Stop planting your orchard in the coldest place on your land.
A complete design system for homesteads where the ground freezes. It fixes the
order you make decisions in — read the site, find the warm band, then plant — and it ends
with nine drawings of your own property, not a reading list. 17 chapters, 83 sections,
341 cold-hardy species, 182 cited sources.
Instant download · Six files · Yours permanently, no subscription
The one thing that decides where everything goes.
Cold air is denser than warm air, so on a still clear night it drains downhill and pools in
the low ground — and the pool sits exactly where your soil is deepest, your shelter is best
and the wild trees are already thriving. Every book you have read points at that corner. You
will not see the damage happen. You will simply get no fruit, and conclude you chose the
wrong variety. This manual maps that pool before you plant, and puts the orchard in the
thermal belt above it, on ground you can improve.
Most permaculture advice is written where water is the problem
Catch the water, hold the water, spread the water. Swales on contour. Ponds high in the
landscape. Keyline cultivation. All correct, all hard-won — for Australia, California and
the drylands where it was developed. In those places water is the binding constraint:
the one limit that caps the whole system, so improving anything else changes nothing.
You do not live there. Between the 45th and 55th parallel, water is rarely
what stops you. What stops you is heat, and the length of the season, and the fact that both
run out before the work is finished.
It is deliberately opinionated. Where the cold gives a defensible right answer, it gives
that answer rather than listing options — and where the honest answer is that nobody knows,
it says so on the page.
The Cold Scale of Permanence
P. A. Yeomans ranked landscape elements by how hard each is to
change — climate, landform, water, down to soil, the thing you can actually fix. Design in
that order and you stop making the expensive mistakes. It is also missing a
rung. This book inserts Cold Air & Snow at position three —
above water, above access, above everything you can build.
The FROST Design Method
The Scale tells you what outranks what. FROST tells you what to
pick up first on a Saturday: Frame the site · Root the
soil · Organise the water · Stack the living layers ·
Time everything. Then T sends you back to F, because your first winter of
records will contradict something you were sure of.
What you get
The Manual
17 chapters, 83 sections, 105 original figures, with 61 pages of appendices bound in.
Every decision in design order, from reading your land through to making it pay.
The Plant Database
Zone, bloom timing, harvest window and a hazard flag on every species. It sits in the
appendices, alongside the mapping toolkit, conversions, glossary and every source.
The Workbook
Built to be printed and written on. You will get the first two wrong, and that is the
point of doing it on paper rather than in nursery stock.
The Calculators
Backwards planting, winter feed and stocking, larder audit, 52-week calendar. Opens in
Excel, Google Sheets, LibreOffice or Numbers. No account, no subscription.
What makes it different from a good blog post
-
It is ordered
The entire argument is about what you do first. No
article can give you that, because sequence only exists across a whole system. Ten years,
arranged by what is expensive to undo and what is slow to pay. -
It ends in a deliverable
Nine drawings of your own land — base plan, four
overlays, two sections, concept plan, species schedule and a costed ten-year sequence.
Specific enough to hand to someone else. -
It tells you where its own numbers are weak
A box called “Where the evidence
is thin” appears about eighty times. Snow’s R-value, the ten-times-height shelterbelt
rule, what guilds actually deliver, dynamic accumulators — all quoted as fact everywhere
else, all softer than they sound. 182 citations across 83 sections, and where a figure is a
rule of thumb it says so. -
It stops where it should
No frost depth, because that is a legal value from
your building authority. No stocking rate, because it is site-specific and getting it wrong
damages land for years. No canning times. Each time you get the method and who to call. -
Three frost dates, not one
The “average last frost date” everyone quotes is a
median — frost happens after it in half of all years. The date you can actually plant
tomatoes against is usually two to four weeks later. That single correction is worth the
price on its own.
The honest part
Here is what this system actually returns, on the timescale it actually returns it.
Almost nothing here pays in year one. Shelterbelts take a decade. Nut trees take longer.
The food forest you plant next spring will not look like the drawing until your children are
adults.
We put that up front on purpose. A cold-climate homestead is not built — it is
accumulated, and you should decide with the real timescale in front of you rather
than a hopeful one. The compensation is that the work compounds: every metre of shelter makes
everything downwind of it permanently warmer, and every winter of observation makes the next
decision better.
Even if you never finish, Chapter 15 gets you
the One-Page Frostproof Plan — your three highest-return interventions,
located on a map, costed and dated, in one evening. Nobody finishes this book
empty-handed.
Who it is for
- Anyone with land in USDA zones 2–5 who intends to grow a meaningful part of what
they eat. - People who would rather do a small number of things correctly than a large number
hopefully. - Homesteaders who have read the standard books and found the advice does not survive
their February. - Designers charging for cold-climate work — Chapter 16.3 is written for you.
Who it is not for
- Anyone wanting engineered drawings. This is a design method, not structural, electrical
or septic design. It tells you where the edge is and when to hire a professional. - Anyone in zone 6 and warmer. The method ports; the urgency does not, and you will find
half of it unnecessary. - Anyone who wants a plant list. Appendix A is here, but the list is the least valuable
part of the book and the order is the most.
The whole book, chapter by chapter
Nothing is hidden — this is the complete table
of contents. Click any chapter to open its sections.
Start Here
00Start Here: Set Up for a Design You’ll Actually BuildW0
- 0.1 What You’re Building and Why It’s Different
- 0.2 How This Book Works: The FROST Method and the Eighty-Three Sections
- 0.3 Your Design File — Setting Up the One Folder Everything Goes Into
- 0.4 Find Your Numbers: Hardiness Zone, Frost Dates, Frost Depth, Growing Degree Days
Part I — Ground Truth
01Why Cold Changes Every RuleFROST F · W1
- 1.1 The Three Ethics and Twelve Principles — Fast, Then Never Abstract Again
- 1.2 What Actually Happens to a Landscape at −35 °C
- 1.3 The Four Northern Constraints: Short Season, Deep Cold, Frozen Water, Long Dark
- 1.4 Zones and Sectors When You Can’t Walk the Back Forty in January
- 1.5 The Cold Scale of Permanence — The Order You Must Design In
02Read Your Land Before You Touch ItFROST F · W2
- 2.1 The Free Mapping Stack — Base Maps, Contours and Aerials Without a Surveyor
- 2.2 Reading Landform: Ridge, Shoulder, Key Point, Valley, Toe
- 2.3 Where Your Cold Air Goes — Mapping Frost Pockets and the Thermal Belt
- 2.4 Where Your Snow Lands — Drift Mapping, and Why It’s a Water Map
- 2.5 Sun, Aspect and the Winter Shadow Line
- 2.6 Soil, Drainage and What the Weeds Are Telling You
03Manufacture Your Own WarmthFROST F · W3
- 3.1 The Suntrap: Geometry, Aspect and the Horseshoe That Changes Everything
- 3.2 Windbreaks and Shelterbelts — Density, Height, Spacing and the Ten Percent Rule
- 3.3 Thermal Mass Outdoors: Stone, Water, Walls and South-Facing Slopes
- 3.4 Working Snow: Insulation, Reflection, Drift Fences and Snow as Irrigation
- 3.5 Stacking Microclimates — Turning One Zone Into Three
Part II — The Living Substrate
04Build Soil That Wakes Up EarlyFROST R · W4
- 4.1 Why Cold Soil Behaves Differently — Temperature, Biology and the Spring Lag
- 4.2 Getting Soil Warm Sooner: Aspect, Raised Beds, Mulch Timing and Dark Surfaces
- 4.3 Fungal-Dominant Soil for Cold Ground — Ramial Wood Chips and the Woody Carbon Route
- 4.4 Composting Through a Northern Year — Thermophilic, Cold, Vermi and Winter Holding
- 4.5 Minerals, Glacial Rock Dust, Acidity and Reading a Northern Soil Test
05Water That Doesn’t Freeze, Flood, or LeaveFROST O · W5
- 5.1 Your Water Budget — Precipitation, Snowpack, Evaporation and Actual Demand
- 5.2 Slowing Water in a Freeze–Thaw Landscape: Swales, Keyline and When Not to Dig
- 5.3 Ponds and Dams That Survive Ice — Depth, Slope, Aeration and Winter Life
- 5.4 Tanks, Cisterns and Roof Catchment When It’s All Ice for Five Months
- 5.5 Frost-Free Delivery: Burial Depth, Hydrants, Drain-Down and Heat Trace
- 5.6 Greywater, Blackwater and Septic in Frozen Ground
Part III — What Will Actually Grow
06Choose Plants That Survive Your Worst WinterFROST S · W6
- 6.1 Hardiness Is a Lie You Can Work With — And What Actually Kills Plants
- 6.2 Chill Hours, Bloom Timing and Why Late Frost Costs You the Whole Orchard
- 6.3 The Cold-Hardy Fruit Palette: Haskap, Saskatoon, Sour Cherry, Aronia, Sea Buckthorn
- 6.4 Northern Nuts and the Long Game: Hazel, Korean Pine, Heartnut — and the Butternut Question
- 6.5 Perennial Vegetables That Come Back at −40 °C
- 6.6 Sourcing, Provenance and Why the Same Species From the Wrong Latitude Dies
07Build Guilds That Feed ThemselvesFROST S · W7
- 7.1 What a Guild Is, What It Isn’t, and What the Evidence Actually Supports
- 7.2 Nitrogen in Cold Systems: Caragana, Alder, Sea Buckthorn, Silverberry, Legumes
- 7.3 Assembling a Cold-Climate Guild, Function by Function
- 7.4 Twelve Ready-Built Guilds for Zones 2–5
08Grow a Food Forest in a Short SeasonFROST S · W8
- 8.1 Seven Layers, Northern Reality — What Actually Fits Under a Northern Canopy
- 8.2 Spacing, Light and Latitude: Why Northern Food Forests Are Wider and Sunnier
- 8.3 Laying Out the Forest: Edges, Sun-Facing Bays, Access and Harvest Lines
- 8.4 Establishment in Cold Ground: Planting Windows, Protection and the First Three Winters
- 8.5 Ten to Thirty Years Out — Succession, Thinning and Coppice
Part IV — Buying Back the Season
09Buy Back Ten Weeks of SeasonFROST T · W9
- 9.1 The Season-Extension Ladder — What Each Layer Buys You and What It Costs
- 9.2 The Persephone Period: Why Growth Stops Before the Cold Does
- 9.3 Cold Frames, Low Tunnels and Row Cover — The Cheap Weeks
- 9.4 Passive Solar Greenhouse Design: Glazing Angle, North Wall, Mass, Arctic Entry
- 9.5 Deep Winter Greenhouses and Climate Batteries — Growing in January
- 9.6 Choosing Your Structure: A Cost, Labour and Yield Comparison
10The Short-Season Kitchen and Market GardenFROST T · W10
- 10.1 Designing a Bed System for Cold Ground and a Compressed Calendar
- 10.2 Starting Indoors: Timing Backwards From Your Last Frost
- 10.3 Succession, Interplanting and Getting Three Crops Out of One Bed
- 10.4 Seed Saving and Breeding for Your Own Short Season
Part V — Animals, Shelter & Energy
11Livestock That Winter WellFROST S · T · W11
- 11.1 Choosing Cold-Hardy Stock: Breeds Bred for This Climate
- 11.2 Poultry Through a Northern Winter — Housing, Light, Water and Deep Litter
- 11.3 Ruminants and the Real Bottleneck: Winter Feed
- 11.4 Integrating Animals Into Orchard, Forest and Garden — Stocking Rates That Work
- 11.5 Winter Water, Shelter, Bedding and the Body-Condition Calendar
12Buildings, Shelter and Heat That Carry You ThroughFROST T · W12
- 12.1 Siting a Building in the Cold: Thermal Belt, Sun, Wind, Drift and Frost Depth
- 12.2 Passive Solar Rules for High Latitudes — Glazing, Orientation, Mass and Depth
- 12.3 Attached Greenhouses, Arctic Entries and Connected Outbuildings
- 12.4 Heating: Woodlot Yield, Coppice, Rocket Mass Heaters and Honest Comparisons
- 12.5 Winter Power, Winter Failure and Designing for the Week the Grid Goes Down
Part VI — The Year Round
13Fill the CellarFROST T · W13
- 13.1 Designing a Root Cellar: Temperature, Humidity, Ventilation and Placement
- 13.2 Storage Crops and Storage Varieties — What Actually Keeps Until March
- 13.3 Beyond the Cellar: Fermentation, Drying, Curing, Canning and Freezing
- 13.4 The Winter Larder Audit — Working Backwards From What You Eat
14The Year-Round PlanFROST T · W14
- 14.1 The Northern Year in Five Seasons — Including the One Nobody Names
- 14.2 Your 52-Week Operating Calendar
- 14.3 Maintenance, Monitoring and Knowing What to Fix First
- 14.4 Observation Records and the Design Review That Makes Year Three Better
Part VII — Your Design
15Your Frostproof Design: The CapstoneFROST F·R·O·S·T · W15
- 15.1 What a Finished Design Actually Contains — The Deliverable Spec
- 15.2 Running FROST Across Your Own Site, Stage by Stage
- 15.3 Drawing It: Base Plan, Overlays, Sections and the Concept Sketch
- 15.4 Sequencing and Costing — Ten Years, Ordered by Return and Permanence
- 15.5 Two Worked Designs: A Zone 3 Prairie Quarter and a Zone 4 Wooded Five Acres
16Make It Pay, and Keep Going
- 16.1 Yields That Sell in the North — Niches Warm Climates Can’t Serve
- 16.2 Scaling From Homestead to Small Farm Without Breaking the Design
- 16.3 Designing for Others: Charging, Scoping and Delivering a Cold-Climate Design
- 16.4 Where to Go Next — Your First Season
The Complete System
- The Manual — 354 pages, 17 chapters, 105 original figures, including
61 pages of appendices and the 341-species plant database - The Workbook — 16 printable worksheets, 41 pages
- Backwards Planting Calendar (.xlsx)
- Winter Feed & Stocking Rate (.xlsx)
- Winter Larder Audit (.xlsx)
- 52-Week Operating Calendar (.xlsx)
Six files · Instant download · No subscription, no account
On refunds, plainly. These are digital files and they are yours the moment the payment clears, so we do not offer refunds. We would rather put that on this page than in the small print of a receipt. What you get instead is the complete table of contents above, with nothing hidden, so you can see exactly what you are buying before you buy it. And if you find an error in the book, tell us — we correct it and credit you.
Not ready yet? Start with the free Zone Calendar
Enter your zone and it counts backwards from your frost dates to
give sowing, transplanting and harvest windows. USDA zones 2–6. No charge.
Questions
Is this just a permaculture book with a cold-climate chapter bolted on?
No — and that was the design constraint the whole thing was built against. Mainstream permaculture assumes water is your binding constraint, because it was written where that is true. In zones 2–5 the constraint is heat and season length, and the two behave differently: water can be stored, heat cannot; water is captured, cold arrives. That changes the order you design in, and the order is the whole book.
Will it give me my frost depth and my stocking rate?
No, and be wary of any book that does. Frost depth is a legal value set by your building authority, not a physical constant. Stocking rate is site-specific and getting it wrong damages land for years. There are also no canning times, pressures or recipes anywhere — you are sent to the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning and Health Canada. Each time, you get the method and the phone call to make.
Does it work in the United States as well as Canada?
Yes. Metric with imperial in brackets throughout, and both USDA and Canadian hardiness zones stated wherever they differ — which matters, because the two are not interchangeable and confusing them kills plants. Mapping covers USGS 3DEP for the US and NRCan HRDEM for Canada.
I am a beginner. Is it too advanced?
Chapter 0 assumes nothing and takes one evening. Every term is defined once, in the glossary, with the section that explains it. What it does assume is that you would rather do a small number of things correctly than a large number hopefully.
What format is it in?
PDF, fixed layout, made for screen and print. All 105 figures are vector, so they stay sharp at any zoom. The workbook is a separate PDF built to be printed and written on. The four calculators are .xlsx and open in Excel, Google Sheets, LibreOffice or Numbers — no account, no subscription. An EPUB edition is planned.
Can I use it in paid client work?
Not yet. A commercial-use licence for practitioners is being prepared, and until it exists we are not selling one — we would rather not sell permission we have not written down properly. If you charge for cold-climate design, email hello@earthkeep.ca and we will tell you when it is ready. In the meantime Chapter 16.3 is written for you, including the thing almost nobody scopes for: you cannot design a cold-climate property from a summer visit.
Is this the same as your free Zone Calendar?
No. The Zone Calendar counts back from your frost dates and tells you when to sow. This decides where everything on your property should go, and in what order, over ten years. Different question, different product. Start with the Calendar if you are not sure.
A design method, not engineered drawings. No structural member, electrical
circuit or septic field is sized here. Frost depth, footing depth, setbacks, water rights,
septic requirements, building permits, food-sale licensing and livestock regulations are set
locally and vary by jurisdiction — confirm every one with your municipality and a qualified
professional before you build, dig, sell or buy. Plant hardiness, disease status, invasive
status and legal status change over time and differ by province and state; confirm the
current status of any species before planting it.