have raised beds in some sections too. My thinking was that I would plant the fruit trees about seven to ten feet off the edge of the terrace. That gives me about 15 to 20 feet of space to get the tractor through. This way we can keep this area nice and mowed so it's really easy maintenance. Overall though I think it looks absolutely beautiful. The terraces are gentle. They won't erode and I'm not going to have to put bricks or some kind of retaining wall to hold it. I'm confident this thing will hold itself because ultimately it's just so gentle. Originally he had about 25 fruit trees in this section. I bet I can fit 25 fruit trees on one terrace so we're going to make this thing look absolutely incredible. There's a few more things I want to show. My vision for the center is, let me center up a little bit first, is to have some brick steps that go up each terrace so that top terrace will have some steps and it will be a straight line of the steps. This way you could walk up the center of the terraces and at the head of each step for every terrace I'll have a hose bib connector. I'm going to have irrigation run out and a connection for a hose. We'll have an additional connection for a hose at each end of the terrace. So there will be three hose connections at each terrace and I'm hoping that's enough water to keep this place irrigated. Let me know down in the comments if you guys have some ideas on the best way to irrigate this place because I'm always open to some good suggestions. Another thing is we have access at either end, that end and that end, to drive the tractors up. Then the tractors could just move along this flat area. It'll be safe to ride on. It will be easy to maintain and we've given ourselves plenty of space to fit a bunch of different things within this small section. So at the moment it might just look like an empty parking lot but in reality I'm blown away with how much more space we have to how much usable land there is and how well the shape came together because we didn't even change anything with the hillside. All we did was we just kind of carved into what was existing already. We moved a little bit of the dirt down from the top but we didn't bring any extra dirt in and we didn't have to get rid of any dirt. We just used what was already here and just reshaped the landscape. The next thing to do is to get this terrace planted out with a cover crop. I've got my Broadcast Spreader right here. So what I'm thinking is I'll plant some cowpeas and some vetch here. I've also picked up annual rye and winter wheat but I think it might be a little too late in the season for the rye and the wheat so I'll probably stick with cowpeas and vetch to start. The idea is to plant things that grow really quick to out-compete the weeds because I don't want some perennial weeds in here and stuff getting a foothold. If I just plant some annuals that are cover crops I can come by and mow them after as I start to decide what to put here and at what spacing. Let me know down in the comments if there's some other cover crops you think I should add to my mix to make sure I get this place covered and to get the soil protected from the wicked beating sun. Another thing is I want to ask you guys what do you think about the tree spacing? So I'm thinking about seven foot maybe maybe five foot well five to ten foot off the terrace and then probably about 15 foot spacing for my fruit trees like my apples and stuff and then I'm thinking maybe dwarves in the front because they're shorter but if you guys have some other ideas let me know. The thing is I've never I've never worked on a landscape this big. I only had my small garden so it's a different whole different animal it's a whole different beast to wrap your mind around. I find it so fun and I I'm just excited for the whole entire process. One thing you'll notice too is with the terraces is you can't see them that much right now but that's because everything is the same color. I think as I get them planted and I get green down here and some fruit trees and stuff the terraces will be a little more pronounced the slopes. The thing is I don't know what I should plant on them so the idea was to keep them short and not really long because this is going to be the hardest section to maintain. So what I wanted to do was reduce the amount of surface area that was sloping so I can maybe go through with a weed whacker or something just to keep them nice and short. I could put something like rocks here or even wood chips. The thing is I want to be able to see that slope because I like to see that change in elevation. I think it looks absolutely beautiful and I mean nothing gets me more excited than this. I've always wanted to put my stamp on a property with my design to create something that's functional that's beautiful and that's a paradise for all living things. I think this was it was a tough decision to do this but I think it was the right decision. I think Joel Salatin would be proud that I came out I made a temporary disturbance disturbance that was an investment that should hopefully pay back in dividends throughout the future and I'm really happy with how it looks. There's so much potential here that's why another reason I wanted to make this video to open it up to you guys give me some ideas of things you think need to be added into this space. I want to create a perfect scenario to encourage other people to get out and grow some of their own food. I figured this would be a good view to close out the video and this is something like I mentioned earlier that I've been dreaming about for such a long period of time and I feel so grateful and I wanted to thank all of you for being a part of this journey where we started just a small little backyard garden with just you know throwing seeds in seed bowls out in the backyard fukuoka style natural farming you know just seeing what we can get no watering to move up every little year to just increase the knowledge and for opportunities to develop as a result of that I feel incredibly grateful and I feel thankful again to all of you that you've been a part of it that you helped bring this dream alive because it feels so nice to to finally have a massive canvas and the only thing left to do is just to get our brushes out and start painting. That's today's video growers thanks for watching I hope you enjoyed it I hope you got something out of it I hope this video encourages you guys and hit the like button also let me know down in the comments if you want to see more videos from the homestead as we start to develop it initially I was thinking I would just do kind of like a before and after but if you guys like these videos in the interim to see the progression to see all the steps that are being made let me know down in the comments because I also want to do these kinds of videos so that I can get some ideas from a lot of you I mean we have a lot of people who can all contribute to this and we can make this place absolutely beautiful I'm always open to ideas and I'm always hungry to learn something especially from someone who's done it before or just from anyone who has a good idea so make sure you guys get engaged down in the comments let me know what you think about the place and give me some of your ideas and some of your insights let me know some trees you think I should get planted and one thing I'm trying to decide is where to put the fruit trees so for example I'll put something like the dwarf apples on the bottom but I don't want to put something at the bottom of the terrace that's going to get really tall that will block the view of the of the hill and the other terraces so I'm going to have to put some thought work into the design to make it function well to be productive but also to look perfect for the videos because what we what we're here to do is to encourage you guys to show you that this is it this is an opportunity anyone could do this you just get out there you get your hands dirty and you get some stuff planted I wanted to send a shout out to someone who reached out to me on Facebook Judah he's a young guy young kid and he he sent me a video of him in his garden the garden looks incredible he's doing the whole James Frigioni intro with the what's going on growers it was very cute and Judah stick with it I see a lot of potential in your future especially with how good your garden looks and I wanted to thank you Judah for being part of the team and for being part of everything out here so stick with it and make sure you keep on going but more importantly keep on sowing I had a blast with this video if you guys found value in it please share with your friends please comment down low hit the like button because all that helps build the channel another thing you guys need to do is to go over to teamgrow.us where we have the community of well over 2,000 members that have come together that are pooling our resources our knowledge and we're truly helping to grow a better future together this video is is it's just something I've always wanted to make and even even the terraces before they happened it was always like is it going to happen are they going to work out but fortunately everything came together and the next step is to turn is to green this place up to get it planted and it's just going to look incredible after one year after two years after three years after 20 years I'm so excited you guys are following along don't forget to hit that subscribe button we'll be back to you with another one real soon we