Growing Grapes, Raising Chickens in a Permaculture System

By Herbert H.W. Heesch
Published on October 14, 2020
article image
Johana - stock.adobe.com

Start your venture into ecological stability by raising chickens and growing grapes to build a successful permaculture system.

Two years ago, my wife, Judie, and I moved from the city to 11 acres in rural Levy County, Florida (just 20 miles west of Ocala, our former urban home). The soil in this part of the Sunshine State is very poor — it’s mostly sand, and it allows water and nutrients to percolate away — but we’ve managed to successfully cultivate two very different kinds of crops: chickens and grapes. And perhaps most important, we’ve done so by teaming them together to create a mutually supportive partnership and permaculture system that produces loads of fresh fruit and plenty of eggs.

Irrigation Issue

Actually, we planted our grapes — three parallel 120-foot rows, each containing six vines — well before we came up with the idea of adding chickens to the scheme. At the start, in fact, our most immediate concern was finding a way to keep our newly established cultivars irrigated.

Eventually, I came up with a convenient solution: I ran a 3/4-inch feeder pipe underground from our water-to-air heat pump — which circulates 8 gallons a minute — to the vineyard. And then laid an individual aboveground pipe from the conduit to, and along, each row. After that, I simply drilled a series of six holes in the piping (placing each one at a point adjacent to a vine) . . . and we were in business.

But the system created some problems, too: The irrigation pipe — as well as the vines themselves and their supporting posts and wire — made mowing the grass and weeding very difficult. I could’ve buried the pipe, but I feared that digging the necessary trenches might damage the grapes’ roots. Elevating the pipes, it seemed, would be a better solution.

Comments (0) Join others in the discussion!
    Online Store Logo
    Need Help? Call 1-800-234-3368