Mark Edward

P Thickens wrote:
Well, I'm the horrible party guest who is depressing all over everyone. Here's from one of my earlier posts, giving information so ya'all can be informed and make the best choice for you and those you feed from your land.

Scientists and medical doctors agree that the use of Comfrey should be restricted to topical use, and should never be ingested, as it contains dangerous amounts of hepatotoxic pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs). Use of comfrey can, because of these PAs, lead to veno-occlusive disease (VOD). VOD can in turn lead to liver failure, and comfrey has been implicated in at least one death. In 2001, the United States Food and Drug Administration issued a warning against internal usage of herbal products containing comfrey, and eventually banned Comfrey products intended for internal use. In addition to restrictions on oral use, scientists and medical professionals recommend applying Comfrey extracts no longer than 10 days in a row, and no more than 4–6 weeks a year.

Comfrey contains excessive amounts of symphytine, a PA, the injection of the pure alkaloid of which may cause cancer in rats. The whole plant has also been shown to induce precancerous changes in rats.

"Injecting pure alkaloid" doesn't sound too smart. But that's what scientists do. They study a specific item in isolation to see what it does. Apple, peach, and apricot seeds have cyanide in them. Injecting pure cyanide "may" kill you. lol Ok. It WILL kill you. But when consumed with the whole fruit, it is actually a strong anti-cancer "health food".

Susan Weed is a well known herbalist. She tells "the rest of the story" about comfrey here (apparently the purple-flowering tall variety has been cultivated to not have the alkaloids in the leaves):
http://www.susunweed.com/herbal_ezine/June08/wisewoman.htm

I have drank (drunk? drinken?) several quarts of the comfrey infusion she mentions in the article. Never a hint of difficulties. Everybody gets to make up their own mind on the subject. But I am especially happy to hear Ivan's news about his cows eating it! A couple days ago, I pulled up a pound or two of roots from a patch of comfrey, and broke it up into bits, and stuck them into a box of dirt. Hoping to get several dozen plant starts so I can expand the comfrey patch for some experimental feeding of some of the animals. I know someone in Oregon who has 5-8 acres of land utterly and completely overrun with comfrey that grows 6 feet tall. Based on what I observe and discover with my little experiment, maybe next year I will visit them and harvest a couple hundred pounds of roots and plant a whole acre in comfrey for the livestock!

I came across this old book called "Russian Comfrey, A Hundred Tons an Acre of Stock Feed or Compost For Farm, Garden or Smallholding" by Lawrence D. Hills. Written in the 1940's? So far I only skimmed through it. They are talking about raising race horses on a mostly-comfrey diet, and using it for cattle feed etc. I suppose if cows can be fed mostly comfrey, you really can't beat 100 TONS of food per acre! Anyway, the book is available free online. I'm wondering if this could make it possible to raise a significant amount of livestock and chickens on small acreage?

Go to this link: http://soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/01aglibwelcome.html and search (CTRL+F in your browser window) for "comfrey". You have to request a copy from their library and the link gets emailed to you right away.

Fred Allen wrote:I need to add that I have a dream to expand the production of ancient grains on our farm and to develop a value added enterprise of de-hulling and direct marketing our farm products. There is the potential for housing and personal farming/livestock production in addition to working with the farm projects. We are interested in help beyond just a woofer, there is some flexibility here.

What part of the world are you located in?

I just want to say that I respect everyone's right to do what they want to do, and go about their affairs their own way, and I'm not trying to be judgmental or condemning to anyone.

All this reminds me of a book I read a little while ago, that has influenced my ideas on subjects like this. A relevant snippet for your consideration:

Here I encounter the most popular fallacy of our times. It is not considered sufficient that the law should be just; it must be philanthropic. Nor is it sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual, and moral self-improvement. Instead, it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education, and morality throughout the nation.

This is the seductive lure of socialism. And I repeat again: These two uses of the law are in direct contradiction to each other. We must choose between them. A citizen cannot at the same time be free and not free.

...

You say: "There are persons who have no money," and you turn to the law. But the law is not a breast that fills itself with milk. Nor are the lacteal veins of the law supplied with milk from a source outside the society. Nothing can enter the public treasury for the benefit of one citizen or one class unless other citizens and other classes have been forced to send it in. If every person draws from the treasury the amount that he has put in it, it is true that the law then plunders nobody. But this procedure does nothing for the persons who have no money. It does not promote equality of income. The law can be an instrument of equalization only as it takes from some persons and gives to other persons. When the law does this, it is an instrument of plunder.

With this in mind, examine the protective tariffs, subsidies, guaranteed profits, guaranteed jobs, relief and welfare schemes, public education, progressive taxation, free credit, and public works. You will find that they are always based on legal plunder, organized injustice.

"The Law" by Frederic Bastiat

I am in agreement with nearly all of Paul's observations.

I would like to point out one of the most serious issues with food stamps (and every other "government program"). That is the actual cost factor for administration. In other words, for every dollar going to people for food, I would guestimate that there is tens, if not hundreds, of dollars being spent for the administration of the program: social worker's salary and computers and desks and chairs and electricity and real estate for offices and paper and their retirement funds and their medical package, etc., etc., and then of course that department has to have an accounting office with more employees and their needs, and then there is support staff for the social workers like secretaries and janitors, and supervisors, and supervisor's supervisors. And of course the building has to be handicap accessible, so you have elevators and automatic doors and wide halls which all requires a significant percentage of additional real estate space, and parking, etc., all of which are purchased with tax payer money. And then somewhere behind the scenes there is an ARMY of employees who actually create the forms, establish the mountains of pages of guidelines and training manuals (which means there is a staff of trainers and the real estate facilities they need to conduct training) and then countless hours of time is spent by legislators and their staff to carve out the legislation and regulation details, and their attendant yearly updates and revisions. And on and on. You get the picture. All that money could have been left in the hands of working Americans by way of lower taxes and then a LOT more Americans would not have needed help because we would be a prosperous country.

Instead of all that waste, I imagine it could be as simple as donating more surplus food to local churches and civic groups for their food bank programs with all costs being absorbed by volunteers who want to participate, instead of general taxation to take from EVERYONE whether you believe in the cause or not. Seems to me that if government really intended to help, they could write a simple business regulation that requires food retailers or wholesalers and/or farmers to donate a small fraction of a percent of all their food stuff to a local food bank type of charitable distribution center. Or better yet, offer an enticing tax incentive to farmers that donate food to local food banks and the like. But then no money would flow through government hands first, so government couldn't profit from it... so we know that won't happen.

The government way has a ton of waste and overhead, with employees all along the way stripping off funds to enrich themselves. The local charity/church/civic group/food bank way is American People helping other American People. The two aren't compatible, and the government can't possibly represent my interests or intents.

I've been in a very bad spot for over a year now, and desperately need food money, but refuse to dip into the government's waters. Instead, I have found good American people who have helped out, in exchange for my honest labor. In the process I am learning and experiencing the "farming life" so that very soon I will be able to set down roots (literally and figuratively) and start carving out my own living.

Just my opinion, and I do not view people with opinions that differ as any less valuable than myself. Just trying to put this out for thought. Issues like this tend to get tunnel-visioned to focus only on the emotional aspect of "some poor child starving to death". It's bigger and broader than "those who need food" because food is always always available if you need it. Anyway, the overhead and effort and added work and frustration of dealing with government bureaucracy seems contradictory to the sustainable mindset and incompatible with permaculture principles to me. But if that's your idea of fun, good luck to you.

ALL plastics can be recycled, and turned into diesel fuel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SDS58y0hDY

Crafty people all over the place are building miniature refractory furnaces in their garage, using the same principles as shown in this video (but on a much smaller scale).

I found this forum posting, which they claim to be able to make diesel fuel for 17 cents per liter using electricity for heat, and maybe cheaper if they can build a liquid fuel heater.
http://www.energeticforum.com/renewable-energy/7040-how-turn-plastic-waste-into-diesel-fuel-cheaply.html

I just read the first page of your discussion on the other site, so I hope I am not repeating someone's idea.

Seems that your only power need is for the air pump, and your goal is to create a 2 psi air stream. Like with a solar electric system, the best route is to store the electricity in a battery, and then use the stored power, in case the sun isn't shining, etc. So, why not focus your effort on storing air pressure? Hook up a windmill (or water wheel if you have a moving stream near!) to an air compressor, and store the air in a giant tank. Maybe one of those large propane tanks or something. You'd need a pressure relief valve to keep it from exploding, and a regulator to have it release 2 psi constantly. Lots of calculations to work out - how much psi can a 250 or 500 gallon tank safely hold, and how long will that volume of compressed air be able to sustain a 2psi output at the volume you need for when the wind isn't blowing, etc. For that matter, can your electric air pump be used to pressurize the tank within your power requirements?