Permaculture course days 3 and 4

Day 3 was all about permaculture design 1, starting on the zones and how they all link within one another. Zone 0 being the house, zone 1 being things you need to access a lot, such as herbs for the kitchen, salad greens etc,, some fruit trees that you would access a lot such as lemons and limes for cooking etc.  zone 2 being things you access daily, the chook house, vegetable garden, etc, zone 3 being for a larger orchard etc, zone 4 being for pasture animals, bees, trees for firewood or cabinets and zone 5 being natural untouched habitat for wildlife. There are lots of other things to include in each zone, but that's a very basic overview. Some things could be in more than 1 zone, some things are right on the cusp of 2 zones, so it does come down to common sense as well. I did my presentation on passionfruit, and made a passionfruit slice and passionfruit cordial. It was an extremely hot day today at the course, so the cordial went down a treat. Saori did her presentation on choko, and made sweet poached choko, they were delicious and will definitely be something that I grow now.
Day 4 was about water and trees. We started in the morning in learning about the contours of land and how to read a contour map, and how to work out the contours of our own land. We then started on water storage, water tanks etc. The afternoon was spent on trees in permaculture, their uses etc. We also did a wander around looking at the various types of trees on the farm. Colin did a presentation on eggplant, and he made up eggplant fritters, they were really delicious! I have never tried eggplant before, so I was really pleasantly surprised. I planted eggplant in the garden some weeks ago, so I am now looking forward to those, but I may have planted them too late yet. They were creamy and meaty all at the same time, I was very impressed. Fiona did a presentation on Okra, I can't say these did much for me...but they may be nicer cooked a different way, apparently they are the main ingredient in gumbo, but I need to find out what that even is! We have an assignment to do which must be completed in 2 weeks time. I need to work out our roof area, and our yearly water use, and work that back to our average yearly rainfall and work out the number and size of water tanks we need based on all of that info. That will be interesting to do, and relevant to us as we have been looking at getting water tanks this year, as being self sufficient in water is something I want to do, especially with Unity Water charging us a fortune for water these days.
There have been other things happening around the place, but I have come down with some dreaded lurgy and not feeling 100% so will catch up on updating the blog in the next few days hopefully.