I'm fascinated by the potential impact of industrial hemp.
I've read that marijuana might follow the cultivation model of tomatoes, with a serious amount of production by backyard growers, an industrial production model that results in a not-entirely-comparable commodity product, and a few specialty growers meeting the demand of particular niche markets.
I sincerely hope that some way will be found to undercut the narcotraficantes that have so thoroughly de-stabilized Mexico.
I think keyline cultivation of the land suits your design needs a little better.
The larger shape of a leaf is determined directly by the tensile forces applied by the fibers holding it together. In fact, some leaves curl up, or fold, in ways that land cannot.
The shape of your land is a given, and the deeper you try to exert control over it, the more energy, time, and money you're likely to spend.
I think you might really enjoy P. A. Yeomans' books (available through this website, I recommend The Keyline Plan to start with): the methods he developed to address the sorts of issues you raise seem particularly elegant.
The US DOJ recently filed papers in a court case, advocating against the patenting of genes. In this particular case, the genes in question are associated with an increased risk of breast cancer.
The brief itself acknowledges that recent legal precedent and government policy allow for genes to be patented, but there is an older precedent (as of now, part of my signature text) that products of nature, rather than of human ingenuity, have no place in the patent system.
It warms my heart that one small step has been taken, and I hope this trend continues.
It sounds as though it might be less labor-intensive to compost with that brush on the surface.
If you can get clover growing well, maybe piling brush on top of the clover sparsely enough that it grows through the layer of mulch repeatedly, then when you run out of brush, piling it all up into a hot compost pile.
What you're describing sounds entirely practical, though.
Not sure anyone has yet mentioned conventional root crops as pig feed. I've read rutabaga (swede) and beet (mangelwurtzel) can be good for them.
If you don't mind my asking, why Gatoraide? The electrolyte balance in dehydrated milk is very nearly perfect, and has a complete array of minerals, compared to the two in Gatoraide. Some table salt and potash and bagged sugar, with the right recipe, will get you just as far as those mid-century sports physiologists got, if you really want to go that route.
I believe that treating with lye can remove all bitterness. Still takes some washing to remove any excess lye.
Compare Kalamata olives, where the bitterness is only removed by changing liquid, to Lindsay olives (the mainstream black ones that come in a can and taste like almost nothing), which are treated with lye.
I hope this doesn't seem like I'm picking nits: you mean "winch." I wouldn't mention it, except that "wench" might be offensive.
There's a long history of similar designs, called "ploughing engines". I think the people using those worked out that, once the engine became lightweight enough to bring through the fields, and once treads had been developed, it wasn't often worth dealing with so much cable.
I really like easy-to-make, easy-to-preserve foods that add a lot of flavor to food, and can be grown locally. I recently started following this blog with some great recipes. Two of them fit this bill quite well.
It would seem that making mustard is stupendously easy. Preserving it is easier still: it might dry out, but it will never spoil.
Chelle Lewis wrote:Investors want a reliable return. Permaculture gives a relaible return over time.
In these times, a significant number of investors are willing to settle for a reliable loss. For example, government bonds are selling at auction with a negative rate of return. That is to say, investors are willing to take significant losses, so long as the rate of loss is reliably small. However, these investments are still only as reliable as the current US government-plus-financial system: if the bonds go into default, or some new currency becomes the reserve currency, losses might be greater than anticipated.
For people with a certain amount of wealth, permaculture might be the ultimate hedge investment. Not just recession-proof: collapse-proof.
Setting up an eco-village, recruiting a core group with the appropriate skills and attitudes, and bringing in whatever outside help is necessary to stabilize its operations, would not cost very much more than the increase in market value of the real-estate used minus the property offered to residents. Wise investors in this sort of activity would also find a way to integrate their families into the eco-villages. This would have the added benefit of guarding against most of the worst hazards of raising children in wealth and privilege: one design consideration would be a group of adults that more-closely resembles Aristotle, than Gamin the locksmith.
suomi--Nicola Lloyd wrote: our thought was to "dump" the solids, we are using a mixture of:sawdust, peat (from our own land)dey leaves and wood ash into a large plastic barrel and leave for a year to compost down, the barrel will be water tight but it will also be frozen for upto 6 months.
My thought is to plant a ring of the fastest-growing broadleaf trees that might be appropriate to your climate, leaving enough space for a year's supply of barrels plus six feet on all sides. When the leaves begin to turn color, but still contain some nitrogen, cut these trees back to produce a Jean Pain-style compost heap around all of the barrels. Mix the heap with enough browns to stay at a moderate temperature for the whole winter. Build an insulated hatch that covers over the active barrel, allowing easy access for filling without letting much heat out the rest of the time.
The center of all barrels can be set aside for a thermophilic heap that is built in the autumn with the contents of year-old barrels, if it makes sense to do so.
paul wheaton wrote:These guys take a barge out to the ocean with wind generators. They fill up hydrogen fuel tanks and then bring it back to shore.
Brilliant idea, and I support it with one caveat:
Hydrogen is difficult to store: not only is it bulky, the best tanks are lined with platinum or rhodium or similar, and still they leak constantly.
I think it would be well worth setting up the electrolysis bath such that archaea can grow on the cathode. They would not only catalyze the reduction of hydronium into a neutral gas, they would at the same time fix carbon into methane gas. Lots of enzyme pathways, but the net reaction is as follows:
Note that the de-carbonated seawater can probably be re-carbonated from the air via a process that isn't too energy-intensive. Definitely less energy than would be needed for cryogenic storage. Or the liquid methane tanks can be re-filled with CO[sub]2[/sub] from some industrial source that would otherwise emit into the atmosphere.
paul wheaton wrote:I suppose you could just park your tractor where the wind blows and it would fill with fuel overnight!
To fill it overnight, you'd probably need a turbine that's too big to carry on the tractor, or a tractor with a wheelbase several meters wide. A turbine charging station that can be easily set up and taken down using stakes and cables is probably a better bet.
It can even be a purely mechanical turbine, that runs the PTO of an electric tractor backward. I'd also strongly recommend storage batteries of one sort or another. Or the tractor's PTO motor can be de-mounted and placed on the rotor, with an extension cable, as the turbine is being set up.
Over-volting LEDs will tend to overheat them, diminishing their life. I suspect the grow lights you purchased are moderately over-volting to begin with, to maximize the amount of lumens produced per cost of components. Expect diminishing returns if you keep the lumens constant.
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A fun sort of lighting project would be to build an algae tank where it gets plenty of sun, collect the pure oxygen from it, and use that plus some calcium carbide to power a high-efficiency limelight at night.
The exhaust from the limelight would be collected into the algae tank, to refresh its supply of CO2.
Eventually, you'd have to harvest the algal biomass, replenish the nutrient bath, and over-burn some more lime.
Safety first, though: don't try this unless you understand all the hazards involved. The same cycle could, of course, use lantern mantles with an appropriate chemistry for the spectrum of light you need, if limelight isn't right for your application.
I'm not sure cob would stand up in the rain on its own, and I think plant roots might find their way into it. I also think worms might burrow through it. Perhaps if you whitewashed it on all sides, those problems would be less pronounced (whitewash reacts with clay to form Roman cement).
Holding the rocks together with lime mortar might be more appropriate.
There might also be a species of ground-cover plant that will do well in the spaces between stones, but not so well in soil. Some varieties of medic might be worth looking into, perhaps.
Seedballs might help if one wants to broadcast a guild with widely divergent seed sizes.
These forums have included discussion of a method partway between bare seeds and seedballs, where seeds are moistened, clay soil is added while stirring until they are uniformly covered in mud, and dry soil is mixed in until the mixture is again dry and crumbly. Other forum-goers have reported good results with this.
Heavy vegetation might call for chop-and-drop, with the cuttings collected on top of species that push through deep mulch particularly well (garlic, favas, potatoes, sunchokes, small grains), and bare soil seeded with a different mix of species.
Mustard seed is a useful antimicrobial. Mustard does not spoil, and I could imagine dusting mustard powder to something that might get wet, that you would prefer not to rot (it is activated by moisture). It harms macroscopic life, too, so I'm not sure if it would be safe to use on plants, but it might be worth a try vs. slugs or aphids. Be very careful not to get any in your eyes, for example.
Forlane wrote: Can you explain what you mean by sowing thickly? From the looks of it in the videos it seems that our definitions of thickly might be different. I'm a complete novice when it comes to gardening so I think my preconceived notion of thickly is off.
Thanks in advance!
-Chris
In the videos, he visits a neighbor that he has been teaching his methods to. He sounds a little frustrated that the plants are crowding one another so much, and scolds the landowner to harvest more often.
In his own garden beds, it looks like there are young seedlings every inch or so.
A part of this effect might be that his climate is very good for beets and similar, which can't really be sown as individual seeds, but rather as tiny fruits which each contain several seeds. This means that even if the total seeding rate were very sparse, some thinning would likely be in order.
If this topic is of concern to you, it might be worthwhile figuring out what particular toxin, family of toxins, etc. is a risk in your case. It will be difficult for the discussion to continue productively unless there is a particular topic, or a few of them.
Elfriede B is right that many substances are biodegradable. Elements are obviously not biodegradable, and there are some halogenated hydrocarbons that don't biodegrade much, as well as some of the heavier normal hydrocarbons. There are some substances for which a monoculture of fungus seems to allow for more complete and/or rapid decomposition than a compost pile. In this case, as in others you've mentioned, specifics would allow the conversation to proceed.
An important method is that he sows very thickly, and harvests very often & intelligently.
My impression is that he works to craft a mix that offers many seeds an opportunity to try out many situations, and lets the health of various species as they develop determine the mix that grows up out of what was seeded.
don miller; MountainDon wrote: Why can't I go down to the local big box store and buy one if this is so good and been around for so many years?
Electrolysis consumes a large amount of energy.
People expect factory-made, professionally-designed equipment to be as efficient as possible. If they take home an item like this from the store, and keep careful track of how much energy it uses and what sort of benefit they derive from its use, they'll probably make a big stink about it with the press or one of the consumer watchdog agencies.
The article I read talked about an orchard that was divided into 10 sections. Each year, they would cut one of these to the ground, and also go through the one they had cut three years before to thin out growth from the center of the crown. A healthy set of roots will send up lots of waterspouts, and this will all be young wood, so the tree will produce as though it's in the prime of life, indefinitely.
The latest xkcd treats spammers on forums from an ecosystem perspective, in which the problem is the solution. It includes an "F" word, in case that's a problem.
It's difficult to ignite, but once it gets going, it's even more difficult to extinguish. Regard it as somewhat flammable, when building stoves or furnaces.
Also, as Paul points out, irregularities from the sand that the pan was cast in are important until a spatula has scraped over it sharply a few hundred times.
Yes, little bits of iron do wear away into the food, but this is actually an OK source of dietary iron.
Apparently, pine resin stops the composting process after only two months, and it's worth putting at least three feet of compostables around the tank in any direction.
pH is important, and there are a few other important lessons in it all.
An important point from this same author, is that neighbors are happy to see you clear invasive brush. Happy enough not to call the nice young men in their clean white coats. It is significant work to cut and chip, but on a per-ton basis, perhaps less so than tracking down so many kitchen scraps. It also seems to be potentially a net win energy-wise, despite the internal combustion to (typically) power the cutting and chipping and hauling.
Another important point is that any wood over 1" diameter should probably be chipped separately. Potentially, this could work with a greywater system and a barrel breeder to feed poultry.
Rob S. aka Blitz wrote: I imagine it is unlikely that they will find a hive if you put one out? I know its impossible to maintain purity with these guys, but how can you improve your chances of getting healthy bees that werent into GM crops and pesticides?
I don't think it's too unlikely.
Bees that have been working in pesticide-contaminated conditions will tend to be less healthy as a colony.
Sending out a swarm is a tremendous investment, and so unhealthy colonies are much less likely to do so. Merely looking for a colony that has swarmed is a powerful selector for healthy bees.
Also, as others have noted, a queen that has swarmed tends to be healthier: lifespan of a queen after swarming might be much longer than the typical lifespan of a queen who never is able to swarm.
I'd like to retract the idea of making a Waterboxx out of plastic film. Rose's discussion of the power of mulch suggests to me that more good would be done, with the same level of effort and quantity of material, by only fusing together film a few layers thick, and using the resulting membrane to line wicking beds which trap moisture.
Much more durable and greater capacity than a Waterboxx, plus the ability to support a polyculture all in one go.
P. A. Yeomans recommends that overflow water can be directed onto a ridge that has been patterned with keyline cultivation. That seems like an elegant way of preventing a gully from forming.
I also wanted to point out that a gas stove might be much more useful in the far future, if national distribution grids become untenable and localities need to put in their own energy systems: methane digesters can put out a lot more energy, more reliably and efficiently, than a typical village-scale electrical system.
Will Sustane wrote:...the goats. As it stands now, there is not much in the way of forage for them to browse or graze upon. Perhaps a couple years of tending the land could change that.
If the climate is appropriate, some willow and/or alder might produce goat feed in relatively short order.
Even if willow seems unlikely to work, if you can find some cuttings to try, it will be worth it: the water you soak them in becomes infused with a natural rooting hormone, and cuttings of other species soaked in it afterward are more likely to sprout roots.
Plus, the twigs stripped of bark can become good rocket stove fuel. And there are benefits to having hedgerows...fringe benefits, if you forgive the pun.
The old stumps sound like they might be incorporated in to hugelkultur.
It might be worth trying to propagate that apple.
The acorns dropped from those oaks will be a great resource for feeding chickens. You might also look into leaching out the tannins to make bread from them.
If you encounter some finer glacial deposits, like loess, it might be worth playing with some of it to produce cob.
Pam wrote: I once planted a hops plant on the south side of a "modular home" ...the roots instantly ambled underneath the building ...(sorry, off topic)
I think this is entirely on topic.
The moist, sheltered environment under pavement or a structure is an unnatural place, which can be host to unnaturally-rapid soil improvement.
All those rotting roots are excellent for the soil, but might not be such a boon to a foundation! Most builders prefer to dig down to subsoil, I believe, so that settling is less of a problem. I would just like to bring this up, in case it might be a problem to undermine this structure.
If you would still like to grow there, maybe a deep-rooted climbing legume would be worth including in the mix, maybe a pea or sweet pea for the winter?
I guess it might be easier to build them a shed high up in an existing structure, with a long staircase up to it.
I would recommend silicon carbide, AKA corundum. They sell coarse SiC "sand" to put in ashtrays, due to its thermal conductivity. It's also commonly dusted over pavement as an anti-slip surface; you'll notice it often because the pavement glitters in the sun.
[re-reads latest post]
But it sounds like you've already built boxes, and they're working! Glad to hear it.
joan from zone 6 wrote: both links are very interesting - left some questions, though - did not hear anything relating to r-value - also noted one finished product was declared to be water-resistant at one point in the presentation and to be compostable at another point - something wrong with that picture ? wouldn't that be akin to being both fire-resistant and fire disposable ?
"Resistant" is the operative word. For example, feathers are water-resistant and compostable.
Similarly, fireproof fibers aren't flammable, but fire-resistant ones like nomex can be incinerated (although this will go very badly if a typical amateur attempts it).
I wouldn't put too much faith in the resistance of this stuff to water. The package can get a splash of rain without dissolving into mush, but don't regard it as waterproof the way polystyrene foam is.
I really like the group that produced this. They are practicing many of the same strategies as the beekeeper in Paul's video on colony collapse disorder.
For example, government bonds are selling at auction with a negative rate of return. That is to say, investors are willing to take significant losses, so long as the rate of loss is reliably small. However, these investments are still only as reliable as the current US government-plus-financial system: if the bonds go into default, or some new currency becomes the reserve currency, losses might be greater than anticipated.