The First Trees

On November 5th I dug the first trees that we will use for the browse islands. These will later be planted in locations where the alpacas will have access to them, and should provide plenty of leaves for them to eat.

Deborah and Suvia noticed some excellent poplars along the edge of someone’s property as they drove around Moscow on their normal errands. These poplars were clearly healthy, and they kept their leave on longer into the fall than most of the other cottonwoods in the area. We wanted to plant some cottonwoods in the pasture area since they grow quickly, have large and numerous leaves, and coppice well. To make sure we weren’t creating problems for the alpacas by doing this I looked into the nutrition and toxicity of poplar leaves. A combination of my own investigations and consulting with both a local dendrology PhD. student and a veterinary diagnostic toxicologist indicated that poplar leaves should be fine for the alpacas to eat. In addition we gathered some fresh poplar leaves and gave them to the alpacas to see if they were interested (even if the leaves are a great source of food it won’t help the alpacas diets if they eat them).

Poplar trees are well known for vegetative reproduction, and this batch was no different. They had been planted along the edge of someone’s property, and they were sending shoots that were popping up as saplings out of the nearby ditch. Since the ditch was right next to the road access couldn’t have been better. The property turned out to be owned by a professor I knew, who was happy to let me take some of his prolific saplings. We walked his property together to make sure I knew where would be alright for me to take saplings from.



This is a good time of year for transplanting trees. It’s basically the end of autumn and the deciduous trees have dropped their leaves and gone into dormancy for the winter. But it’s still above freezing and the ground moist from late autumn rain. The soil is easy to dig, and the trees are dormant so transplanting them is much less of a shock.




Not knowing exactly how many saplings I would need I dug up most of those available to me, all of which were in this ditch beside the edge of the road. It had been raining a few days before, and was lightly sprinkling on the day I went out to dig. The soil in the ditch was supersaturated, which made digging a pulling roots up much easier. I didn’t take any of the soil with me, but instead dug up the saplings and as much of the roots as I could reasonably get up intact. I placed the trees in a large trash bag and drove them back to the ranch.

Since we don’t know exactly where we will be planting the pasture trees just yet, we needed to put the saplings in the ground someplace out of the way to get them through the winter. I planted all of the saplings close to the northern boarder of the pasture, in an area where the alpacas won’t have access to them. They are all close together in order to minimize the disturbance this location and to make it easier to go back and dig them up later on when we are ready to put them in the pasture.





The grass makes the saplings hard to see here when they don’t have their leaves. But there are about 20-25 saplings here (some are smaller than others). This will probably be more than we need, but having extra gives us a little margin for error and sapling mortality.

Since many of these saplings are so small we will place exclosures around them for a few years once they are planted in the pasture. This will allow them to grow larger and build a stronger root system. Once they are large enough to withstand browsing by the alpacas we’ll take down the exclosures.

Ranch Tour

Some of the alpacas


Most of the alpacas have access to covered stalls with straw covering the floors, as well as open pens.


The other side of the covered stalls


The rest of the alpacas have temporary shelters from the wind and rain made primarily out of tarps.




There are multiple fenced-in pasture areas for the alpacas. They spend part of the day in their pens, and part of their day out in the pastures grazing. Some of these pastures recieve heavier grazing than others.

Some of the lightly grazed pastures.




Some of the heavily grazed pastures.




The manure is currently mixed with the waist straw from alpaca pens and heaped into compost piles that run along side the fences. This helps to keep parasites in check, as well as provide a source of fertilizer for gardening purposes.

Compost piles along fence rows.



An old compost pile previously used as a squash garden



A few pictures of the orchard.



View of the ranch from the edge of the property. Ungrazed pasture, grased pasture, and some of the pens.

Integrating with those around us

One of the driving ideas of permaculture is to be aware of your surroundings and to work with them rather than against them. This is usually thought of in terms of biological process, but the idea is certainly not limited to that scale or perspective. Working with our surroundings, both on and off the property, is equally important in urban environments and within social situations. It's just as important to work with your neighbor or community as it is to work with decomposers, wildlife, and rainfall. If you find yourself in direct opposition to any of these forces you not only find yourself with a greatly reduced chance of success, but your life also gets a lot more difficult and frustrating. So it's important to us that our activities here at the ranch don't interfere with the daily lives of the people around us, or decrease the quality of life for the people or other organisms living in the area.

Here are a few pictures to give you an idea of what the ranch is like. I'm still learning the format of this blog, so I apologize about how things are set up right now.


This is the view of Moscow Mountain looking across some of the ranch property that is closest to a nearby park. As you can see the ranch is inside the city limits and surrounded by streets, housing, parks, etc. The view of the mountains is important to most people here in town. So we are trying to be very careful about the types of trees we are going to plant. We are selecting trees that will either remain rather short at maturity and aren't able to grow tall enough to obscure the view of the mountains, or trees that can be coppiced or cut back regularly to prevent them getting too tall.

The coppicing of trees will be especially important in this project, since when the trees are coppiced (or cut back) they will respond by quickly growing a large number of new leaves and shoots. These will then provide a large amount of leaves for the alpacas to eat, and the leaves should be young and tender at that point. Younger growth has more nutrients and is easier to digest than older plant tissue, making these leaves browse for the alpacas. Tree material that was cut down can them be used for compost, green manure, or as a substrate and food source for growing mushrooms.


This picture is taken from the top of the ranch property, and as you can see it looks directly down on a small park, stream, and bike path. The ranch and alpacas are just up the hill from this park and are one of the main views that people have when they come to the park. So it's important to us to make this area beautiful and functional as well as safe. We don't want drainage from the ranch to reach the stream without having been sufficiently filtered first, the view to be filled with garbage or bare ground, or for odors from alpaca manure to drift down into a picnic. At the moment the area next to the park is unglazed grassland and provides visual and biologic buffers between the park and the alpaca pens. The trees mentioned above will also help to make the area more beautiful and visually appealing for park goers.


Here is a view of the same area of the ranch from a road that overlooks both the park and the ranch.

What's the project?

As both an ecologist and a person interested in the long term survival of humans and other species I find the idea of permaculture very appealing, practical, and pertinent. So when I saw a flier for an internship aimed at implementing permaculture principles on a local alpaca ranch I decided to take a look. It turned out that a local alpaca ranch in the small town of Moscow, Idaho wanted to start practicing permaculture principles on the ranch.

Deborah Berman and Suvia Judd started the Lazy M Suris ranch in 1995. They started out raising alpacas for breeding, show, and resale, with the intention of progressing to dependence on alpaca fiber and other products produced on the ranch. After learning more about possible practices in the alpaca industry they decided to make this transition sooner rather than later. Since then the two have tried to incorporate permaculture practices where feasible on the ranch. In 2006 they decided to use permaculture principles as the guiding management paradigm for the ranch. To assist with this transition they applied for and received a small grant from the Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education Program (SARE) in order to fund a permaculture intern, who’s duties would include researching, designing, and implementing long-term permaculture strategies on the ranch.

The ranch is home to 4 llamas and 37 alpacas. They are kept on 2 fenced-in acres of the 6-acre property. Most of the remaining 4 acres are open, un-grazed pasture, providing excellent pheasant habitat as well as open scenery for the adjacent park. There is also a small orchard on the property, producing apples and pears. The alpacas are sheared each year and the fiber sent to Becky Weed at Thirteen Mile Lamb & Wool Company for processing.

The long term goal is to turn the alpaca ranch into a self-sustaining ranch, producing alpaca fleece, fruit, mushrooms, vegetables, beauty, and environmental integrity. The internship is the first major step towards that goal. The major focus of the permaculture internship will be to create hedgerow and browse islands in and along the pasture. The browse islands will provide shelter from some winds as well as shade from the sun during the hottest portions of the year. They will also extend the forage season for the alpacas by providing an alternative food source that supplements their diet of grass and alfalfa.

The browse islands and hedgerows will be composed of a variety of tree and possibly shrub species, increasing habitat and biodiversity while also providing a varied food source for the alpacas. Depending on the tree species selected they may also produce a variety of fruit, nuts, and wood products that can be sold to diversify and expand the ranches business and economic stability. If some of the trees are coppiced the woodcuttings can be used as a substrate to grow gourmet mushrooms to further this goal.

The internship is by no means limited to hedgerows and browse islands, and can expand to try create or hone permaculture with any part of the ranch or its operations provided there are time and resources to do so.

What's Permaculture?

I suppose an introduction and some background is in order here. This blog’s titled “Permaculture Oasis,” so we’ll start with permaculture. What the heck is that? To the best of my knowledge permaculture is not an idea that is strictly defined. The term was coined around 1979 by Bill Mollison to describe an alternative mentality and approach to growing food and interacting with a cultivated landscape. Mollison wanted to create a form of agriculture that could be practiced indefinitely without destroying or depleting the landscape and surrounding resources. The resulting term “permaculture” is a combination of permanent agriculture, as well as permanent culture, because in order for an agricultural system to function indefinitely it must be accompanied by an enduring mentality or culture by the people who practice it.

Although there are varying definitions of the term, they all seem to share the same goal and mentality. I think of permaculture as working with the environment and ecosystem rather than against it, taking advantage of natural systems to provide work and services that we need, planning with a long term perspective, and recruiting biodiversity for the goal of sustaining ourselves physically, emotionally, and even spiritually both in the present time and for the foreseeable future.

What's this blog about?

The purpose of this blog is two fold: 1) to share what we learn in this project and process with you, and 2) to provide a medium to allow people interested in permaculture to connect with one another and share ideas and resources with each other. So please feel free to make comments on this blog about whatever you find here. Make suggestions, post links to other resources, connect people who can help each other out, and ask questions, addressed either to us or to anyone who might be reading this.