 Hello again. So you've got your design, you've decided what you're going to do and this week we're just going to look at what order is going to be best to do those things in. And we're going to start with one of our principles. We've been looking at a few of those recently of course. This one is least effort for greatest effect. And this is looking for what I might call leverage points, places where we can make a small change to make a big difference. And usually that's looking at where are the leaks on site. So that might be that you've got something, you know, a storage of some sort might have plants that you stored that are going off. So how do you reduce that? It's much easier to reduce losses than to increase inputs, increase yields. So it might be dealing with a leak on a water tank or something like that or just storing a seed in the wrong place. So this is something I often see is I go to a project and there's a big box of seeds in the polytunnel. Now these don't live here normally. They live in a cool, dark place in the corner of my office. And when I'm sowing things I bring the relevant tab with me. So yes, looking for, looking up for those losses and very often the easiest win is to address those first of all. Now another thing we might consider are seasonal constraints. Now again when it comes to planting there's very much seasonal constraints. If we're planting trees, for instance, if we're planting bare root trees you can only do that in the winter. They can only be moved that time of year. You might be choosing bare root trees because they're cheaper and you have more selection, more variety than if you were to buy pot grown trees. So it might be a limiting factor. There might be just finances. So you might say we can't afford to buy pot grown trees. Let's buy bare root trees. You can only plant them or move them in the winter months. So they go on the calendar and these are the kind of things that want to go on the calendar first because they can't go anywhere else. Another thing to think about also is resource availability. So that might be things as simple as labor. If you're running a project then you might have a lot of people come to help in the summer months. So big jobs that require a lot of people might be put on the calendar for the summer. Whereas if you're thinking about what time do you have you might earn more money in the summer but have less time available at that time of year. So other projects might go in the winter when you have more time if time is the issue. So looking at what resources you have at different times of year. So we've just had a whole load of woodchip. Two loads of woodchip delivered recently. This is the time of year where most tree surgeons do tree work because the sap is down. The tree is dormant. Many trees are dormant in the winter. And so it's much easier. You know limbs are less heavy and trees are happier if they're addressed and worked on in the winter as well. So this is the kind of time of year we would get that. So then we're looking at systems that would set that up. So we've got a little hotbed system out there where we put the woodchips with some early grass cuttings to get the heat hot. And that's very much a seasonal thing. It's when we want to be growing our earliest crops and it's when we have that resource where those two things overlap. So there you go in the calendar then. Okay. Hopefully this is all making sense. And then we also have things like dependencies. So some things just have to be done before others. So you need to prepare your vegetable bed before you plant your seeds in it for instance. Or if you're looking at a building it's quite difficult to put the roof on before it's got walls or some kind of footing. So there are logical dependencies that some things proceed another and you need to give time for those things to happen. So if we're thinking about deadlines and scheduling things it's always worth thinking about how long it takes to do particular jobs. And particularly if you're working on a project with other people, especially if they're contractors and you're paying them, you need to know that when a job needs to be done that they're available you often have to book them a long time in advance. So to figure out how long these things going to take where they'll sit on the calendar we can use things like a Gantt chart. Now we've used one here to work out what we're going to do as part of our implementation plan and we've chunked them around different permaculture principles and they're laid out on this chart and that's on the computer. So computer charts can be useful in the sense that if something gets delayed we just adjust the time and everything moves, it sets, it tells you how long it's going to take you to get to the end of the project. The downside of that of course is that it's on the computer and it's not on a piece of paper on your wall. So sometimes an implementation plan is most useful if it's a simple thing maybe with post-it notes with little pictures on stuck on a wall or grid just to remind you of what you're going to do and maybe inspire you. I put a lot of things in my calendar for instance but Gantt charts can be really useful and you want to make sure that if you're doing a big project someone turns up to do the job that everything that they need is on site or the resources are ordered and you've got the money in the bank to pay for those resources and pay them as well so people don't sit around waiting for things or they just go away and don't come back again. So depending on how complex your setup is your project is would determine what you need in that regard and Gantt charts allow you to work out things like the critical path which is the all the dependencies that have to occur one after the other how long each one of those is going to take so that you know from beginning to end of the project how many days that is and it's important to identify those dependencies and that critical path because if something gets delayed and it's on that critical path that other things are waiting for it to finish before they can start then you need to if you're going to go over a deadline at the end you need to be able to look at that and say we can't be late with this we need to get more people in to do the job or people have to work later for instance so critical paths Gantt charts Gantt charts are also useful for working out resources how much the cost of resources cost of labour and those kind of things so and yeah just coming back to this idea also if we think about maintenance so maintenance planning is also important for me mostly it's about having lists so we've got some very basic lists of things like spring jobs summer jobs winter jobs and they don't have to be particularly complicated but this is a reminder for things like remove the tree guards in the spring so that the bark of the tree can breathe and ants don't make nests in them but then come the late autumn into the winter we put the guards back on again to protect the trees over the winter and it's just it's a simple job doesn't need any detailed instructions but we need the reminder to make sure we do it and then sometimes maintenance is not so obvious so particularly if you've got a design where you have something like a composting toilet then maybe instructions for how to maintain the composting toilet is something that will day to day for the user perhaps on the inside of the door so people can see what it's all about how it works what to do to make sure it works properly but also for the manager of the toilet that they know what they need to do on a seasonal basis in order to keep it healthy and working well and then when it comes down to you know if you've got a whole bunch of things and you can't decide where to start because for instance it's spring like it is now middle of March and you've got all these seeds what do I do first so I've got just you know so that's one bunch and these are organized around the biodynamic planting calendar so in the front here today is a root day so roots followed by flowers that's going to be tomorrow flowers f l so the l so flowers followed by leaves leaves as l and then leaves is followed again by the other f which is fruit fruit followed by the r fruit r fr root so it's easy to remember the order and I just have them in these little yogurt tubs they're stuffed in a box it's a perfect size and whether it works or not I don't know I haven't done that much of a detailed experiment around this but what I do know is that I can get up on any particular morning say I'm going to go and sow some seeds today and rather than thinking which seeds shall I say if I just say what's today today is a root day let's go and plant some roots it just makes deciding what to do so much easier so ultimately an implementation plan means that you don't waste a lot of time thinking what am I going to do next and if you have a system like this I don't need to waste time thinking what am I going to sow today I just go ahead and do it enjoy your design and look forward to seeing you maybe at some point in the future on a permaculture course