Sonyadora Hatfield

+1 vote for Kourik's book.  I'm just reading it now.  Permaculture isn't mentioned much, but that's what it is.  Of course, I think the word was trademarked or something back then.

This. ^  I can't recommend this book enough, especially for the urban permaculturist.  Kourik's other stuff is wonderful and accessable as well.  Some of what he's written makes it seem to me that trademark isn't the issue...he's deliberately avoiding the word "permaculture"...

I was surprised at first to see Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind on here, I always thought of it primarily as a brilliant humanist work, but don't permaculture and humanism go hand in hand?  Anyway, I can second the recommendation of the manga.  Well, if we're nominating works of philosophy I say check out Joseph Campbell's Myths to Live By.  Also, or course, Wendell Berry's The Unsettling of America, especially the chapter "Where are the People?".  Both books are dated now, but still highly relevant.

I just finished reading Carol Depp's Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties and enjoyed it thoroughly.  Even if you have no designs of intentionally breeding your own varieties this is a good book to check out.  As she points out, as soon as you start saving your own seeds, you are engaging in selection, and have become a plant breeder of the old school.    The book also encourages a lively sense of experimentation and observation in the garden and farm.  In addition, she gives good advice on obtaining germplasm, with lists of sources for both annual and perennial crops, and advice on obtaining stock from the USDA Germplasm system, which in my opinion is a vastly overlooked source (no doubt because people are astonished that the USDA actually does something useful).  On top of all it's other virtues, this book is a good seed saving reference.  It now occupies a place of honor on my shelf next to Seed to Seed.

I also re-read Plants, Man, and Life and Farmers of Fourty Centuries recently.  These books are old too, I guess they are more the ground permaculture sprang from than specifically permacultural readings.  Both are excellent, I particularly enjoy the former for elaborating on the theories of how we domesticated plants, and they domesticated us...  You may recognize a food forest being described in chapter 13.    The latter is likewise fascinating but I was a bit depressed to see someone writing in 1908 on the foolishness of westerners refusing to utilize humanure and realizing that nothing has changed on that front in 100 years.

We tried this for the first time last summer, and I think the spacing advice I got from some website (not this one, not a forum) put the corn way too far apart for good pollination.  We were instructed to wait to plant the beans and squash until the corn was a few inches high.  I sowed buckwheat around in the whole patch right away, and I was glad for this decision because the later planted squash took until late july to fill in.

You guys were using Painted Mountain, which I believe is a shorter corn right?  The old school corn that you might expect to see in a system like this is pretty tall, so that might be the reason for those wide spacing recommendation, those burly plants needs some room.  We did do this at Davis with shorter popcorns but a closer spacing and it worked pretty good.

My experience with corn is that if you want good pollination it's best to have at least 100 plants, in a block.  More is probably better.  There's a point at which if you're not going to devote enough space to corn it's best to just not bother.  It sounds like a lot of plants, but it really doesnt' take as much space as you think.  Actually, if you are saving your own seed, you probably want at least this many plants anyway so that your corn line doesn't get inbred.  The block doesn't have to be completely contiguous or anything, alternating rows of corn with other stuff, or making a block of three sisters mounds works, just avoid stringing the corn out lengthwise in any direction.  I know you hate straight lines, I bet some concentric circles would work just as well. Maybe with some sunflowers peeping out from the center.

I want to fart around more with 3 sisters.  I haven't done it a lot myself, but over the years I've heard such variable reports of success from "Fantastic" to "Didn't work for me" that I've developed the theory that variety selection and planting dates are critically important for it to work and that it probably takes significant trial and error to find the right ones for a given site.  You need varities that not only do well in your area but also with each other and that you like to use (either for yourself or your animals).  For example, maybe marina needs a squash that comes up a bit faster, or the one that was used would work better planted earlier.  I'd kind of like to experiment with other cucurbits as the third sister too.

I like the idea of using buckwheat under the corn.  I like it so much, I'm going to steal it. ;D

The first whites had to paddle around in canoes to stake their claims.  We drove around Wasco/Bakersfield recently visiting family....all I could do was imagine huge flocks of birds feasting among grasses and reeds, elk carefully wading through the water....I really wish I had a time machine sometimes.

Remind me to lend you my copy of The Great Central Valley sometime.  The place has a fascinating history.

If people are interested in scion wood for fruit trees, cuttings of grapes, figs, or pomegranates, or European Chestnut and Walnut seeds, email me in the fall.  Seriously, when it comes to fruit trees and grapes, just ask.  I have access to a wide variety of things. 

If anyone has scion wood of umeboshi plum (Prunus mume please, not some pretender)  I would love to get my hands on some.

I can verify the fact that they do NOT need a hard freeze to ripen.  It almost never freezes in my area and they ripen in abundance every year.

If you just can't find enough things to do with all those squishy persimmons though, try drying them.  You pick them while they are orange but still firm, peel the skin off, and hang them by the fire (or other sufficiently warm and dry place) to dry.  It takes awhile, but by the time they are done, the astringency is gone.  They taste fantastic, very reminiscent of dates!  You may see a while powder form on the outside, usually this is not mold, but crystallized sugar.

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds has some nice stuff.  www.rareseeds.com

I like Fedco a lot too.