Darin Kirschbaum

I think I'm more of the learning type than the teaching. Unless I learn significantly more that is.

It must be rewarding and enabling to have such a large-scale canvas to work with. Please keep posting photos, it's so inspirational to see how much can be done to change a landscape. Would also like to know the mix of species you're working with. I'm an information leech, if you didn't notice...

Absolutely stunning landscape. I love the curvy hugel beds that extend into that pond - that must/will be a really productive area. I went to the website and looked at the garden photos - are there any more before and after photos to see the ideas that Sepp put into place? Also, what exactly are the goals of the project - who is going to be using the land? I'm curious about what kind of community you're all looking to set up.

Beautiful and inspiring. I love seeing earthworks full of water after a rain, and in the desert even more so. Please post pictures/video of the rest of the site and let us know what's been going on there for the duration of the project. Was that an olive you were holding up?

Alder Burns wrote:I had this years ago in GA and it was pretty much a disappointment if you are into serious food production. The tree grew fast and easily, which means the small edible "stems" are often pretty far up there. They are more chewable than edible, being quite fibrous.....sort of like a date with the texture of sugar cane. You would have to munch on a lot of them, which would take hours, to get anything approaching a meal. The things cling to the tree, so there's no way to shake them down and gather them in bulk, which would make juicing, wine, or some such more of a possibility. Ditto for chickens. So it's really more of a novelty than anything else. Perhaps wild birds might relish them. Or a fun sweet munchie for tree-climbing children!

I read you're supposed to wait for them to fall off the tree before eating them. Could it be you're trying to harvest them too early or do they really stick on there good?

Ah well, I guess I get that. But I sure do like cats. A ferrel horde of them is not really what I had in mind though. It seems like 5 acres would be enough land to have a few of them, but maybe I'm a little naive about how much ground they cover and the damage they do.

Paige, I just read through Paul's chicken 2.0 article where he talks about livestock guardian dogs and it brings up another solution to your dilemma. There are a ton of specialized breeds of dogs and I'm sure one has been specially bred to hunt gophers. Or rats. Or whatever you can imagine. It seems like a dog would have a targeted effect with much less collateral damage than cats too.

Cats seem to me to be great additions, especially when you need something like rat and gopher control. Maybe making stone piles to attract snakes might be a good alternative.

Jay, I don't see how cats are so much more harmful than dogs, chickens, goats, pigs, cattle, etc. Could you explain a little more? Thanks.

I thought Geoff's website might be worse from all the comments. It looks sort of like an online infomercial, but not too frightening. I've always thought that just releasing video content might make more money than protecting it, particularly for someone like Geoff who would instantly have a ton of subscribers. I can't count how many times I watched the greening the desert video. It's scary to make completely public and free what you're basing a large part of your livelihood on, but I think it would become much more far reaching than he could imagine. Plus he could post every inconsequential scrap of video and I would watch it.