Tommy Wilder

maybe something you can try, if it is available in your area: job's tears drink (or milk). Check the internet for health benefits from job's tears. It's amazing! I am in thailand and here they sell small drink packets which is 100% job's tears (so nothing else added). I use it to soak my breakfast oats in, which also has added fruits etc. The drink by itself is a bit getting used to, but hey, adding a little honey or what you like might make it delicious.
fyi: the brand is called pro-fit and is produced by a company called ampolfood. I know they sell all over asia, but the west i am not sure

As most ideas have already some saturation and slowly move to inspire more people, I would dive deep (if I had the resources) into this regenerative agriculture (ala syntropics etc). Because in that field (pun intended) are countless souls which are active in conventional agriculture and many more are actively following this from an economic perspective (investors, etc).

There are a lot of people who can be turned. Needless to say, for me, syntropic agriculture and permaculture are so close related which results in better soil, produce and our earth. A lot of potential there.
tom

Having a small kubota 12hp excavator myself, I am happy to see swales made with this type of excavator. One question though, How to you keep your trench level while digging?? or do you have a laserguide?

Tom

With the option today out there, it is choosing between all bad choices. keeping us for over 100 years enslaved to the oil is clearly an agenda. I remember a newspaperclip I saw somewhere, were the director of shell was saying in 1928 that the current mobile was running 25km on 1 liter of gasoline and that in 1930 they would reach 1:30 and by 1940 it would be 1:100 (1 liter gets 100km...). normal today is 1:10, 1:15 for gasoline cars...

Now to some solutions. use bicycle if you can. Also an electric car which can be charged at home with solar or wind gives some relief... I use a motorcycle (which runs 1:30) for shopping if it is not raining. Better that the 1:10 of my car.

Hi Nancy,

thanks for your reply. most likely I will not order from them, but use the picture to compare other findings.

I also bumped into a very interesting research paper (downloadable pdf) from POLS about the assesment of genetic diversity of job's tears. Having browsed through it, I could not find info I was looking for, but the paper has a lot of other value. It confirms the anti cancer properties of the oil of the seeds for example.

link to paper

HI,

Yeah, I read it... but only after I posted my own. Before posting I did a search for job's tears and your post did not show up, but after I posted my own post, a poppup appeared referring to your post... anyway, good info there indeed..  The EFN is no use to me as it is in the US. But the picture of the seeds on their site is interesting (https://www.experimentalfarmnetwork.org/group/20) as it is different as the bead type.

This might help, because on ebay there are some offers but offer little info on which type. The german, french and other languages there offer no help. maybe the picture does...

will post here some info if I get any in the future.

Hi folks,

Recently dived into the world of job's tears. Was amazed by how healthy it is. It would also solve some problems I have, but, I cannot get the answers (from searching internet) to the questions I have. Maybe in this forum there are people with experience in this grass.

We are situated in Thailand, so that solves the climate problem. My questions are:

1. With it's protein content 15-16% it seems good to feed to chickens. Anyone having done this? seeds and grass?
2. In our shops it is easy to buy seeds (for cooking), they are white, with a groove. Can this be used for cultivation? (waiting for 4 weeks sprouting for result is long time!)
3. There are 2 types according to wikipedia. The wild one (used for beads) and the "food" type. We are looking for the food type. Anyone here with experience with that type?

One great advantage for us would be to replace the so called ya-ka grass. It is used in this country for making roofpanels, but it is highly invasive, spreads (horizontally) via long deep roots and is not suitable for animal feed. Maybe the job's tears grass could take over....

any info on this grass is welcome!
Tom

we are in Thailand. Hot & humid. coming from a cool northern europe country, we haveto cope with heat differently then the locals.

We eat (big dinner) after dark because digestion takes a lot of energy. When we eat, it is small portions. As mentioned before, some foods result in cooler body (try ginger in the heat )

Also use the siesta in the hot hours. heavy work always done in early morning hours.

aircon for solar note:
the compressor in the aircon is an AC motor. these motors need a huge start current. often more than double the current after the start. If you know an engineer or have the skills yourself, you might combine your solarpanels with supercapacitors and save a lot on the normally required solarpanels(surface). the supercapacitors deliver the start-power, while the solarpanels give the (lower) current for running. This appllies to a none-battery setup.

Linux and permaculture: using linux since 1996, started with slackware. several years, due to work, had to put up with windoze... but now for about 7 years, linux only (current distro: kubuntu 20.04).

In 2016 I did a permaculture designers training from mr Lawton. I used a program called Inkscape to do all the designs required for the cursus... Inkscape is very easy to learn, it also free, and uses vector image (when you enlarge the image or design in your program, the resolution stays the same). I still use it today to keep my permaculture homestead design updated and is very helpful in deciding what, which, where.