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helpful to choose a reference spot when making your maps. It might be your house or a fence that’s already there. It may even be just a post. I’ve found it extremely helpful to have a metal fencepost at the corners of each section in my large garden. If I need to realign the beds I can quickly run a string and know where the corners are. If you don’t already have a fence or post in your garden, now is the time to plan it in. Besides being a point to measure from, posts and fences give birds landing spots to check out the area for insects to eat.

    Make sure to show the scale — how many feet in one inch — on the map. To get the detail you want for your permaculture plan, you may have to tape pieces of graph paper together. If your map is bigger than what you can copy on a copy machine, fold it and copy the pieces. You can tape those pieces together later, maybe on a backing of poster board. If you are copying your map in pieces, while you are making copies of the original plan at 100 percent to have an exact copy, make some smaller ones. Figure out what size you need so the resulting pieces will all fit on a standard size sheet of paper. Cut out what you need from the smaller copies, tape them on their new size paper, and make copies of that. You can make many sizes to play with. The more familiar you are with the copy machines at your office supply store, the better. You can always ask the employees to make the different size copies for you, but it is good to learn to do it yourself.
    An 8½ × 11 size is nice to put in your notebook. You might want a larger size with color added (I use colored pencils) to put in a poster sized frame to hang on the wall. If you don’t have a map that shows the whole of your property, you will always be leaving something out in your mind. It also helps to see things in proper proportion to everything else on your property. You could cover copies of your garden map and permaculture plan with clear contact paper. Using wipe-off markers, you can have fun thinking up new plans. When you come up with something you like, draw it on one of those extra copies you made. Your family members might even want to get involved with that.

    Figure 2.7. Base Permaculture Map for Sunfield Farm
    Leave a wild spot on your property when you are planning. That would be an area that is left alone and not cultivated. If you are living where “wild” might be frowned upon, some bushes or a tree with bushes will do. Anywhere that is not messed with too often will provide habitat for beneficial insects. Those bushes could be something that flower early, providing nectar for the bees. (Having a perennial flower bed could also fill this niche.) If your neighbors live close and have phobias about insects, maybe it might be best not to mention attracting bees and bugs.Wild areas help to maintain diversity. If they connect from one property to another they become wildlife corridors — highways for the wildlife. Not cultivating from property line to property line is a start. Some communities plan for undeveloped space. Unfortunately, sometimes residents do not recognize the value of those areas.
    The base permaculture map of our place, Sunfield Farm, is shown above ( Figure 2.7 ). This is the starting point of all the plans and only shows the property lines, fences, and buildings. At times I’ve made larger maps of portions of this map to show more detail when planning projects. I’ve done that for each of the gardens, the backyard, the back pasture area, and the barnyard. If you own your house you may have a copy of the plot plan that resulted from the survey that was done when you moved in. If you are not skilled at map making you could just use that as your base map.

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    Cover Crops and Compost — Planning for Sustainability
    G ROWING A SUSTAINABLE DIET also feeds the soil. Growing cover crops is one of the best things you can do for your soil. There is no separation between you and the earth that grows