Gotta let me them two-fers!!! Most of the modern beef breeds produce more milk than they need to raise a calf so you should be just fine milking her. Any idea what breed the daddy is?
BTW, if you're looking to ferment the spent brewers grain (someone mentioned that earlier) you'll need to supply some sort of carbohydrate since most will be leached out of the grains in the brewing process. I've used soaked fresh grains for this with pretty good success int he past. Lot's of protein not much carbohydrate in the the spent grains so you'll need to take that into account as you formulate your feed ration. I like pigs and chickens/ducks for the grains myself....
To get a really good idea of what that pasture will sustainable support you'll want to get a forage inventory done. You can contact your local NRCS or soil conservation district and they'll likely do the testing for you. Once you find out exactly how much forage your land produces you can figure the carrying capacity. You'll get pretty good regrowth with your long growing season and irrigated pasture, but you will want to make sure you have a long enough rest to fully recover your pasture between grazing events. That time will likely change from season to season and you'll have to be flexible to get the best results from your land. Figure out how much forage you've got and go from there. Your cattle will need to consume in the neighborhood of 3% of their body weight in dry matter daily, more if you're looking to finish an animal on pasture.
I'd go with Jevon's Grow Biointinsive method for what you are describing. Predominantly staples and compostables, and a smaller percentage of what most people would consider "garden" crops (i.e. tomatoes, greens, etc). Check out the Biointinsive method for specific recommendations....
Dave Dahlsrud wrote:Looks like it works pretty well with Helen's presentation!
Dave, my records show that you bought helen's presentation just as a normal, direct purchase, not as a gift.
If you did buy it as a gift, then we found a bug in our stuff. But I am seeing the other purchases as gifts.
Paul, so I totally screwed that one up, but I'm on a mobile device and going back through I'm not seeing the buy as a gift option on any of the links so it doesn't look like it works with my android phone chrome browser...
9 out of 10 Acorns....
This is an exhaustive reference for the homesteader or small farm owner. Just so many good references and resources listed a guy can't even name them all. Just a quality resource for any of us who like this sort of thing....
Nothing else like them that I've found that is so subtle and convenient for opening a dialog about Permaculture. The art is superb and it's fun for the entire family to pull out a deck and just start reading and finding the hidden names, etc.
I think you would end up with a more uniform coverage in your mulch by fluffing the hay a bit so that everything is more homogenized and locked together. It seems like the edges of the flakes wouldn't lock together very well and give an easy route for grass and weeds to come up through the paper and mulch at those seams, if that makes sense. As the fluffed hay compacts it intertwines giving you a better sheet layer instead of the tile effect you might end up with using the flakes.
That's right Deb the carbon comes from the atmosphere. Got a set of NiFe batteries myself, reconditioned Edison cells from Zapworks in Montana. The documentation that came with them along with Edison's original writings call for a layer of mineral oil on top of the electrolyte to seal out atmospheric contamination that can lead to carbon fouling of the electrolyte and plates thus reducing the efficiency of the battery bank until the fouling is corrected. My understanding is the KOH has a chemical reaction with the CO2 in the atmosphere that causes the problem.
I think you would end up with carbon building up on the exposed plates and fouling your electrolyte. You would loose considerable efficiency of that cell, but on the bright side all you have to do is drain the electrolyte, open up the cell and clean it off with a pressure washer, then reassemble and refill with fresh electrolyte.
Thought I'd post a little before and after pic of our kune-ish cross pair. First pic is when they are first put in the paddock the last pic is after a week....not much damage out of these two!
Put some chains on your tractor and drive in reverse over the the area as you're broadcasting, zig-zaging as you go to get something like even coverage and contact......solar fence charger, some poly line, and rent a few cows for a week or two......sometimes the NRCS guys have or know somebody with a pasture drill you could rent or hire out.....scrape the "mulch" layer off, spread the seed, then re-spread the mulch.....or jsut spread the seed and hope for the best!
I would look at moving the wood chips aside and filling that void with compost or a planting mix and then run your seeds and starts into that. Here's a pretty good video of what I'm talking about....should solve your problems!
I wouldn't hold out a lot of hope with the cedar chips for quite some time, but your oak should work very well for the wine caps. Not sure about the white wood, but likely will be fine as well. You might want to consider some 50-75% shade cloth until things get established in your beds if you're wanting your spawn to colonize well and stay viable. I kind of like to grab hand fulls of spawn and plug it into the chips rather than mixing it all together evenly. You can mix in some soaked straw to get your spawn colonizing a little faster as well...it's easy food for the wine caps but they use it up quickly.
Good wood! I wouldn't think twice about using that stuff, you could mix in some fresher wood too if you have access to it to prolong the benefits of your hugel beds. I made beds just like this in my greenhouse and it works fantastic! You will likely have to add more dirt and organic matter to keep the beds filled every year (I know I do!) but they work great for annuals.
One thing to think of is maybe not using cedar next time to build your beds. The same stuff that keeps it from rotting fast can also have detrimental effects on your plants and you will loose some of the hugel benefits as far as microryza fungi establishment etc. I used douglas fir to make mine and they are holding up really well after 4 years, but I know I'll be working them over soon....
Your giant oak log will work just fine for a hugel, but like they said it will decompose overtime and you'll be left with either a much smaller mound or a depression that will need to be filled. Grass will grow just fine on a mound like that as will your hydrangeas.
Do you plan on digging a trench and burying the log partially below grade, or just bringing in a bunch of dirt to throw over the top of the log where it sits?
Just toss plenty of soil over the top of the mound and you'll be fine. Your woody core will lock up a good bit of the nitrogen in the manure anyway, I wouldn't worry about it too much....plus you could just plant really hungry plants like pumpkins, etc.
Premier 1 is probably the best poultry net you can buy. It's lasted years for me, so it's been well worth the cost. Make sure you have plenty of spark(don't skimp on your fence charger) and ground the heck out of it.....you won't be sorry!
I would just toss them in the run with a bunch of carbon like wood chips or straw and let nature take its course. Eventually the guts will be no more as either chicken food or compost that can be spread on a grow bed.....
With that size of lot to work with I would sheet mulch the whole thing to get started and then start looking at some of the planting strategies developed by John Jeavons and the Grow Biointensive crew at Ecology Action. They have some really good info on intensive production on a small scale....or large!
michelle salois wrote:I've just been thinking I want to move to this method too. I've not been happy with the wood chips approach since smaller seeds just don't work as well but grass invaded anyway. gotta find a way to transport hay though to my city lot.
You might be able to get a farmer to deliver you hay and straw in small bales if you live near a hay producing area. I've had really good luck getting hay and straw delivered through Craigslist, you'll pay a little more for the convenience of having it delivered and you'll pay a little more for the small bales than you would for big squares or round bales, but you pay less for the tractor, pick up, and trailer for moving it yourself....
We haul water with a 275 gallon tank as well. It's not that big of a deal to go out with the water tank and refill for us since we do daily moves from one paddock to the next and will move the water about once a week to keep up with the cows. We're already out with the cows every day so hauling water doesn't add that much more time. It all depends on what kind of management you plan on doing with the rented farm. For me I would mob graze the property, moving at least daily, integrate those paddocks rotations into my own property (one large herd), and haul water in when I needed.
I know Greg Judy runs one herd commingled with bulls, heifers, newborns all of it together. He's had good success with this system in Missouri, but he has a large herd. That being said I separate my bulls away from the heifers (keep them with my milking cow), but I have plenty of room. I think if I were in your situation and I really liked the bull (for more reasons than just being a pet) I would try out the commingled herd and see what happens. I don't think one season would be catastrophic in the long run....
Kamaar, I've found that a lot of people will get on board if you just start doing something. For instance at your community garden if you wanted to start implementing a Ruth Stout style garden first convert your plot to that style and get one other person to do the same(that way it's not just your crazy idea), once you have that first follower and an example to point to it becomes MUCH easier to have a productive conversation about larger scale projects.....
Jessika, I wouldn't worry about the termites one bit, unless your mounds are in contact with your home. They'll just convert the wood into soil faster with plenty of fertility added. Mix in plenty of biochar while you're constructing your mounds and you'll be sitting pretty in your tropical-ish climate!
It seems like if you integrated profitable annuals during your establishment phase right after your earthworks and other major land disturbances you could get around the lag in profitability between initial perennial planting and establishment.
I think the I resource guild is basically an experimental planting to see what is going to work in your area with you management. That way you don't waste a bunch of resources planting something that isn't going to be profitable for you. Start with the resource guild then go from there, at least that's how I interpreted that.....
What are your thoughts on the deep mulch Ruth Stout gardening technique on a large market garden scale? Do you think it is too resource intensive to be of much benefit in this application or would you recommend it? Has anyone tried the deep mulch on the 1 acre plus scale with success, and are the continual inputs offset with less labor?
We have a Meadow Creature broadfork, and it is absolutely bombproof! Works great for breaking up heavy soils, it is a beast of a tool though and extremely well made. Was pretty spendy to get it shipped, but this tool will be passed down for s3veral generations! In your case I would use the broadfork before you plant your cover crop and then again after you terminate in preparation for new planting.
If you make sure to include lots of the branches and needles in the mound they should break down a lot faster than the big pieces of log so don't waste those! They'll make up for that slow break down quite a bit, and remember that slow decomposition isn't necessarily a bad thing, it'll just take a little longer to get into full swing, but you're mound won't need to be rebuilt or slump down into nothing as fast....
Looks good! I think as long as you can work the soil and things are past the super cold time of the year you should be fine planting, just make sure to get most of the air out of the soil like Bryant said after you're done and you will likely be just fine....
I try to plant early blooming frost sensitive trees in sheltered north facing slopes to prevent early bud break. Those areas stay cold longer for us and don't start getting direct sun for a month or so longer than our south slopes.
I am experimenting with using one of those cheap styrofoam coolers you can get at the grocery store as a stratification/seed planting container for chestnuts this year. It's one of the 60 gallon size and we had it laying around so I figured might as well use it instead of throwing it away right! I filled it with a little over a foot of loose planting mix, spread the chestnuts on top, covered with and inch or so of more mix, put the lid on and set it in the corner of our unheated shop for the winter. I'm hoping that the insulation will keep it from getting too cold, but provide enough chill to properly stratify the seeds....I guess we'll know here in a couple months!!!
The cubicle rotted wood is great to put in the hugels, it will actually maintain for quite a while in the mound retarding the eventual total breakdown of the wood in your hugelkultur. The red alder is good stuff to put in the mound as well, but it will break down pretty quickly.
That coup should be able to hold a ton of birds! You might be getting a little top heavy though.....might want to shrink it down a bit to keep it stable especially if your pasture is bumpy or off camber. How many birds are you planning on getting? You could probably get around 36-40 birds in something about 5 feet high if you puzzle in the perches just right.
.jpg)
