tuffy monteverdi

LOVE hitching posts and those who live in horsey towns are lucky🧡

Agree w Jay, why not make horse trails contiguous, away from car roads?

We are going to install some kind off hitching posts, as I train my sheep to halter for easy leading and shearing and such, and I frequently tie my dog to fencing or trees briefly too, for certain tasks.
I do like the cast iron ones a lot, with good functional rings. Boy are they expensive!
I’d love to learn to cast iron. I can certainly sculpt the form myself.

Peter Ellis wrote:
“I cannot get past the sense that you are focusing too much on the trees in the forest There are multiple layers to the food forest and they are not all about producing fruit. I am not sure that any of the layers are all about producing fruit, in fact. So, if there's an abundance of fruit in the trees, surely you can find balance for that with all the vegetables you grow at the lower levels.

I think your perceived problem is not a problem with the "food forest" concept, but perhaps relates to some executions you have seen, or to your looking at only part of the system rather than the whole thing.

I just don't see an inherent fruit overload as part of the food forest approach.  Of course, with any planned garden, you can put too much emphasis on a given product (how much squash do I really need? Now how much more than that am I growing? ), but that is a planning error, not an error inherent to the concept of a planned garden”.





Yes! I totally agree, those 👆 are the points.

One can set up a food Forest with whatever food plants and animals one wants! It’s the overall plan, with basic structural considerations and plant types, successions, layers, patterns, time considerations, that matter. NOT the specific food type.

One can create a food Forest with no human foods at all, if for example a carnivore diet is followed… ie, all the tree and plant forages would be designed, so that season by season, it feeds the full variety of animals one plans to put in one’s forest system.

Re fruit trees: I totally agree that I do not want too many either. We just put in the ones that we care about and eat frequently in the food Forest, placed in a Savannah style system with guilds and inter-associative and supporting plants that work for the land, plants, animals AND what we want to eat.
Personally, We focus on avocados, olives and citrus as every day eating, and plums, apples, native currants, figs, mulberries and apricots as dessert fruit. We don’t eat sweetened food here at all, no ‘alternative’ or fruit sweeteners either,  *only* whole raw or baked fruit as dessert or tea - it’s been 15 years. And it’s the best decision I’ve ever made.

Mostly though, nuts like acorns, hazels, walnuts, chestnuts are on trial, and almonds are the food trees we chose. And trees and brush that are forage-able by the animals we have, and which also support wildlife in each season.

2 particular fruiting plant that are very useful:
1/Opuntia. The paddles are certainly a definition of an edible “tree” and the fruit truly are excellent - even un-hybridized varieties. The paddles also serve as *excellent* forage for ruminants and poultry, especially in the summer and fall dry Mediterranean climate.
2/Mulberry: the young leaves are an edible green for humans and the entire tree is invaluable forage (higher protein than legume greens!) for animals especially in the dry season when no green animal forage is available. The pollarded wood is GREAT for my rocket heater and the darn things grow back instantly!! The leaves too!! Such a win-win!! The berries are SO good as well, lacking intense sweetness and dry beautifully for storage.

We don’t eat grains much at all. I wouldn’t miss them in fact. And we don’t feed “feeds” and “grain” to our livestock, they get that via the grass seed heads out in silvo pastures. But it isn’t hard to grow them if they are desired. The right variety for the climate is the key 👍
Wild types of Buckwheat, oats, barley types and amaranth are weeds here, the animals love them, and certainly the hybridized types would grow well, if desired.
There is no reason that interplanting with chosen grains wouldn’t work beautifully in between food Forest plantings..

Just because someone else focuses on fruit doesn’t mean you have to.
As long as there are guild plants and support plants placed according to sun, water cycle, topography and animal involvement as desired, choose the food p okants and animals that work for YOUR family.


Oh and I forgot to say: there is plenty of fresh unrotted fruit and nuts that fall from trees - these are ALL out to great use for our animals. A human is not required to eat all, or even any, of the fruit produced…

Wow!! Amazing info here! Thank you all!
And the pies!! The pies!! 😍😳🧡😳
They look incredible.
Nothing like a great savoury pie in my opinion!

We do British style via lamb Wellington and  Shepherds pie w our homegrown grassfed lamb; French via the various galettes and especially terrines which are marvelous; and Greek via the great variety of veggie and meat pies enfolded in grape leaves or phyllo.

A simple every day one I make is a bacon onion and cheddar pie, but I use thinly sliced potatoes not flour for crusts.
Quiches too, with potatoes as crust is more delicious (but technically that is a tart).

Leila Rich wrote:
Something involving berries, booze and cream always appears on our Christmas table.
Generally it's raspberries, red and black currants and strawberries.

100%!! Berries and cream - type dishes are so perfect on winter holiday meals!!
Not to mention perfect for our immune systems at this time!

Is it ok to post recipes here?
(If not please let me know)

Something that ups potatoes and/or root veggies to absolute star 🌟 power is Hasselbach potatoes. In particular I 🧡 J Kenji Lopez-Alt’s version, and one can mix/ sub any starchy root veggie in there as well, if desired:


Cheesy Hasselback Potato Gratin
J. Kenji López-Alt

Watch
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nZKWmo9wH3s

From Kenji’s book: In ‘The Food Lab,’ the Science of Home Cooking

INGREDIENTS
Yield: 6 servings

* 3ounces finely grated Gruyère or comté cheese
* 2ounces finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
* 2cups heavy cream [I use buttermilk]
* 2medium cloves garlic, minced
* 1tablespoon fresh thyme leaves, roughly chopped [I add rosemary and sage and oregano too. Herbs work so well w starches & cheese]
* Kosher salt and black pepper
* 4 to 4½pounds Yukon potatoes, peeled and sliced ⅛-inch thick on a mandoline slicer (7 to 8 medium, see Tips*)
* 2tablespoons unsalted butter
* [I add grated onion, or even mushroom and sage, to liquid cheese mixture for extra flava as a variation]

PREPARATION
* Step 1
Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 400 degrees.
* Grease a 2-quart casserole dish with butter.
* Combine cheeses in a large bowl.
* Transfer ⅓ of cheese mixture to a separate bowl and set aside.
* Add cream, garlic and thyme to cheese mixture. Season generously with salt and pepper. Add potato slices and toss with your hands until every slice is coated with cream mixture, making sure to separate any slices that are sticking together to get the cream mixture in between them.

* Step 2
* Pick up a handful of potatoes, organizing them into a neat stack, and lay them in the [buttered] casserole dish with their edges aligned vertically. Continue placing potatoes in the dish, working around the perimeter and into the center until all the potatoes have been added. The potatoes should be very tightly packed. If necessary, slice an additional potato, coat with cream mixture, and add to casserole.

* Step 3
Pour the excess cream/cheese mixture evenly over the potatoes until the mixture comes halfway up the sides of the casserole. You may not need all the excess liquid.

* Step 4
Cover dish tightly with foil and transfer to the oven. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove foil and continue baking until the top is pale golden brown, about 30 minutes longer. Carefully remove from oven, sprinkle with remaining cheese, and return to oven. Bake until deep golden brown and crisp on top, about 30 minutes longer. Remove from oven, let rest for a few minutes, and serve.

TIP
•Because of variation in the shape of potatoes, the amount of potato that will fit into a single casserole dish varies. Longer, thinner potatoes will fill a dish more than shorter, rounder potatoes.
•When purchasing potatoes, buy a few extra in order to fill the dish if necessary. Depending on exact shape and size of potatoes and casserole dish, you may not need all of the cream mixture.
•I’ve substituted sweet potatoes, kohlrabi and celery root for some of the potatoes with success.

Mary Cook wrote: …. In my opinion you HAVE to add organic matter or some sort, to replace what you remove and feed the miniature livestock in the soil--and you have to mulch to keep the soil cool and moist in the summer and weedless--ha ha, okay, fewer weeds…

We find livestock - the big kind, in our case sheep - do this extremely well, grazing (holistically managed).
The urine and feces in ‘manure’ have been great for our pasture soils — so much so that we no longer have vernal pools in our clay soils unless it rains abnormally long and hard for weeks. (We used to get pooling instantly after a rain).
And the sheep love the forb ‘weeds’. I actually miss the ‘weed’ flowers now, because weeds are such a preferred food, that they tend to disappear from pastures😔.
I’ve adjusted our grazing so that bloom times are considered - something I missed initially in my quest to get the grass volume eaten or hayed before heading/seeding out.

We have 2 different spaces: silvopastures and  
garden beds.

Our silvopastures have small-medium sections that are overrun by cheatgrass or other brome that can be quite flammable once seeded out. I’ve found grabbing large chunks of 6-8” high sheep manured old hay bedding in the Fall just before the rains start, and placing them intact/as is  over these cheatgrass sections improves the grass and forb diversity in that area very well.

For the garden beds, we take the rest of that sheep barn bedding and compost it Berkeley style, over late winter and spread it in the raised garden beds a few weeks before we’re ready to plant. After doing this for a few years, we are finally getting really nice veggies, and surprisingly not a lot of pests 👍

I echo a couple of others here to make the wildlife environment better (and more native) at my place  - planting trees, shrubs and forbs that bloom and seed late in Fall and early in Spring.
Here that might be manzanita (Arctostaphylos spp), strawberry trees (Arbutus undo), golden currant (Ribes aureum v aureum), avocado, citrus, camellia, and magnolia.

Also being sure I’ve got evergreen trees planted - whether conifers or not - in thickets, so that cover, safety, and more warmth are available year round as well as winter.
I’ve found plain ol Privet (Ligustrum spp), the scourge of many a gardener, to be surprisingly useful and *very hardy*, if managed well in a hedgerow (ie pruned correctly for increased mass, and at the right, non-nesting time). Privet cares nought about flooding or drought, sand or clay- it’s very useful! Tiny birds seem to love to nest in the dense branched interior, it provides cover year round for mammals and birds when heat is high in Fall too, PLUS it’s great cut and come again forage for small ruminants, *especially* in late Summer and Fall here, when pasture is brown and fresh nutrients hard to come by.

For ground animals, we do place wood and woodpiles (mostly from felled dead trees due to drought conditions here in last 10 years, sadly) throughout the property strategically, and use this wood too for our rocket stove. Also, after grazing we leave pasture stubble tall in some places for cover, instead of weed whacking or scything it all down to compost on ground. Snakes and reptiles definitely prefer the longer grass.

While we do have seed eating birds, and they get a lot from the heavily naturally-seeded pasture, we also have a lot of more carnivorous/insect eating birds that I value greatly, and they have a harder time of it in the cold season I think, with no insects around.
So we will put out ruminant fat netted balls for them, hanging from thin greased posts with a wide cone underneath to discourage non-native rodents. (So far so good).

paul wheaton wrote:The big point:


       we tried any names and i didn't like it.  And other people i liked didn't like it.


       we switched to "real sounding names".  I like the results and the people i like seem to like the results.



We decided to call it policy.  Good people rejoiced.  Nasty people went psycho and had their accounts like.  The site flourished.

Got it👍

paul wheaton wrote:Here is a painting that started off as a different painting.  Somebody bought a painting at a thrift shop for a dollar and then added something to it:



The first painter clearly liked landscapes.  Especially with some ocean in the background.  

The second painter clearly had a different vision.

Some people like the original better.  Some the hybrid.

I ran this site your way for a while and eventually got tired of accounts like "Goat Fucker7".  I decided to take the site to a new direction featuring real sounding names.  

I think of it as a sort of artistic choice.  


Everything you are saying is true.  And everything I am saying is also true.  

Having no experience with group moderation or site ownership, I only have questions (hence I don’t have a “my way”). Moderation sounds difficult. Thanks for responding.

The painting either way is not my cup of tea, artistically. But it might be for others. It is illustrative though, especially if the discussed subject is something like ‘how power can behave regarding private property’ or ‘identifying nemeses in our Zones 1’.