Todd Hoff

I've thought about this too Brian. And there are air compressed cars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_car. Some questions: What is the available energy? That is, can I run a household on compressed air? A bulb of compressed air is basically a bomb. How do you keep it safe?

John Saltveit wrote:I have a food forest in Washington County OR. I am in the suburbs but not in a homes association. There are certain restrictions in the county on trees in the sidewalk strip. Some trees are approved. Some not allowable, then there are some in the middle. I planted some in the middle at my other house and it was ok. It will be much tougher if you are in a Homes Association.

http://www.co.washington.or.us/LUT/Divisions/CurrentPlanning/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&pageid=172136

That's the document you need.
John S
PDX OR

Thanks John, it's on 40 acres so I'm no so worried about street trees. I'm more worried about installing a network of ponds and swales alone with a non traditional mix of crops and crop organization.

Hi,

We are looking at some land in Washington County that's zoned forest/agriculture that currently grows hay and has some cattle on it. Around the property are lots of row crops of various sorts. What I'm wondering and will be calling the county on is what is the acceptability of creating a food forest on the land? I'd like to put in numerous ponds, swales, and recontour the land somewhat, then plant all sorts of different plants. It will look quite messy in comparison. Reading up on all the problems with getting permits fills me with a little unease.

I was wondering if anyone has experience doing this sort of thing? Is it even possible?

thanks

I had a conversation with Geoff Lawton and he said they never use well water is it could be contaminated. They only use collected rain water. They don't even filter it. So when Sepp says don't use water from your roof I'm not sure he has really listened to nature.

There are quite a lot of free videos on youtube that are excellent resources.

The positive is predictable massive production. It's not that I disagree with you on many of your points, but there are positives. Think about all those heads of lettuce, garlic, etc the streamed to every supermarket in america. It is amazing. What will the permaculture world look like? What will those fields look like? We'll need a lot more product wins for permaculture to progress outside it's very small, loyal niche.

Me too Robert, but they had nothing really to say on the aspect of the situation, so I was wondering more about their other conclusions.

We just spent the holiday weekend driving through those hundreds of miles of row crops in California. My thought on seing this incredible production machine is how hard it would be to replace with permaculture. If you replaces all those miles and miles of produce would you really be more productive? I find that hard to believe. New technologies rarely ever replace an existing technology. They slowly penetrate and then sometimes they cross the chasm to become the dominate paradigm. That seems like a good diffusion model for permaculture to me.

Interesting study: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19465692

"Eating organic food will not make you healthier, according to researchers at Stanford University, although it could cut your exposure to pesticides. They looked at more than 200 studies of the content and associated health gains of organic and non-organic foods. Overall, there was no discernable difference between the nutritional content, although the organic food was 30% less likely to contain pesticides."

Lots of potential counters, but are there studies on the nutritional density of organic foods?