amarynth leroux

OK, an update will follow soon.  Just a lot to do overall.  

Melipona bees are under threat in the Yucatan, where we live.  It is the normal causes .. destruction of habitat, poisoning and dying out of the culture of keeping these bees.  They are not difficult bees to raise but need a very specific diet and the areas that can supply those specific trees can carry the Meliponas.  The trees are indigenous where we are.  The honey is gorgeous, I would say for medical purposes it rivals the Australian Manuka honey.  Of course it is expensive honey as the quantity of honey is very little compared to any traditional bee keeping.  The bees were traditionally kept in their log homes, hanging under the overhangs or eaves of the roofs, almost like pets if you like.    There is a reviving interest in these bees ... http://www.meliponamaya.org/  


There is much work being done now trying to duplicate the traditional wood round hives with hives from bamboo.  I was the proud owner of 3 hives (grins).  But we are in Mexico, and some things of value get stolen.  Nothing else, but my 3 hives got nicked one dark night!  We will replace them.  They are the ugliest little bees that make you think they are just beautiful.      

While I cannot help you with your other questions, I've tried to remove the hulls from rice.  Oh man, never again.  I beat it, I drowned it, I tried to bite them off, I tried mortar and pestle, I stuck it in the microwave .. there is nothing that I did not try to get those hulls off.  I gave up on the rice and the romantic dream of doing it by hand as they used to do it in olden times.  Here is a reasonable article and there are some rice huller attachments to some smaller hand mills.  https://survivalblog.com/how_to_winnow_de-hull_and_clea/

Generally for storage in the tropics we store in a freezer because it is just too easy to get our harvest contaminated with critters.
Amaranth stores well in glass jars sufficient for a season.

Corn, parched and ground to a finer consistency for polenta and it is best fresh.  Parching is not generally necessary although the taste is way nicer and of course it cooks up quicker.  A good hand mill is the thing to have but my husband keeps threatening to put a motor on ours.  We take turns ... 100 turns each (grins).    

This all should give you at least a start on post production of grains.      

I would echo ... do not pay rent for farmland.  It may be an idea to trade your labor to a farmer while you learn some stuff?

Lenore Ogbor wrote: I'm in F Carrillo Puerto on the highway from tulum to chetumal.

Oh yeah ... we came through there just Friday last week.  Spent a few days in Chetumal.  We have another permie friend just this side of Vallodolid on the Cancun / Merida road.  

Soon there will be enough of us to have a get together.  

I've done that ... right on concrete.  We were in a rented place and could not garden ... so, I put some agricultural cloth down, built wooden raised beds right on the concrete.  When we moved, we just took the beds down and cleaned the concrete.  

Where are you in the yucatan.  We're 40 kms' out from Merida of the Cancun highway.  

We're in Southern Mexico - dry tropics in description but in wet seasons the rains really come down heavily.  Traditional hugel did not work for us, but what did, was hugel with raised bed on top.  I'm sure there is a name for that.  The raised beds have some agricultural cloth around them kept in place with local wood as uprights, to keep the soil and compost in place.  Doing traditional hugel, what happened is that with the tremendous amounts of rain, the soil washed from the top and we ended up with bare wood doing it traditionally.  This is very consistent with our local landscape which is flatter open areas with deep soil, and higher small hills basically rocky that keeps the soil in place.  Now we dig down, make the hugel with all kinds of wood where we need to clean up forest, start with the biggest that we have and work up to finer material.  Then the agricultural cloth goes up at least 1 meter and that is filled with a mix of our own compost and local soil that we dug out in the first place.  A light layer of mulch on top and it seems to work better than traditional huge hugel mounds at least in our local conditions.  We have the one test bed up now over 3 seasons, 2 wet and 1 dry, and besides a bit of settling of the upper soil mass in the raised bed, it seems to be working well.  It keeps moist even though water disappears from the surface to sub-surface within hours after rain.      

Thats exactly what we used here in the South of Mexico for our earthbag cottage.  Just ensure that it is moist enough when you fill those bags and tamp the bags down well, both from the top and from the sides so that you have a good surface when you start earth plastering or another kind of plaster.  It worked really well for us as our soil did not have enough clay content for earthbag construction.  

We grow Moringa but we are in the dry tropics.  Working with some friends in colder areas where it needs overwintering, we've figured that you have to grow it more like a shrub, i.e., cut it and keep it short.  Then overwinter it and cover it as you would do with your other shrub type things.  There is a lot of moringa now grown not as trees, but as field crops, where they grow 35 or so days, and get harvested, and again they grow 35 or 40 days, and there is another harvest.  So, the plant lends itself to be aggressively pruned.

Otherwise, just take seeds and plant it year after year when your climate allows.  They grow so easily that this is viable.    

From the tropics, none of those are sweet and soft to lie down in and all of those are too long and too rough.  The tropics does not lend itself to a ground cover that is soft on the skin.  Clover would do it to an extent.  None of those are easy to get rid of, but I have no experience with peanuts.  The thought of getting rid of a patch of sweet potato is hard to contemplate as it supports itself in our climate.    

What we did eventually was to plant a little spot of a local short soft grassy lawn type thing, just to have a spot to sit on in the afternoon.  Here it is simply called 'grass'.  I would suggest ground cover is ground cover, and a little soft spot to lie in is different from that.   Check your local area - there will be something but I don't think a ground cover will do it.