koalakvale Hatfield

Check out some of the ideas at:

http://www.holisticmanagement.org/
-and-
http://www.managingwholes.com/

    People are showing that dry-land areas can improve considerably with the inclusion of animals using holistic planned grazing.

  I've dug a number of swales in my time and have a hunch that animals, used properly, could be more profitable as well as biologically restorative for your properties than large trenches.

  I'm finding that Permaculture is running into difficulty with it's ideas about what land ought to be.
  A feature of Holistic Management differentiates climates by a brittleness scale, and the more brittle (i.e. periodic low rainfall areas) work best with the inclusion of herding livestock.
    This isn't Management intensive Grazing.  It is holistic management which focuses on improving the biological processes of the land in what ways are available and best suited to that land.
  Sure livestock can desertify areas, and some places are better suited to mature forest, but the point is that some areas are more suited for livestock that behave in a certain way, Via herding behavior that promotes animal impact, and the needs of the plants, etc.
    For Permaculture to dismiss this point and favor instead rainwater catchment through swales or whatever is to miss an enormous biologically restorative potential.

  I went to college a bit for Sustainable Agriculture.  There's a lot more at play with agriculture and sustainability than you could pick up attending classes in a setting with lots of other folks your age.  Heck even the professors might not know what's going on.  So I stopped going to college.
    I decided to Wwoof (check it out at WWOOF.org)  So far it's been cheaper than college by a long shot and I've gotten an education from a lot of different people on their land in the process of their own day-to-day lives.  It's not a perfect education and it doesn't give you a piece of paper that grants you a fancy job down the road, but you'll at least see deeper into what's involved.
    Maybe it was just that college, but there has to be more to Permaculture education than you can get in classrooms at colleges.

    Hey there, my home town in Minnesota is drafting an ordinance for farm animals which includes chickens.  It's a hot topic around the country these days with people fearful of the problems and folks wanting quality home-grown food. 
      I'm curious if anyone has any suggestions or experience on how to get across the right message about it being possible to raise chickens in ways that doesn't stink up the neighborhood, cause rat problems, and create a farm scene that seems so objectionable to some folks.
      Permaculture is a fun idea for small cities.  I'd like to keep it legal here.

   I'm living in zone 3.  It's going to be used for summer birds, and then bunker any egg-layers down for the winter.  It was cheap.  I don't know how much a trailer costs but I found mine under a tree in rough shape for free.  Palettes are free, and pvc pipes are cheap.  The interior is just a big bed of sawdust with poles going across for support and roosts.  I never used it for egg-layers.  I'd like to fit in a side roosting apartment that you could lift the roof off of.
    I should add that you can move it by hand and it's easiest to close them all up and drag it to a new spot and set the fence up again.  (takes like 7 minutes with 1 person).  But when they get older it gets nearly too heavy to drag by yourself.
    One advantage is that you can take them down the highway in it and set them up at a new location should the need arise.  Which it did for me.

  Here's one I built last year.  Made out of a 4x8 flatbed trailer with palettes up the sides.  The roof is bent pvc with a cut tarp over it.  Inside are some roosts and plenty of sawdust.  The ramp comes up as a door.  worked with nearly 100 birds, though a lot of them slept under it, which was fine with an electric fence.

  I just kept throwing new sawdust into my coop.  When it got at all smelly it was time for a new layer.  In the end I pulled all of it out onto the garden.  It smelled woody and rather pleasant.  I think this helped keep a load of manure of the grass because there was 90 birds which added up quick.  The birds really like rolling around in sawdust.  Deep bedding that composts makes a lot of sense, but sure made the thing heavy to move.
      I'll be on the island for at least a couple of weeks.  No rush at all and I'll be sure to schedule ahead of time.

  Strange coincidence but I'll be on Salt Spring Island tomorrow.  Maybe I can come look at your chicken tractor.  I'm looking for wwoofing places in British Columbia.
  Bytesmiths: Do you use deep bedding in the coop and remove it?

  The fence in the picture is easily portable.  It's electric poultry netting which takes about 10 minutes to move and re set-up.  Works great so far.

  Go right ahead.
            you can credit me as Sam Kvale.