Michael Cox

Have you considered planting vetiver grass hedges on contour? They form a dense barrier that drastically slows surface water flows and erosion, while stabilising slopes. You would probably place them 20ft apart, allowing you to mow strips across the slope as you do now. They have very deep root systems so bring soil moisture up to the surface which other plants can then access. Over time the trapped material collects up slope of each hedge making terraces of fertile soil on a more shallow incline.

The grasses grow tall, but recover well after fire and can be cut low with a hedge trimmer to reduce fuel load. The cut leaves make excellent mulch for building soil carbon and increasing water retention. It's generally considered a low fire risk, and is used extensively in places like Australia. The above-ground biomass remains green and moist, provided there is some maintenance to periodically cut back growth.

PDF showing examples of vetiver

Anne Miller wrote:I cant help with you question other than they less particular about nesting sites.

I have always heard African bees are very aggressive so I would stay away from them as much as possible.

Minor correction.

There is a big difference between African bees (that is, bees from Africa) and Africanised bees. Africanised bees are a hybrid sub-species that originated from mixing bees of European lineage with those from Africa. The hybridization led to very different traits than either parent line.

I've not done beef, but I have processed my own venison. We reached very much the same realisations - I saved too many largish pieces for roasting joints and quickly ran out of mince. We also decided we don't really want chunks for venison stew very often - it takes a long long cooking time to soften down and that just isn't compatible with our daily lives.

These days I save the best pieces for steaks that I can quickly pan fry for an easy evening meal, and mince pretty much everything else.

M Ljin wrote:People haven’t really talked about degrees that might be useful in a permaculture perspective, like, say, ethnobotany. If you had a degree in ethnobotany, that could  give you a particularly useful perspective as a permaculturist for feeding and providing for yourself and others, and staying frugal.

Personally, I have not felt the need to seek out a degree in ethnobotany or similar subjects. Part of it is that there are so many resources available, in foraging books and furthermore online in places like the native american ethnobotany database (https://naeb.brit.org/), plants for a future (https://pfaf.org/), and the sorts of old books you used to only find in big city and university libraries (the public domain ones, historical resources, etc.) are available on Google Books (https://books.google.com/) and Internet Archive (https://archive.org/). And of course, Judson Carroll’s generous posting of edible and medicinal plant writings here on Permies (https://permies.com/u/324733/Judson-Carroll)

How many degree level people does the world need in ethnobotany? I suspect that the number is small because, as you imply, the knowledge is readily accessible to the interested lay-person through books and other resources. Degrees shine on the level of an overall society when they are deep, and that deep expertise brings special insights that are valuable to a society in a way that is uniquely distinctive. But even then, the utility of having more people with the same narrow expertise is limited.

My feeling is that many modern degrees frequently don't equip students with sufficiently distinctive skill sets to make them attractive in the job market, and/or "useful" to society based on those skill sets.

I relate to this thread a bit too much.

Geology, maths, engineering, environmental science, beekeeping, debating, union work, scouts, bushcraft, woodland care, websites, general tech stuff, various deep dives into computer games and physical games, mountain leadership, gardening, mushrooms growing and foraging, dog training, economics... I just goes on and on.

I've been watching the rise of AI with interest, and looking carefully at the spaces where it can enhance, rather than replace, human effort.

Most people at the moment think of AI as text text-generating tool... but my experience of it for that has been disappointing. It produces stuff that superficially looks like good answers to problems, but lacks the depth of detail and nuance that a human who really knows the domain would bring to it.

A case in point. I'm in the process of applying for a job. AI allows me to write a few bullet points about my experience, add the detailed job spec, and then generate a personal statement. That statement looks superficially plausible, but at the same time is generic and bland. On the other hand, if I write it myself, I get much stronger statements with much more relevant detail - but perhaps not hitting the requirements of the job spec. So what I did instead was to get AI to review my own words against the job spec and recommend areas that need more detail or improvement. This, to me, is a lovely balance of using the tool to enhance, rather than replace, my human expertise.

Of course, it will end up replacing human labour where generically "good enough" answers are adequate, so humans need to be working in the territory where that isn't the case.

Alternatively, humans should be working in the domains that cannot be replaced by machines. I've spent the last week completing my Mountain Leader Assessment. There is no AI in the world that can or will, be able to replace the need for humans to take responsibility for guiding others in remote mountainous country.  It's a role that requires physical presence, excellent people skills, technical expertise, and good decision-making under pressure.

It's been a bonkers mast year in the UK for all nut crops. Bumper harvests of chestnuts, and the size is much bigger than normal. Over the past few weeks we have filled multiple bags with BIG nuts of great quality. No one seems to know exactly what triggers a mast year.

Also, if we are genuinely talking about "medieval peasants" it's worth looking at the systems they actually used in practice. Again, in the UK the common agricultural system was "ridge and furrow". A field was ploughed in strips with ridges and troughs that grew over decades of consistent use. These were tended communally by people from the community with crops grown on the ridges. I have always envisaged this more like market garden agriculture than the typical modern mono-crops.

In ridge might be planted in a single crop, but it would be unlikely to be a whole field because a modern "field" didn't really exist. In this context sowing your peas and then using pea stakes on a long broad row seems much more reasonable.

Actually I think they probably did it exactly as you describe.

Here in the UK  many of our ancient woodlands were actively managed as coppice - hazel, hornbeam and chestnut are the most common species.  A common product was bundles of pea sticks made with the brash from trimming other more valuable products.



Here you can see them tied with twine, but they would likely have been bundled with twisted withies of hazel.

Coppice products were used extensively - faggots for bread ovens, stakes for fencing, hurdles etc... and then most furniture for common folk would probably have been made in the woods by a bodger.  I think we underestimate hugely the amount of manual labour that was dedicated to these crafts.