CBostic Hatfield

In the US corporations and LLCs can be formed easily without a lawyer. Over the years I have formed half a dozen of them on my own and then sold or disbanded them. Most states now have online forms for forming these entities. There are many good books on the subject and I see no reason to pay a lawyer a lot of money for some paperwork. The LLC in particular is a good vehicle for sharing ownership and responsibility and affords the most liability protection available.

Two comments:
1. Its easy to focus too much on the things YOU can eat in the earliest stages. You may get to your target vegetation sooner if you plant some "nurse" plants first, followed by your target plants once the "nurse" plants are established, rather than just jump in and plant your target plant right away. It sounds like the baby trees will have to fend for themselves - can they do that?? Would they be happier with another tree or two or some bushes to block the wind and fix nitrogen? In the earliest stages the most productive plants to place may be the nitrogen fixers and mineral miners.

2. If your land has been grazed by cattle, they will have eaten a lot of the "weeds" that have come up by themselves. It might be very educational to let the land do its own thing for a season or two and see what comes up. Also, how many different times of the year have you been on the land? Some of the areas that are empty now may have vegetation at other times of the year. Volunteers could be the best answer for your bare ground under the trees.

Translation of labels for aerial photo:

Mare = body of water
haute de la colline = top of the hill
ligne d'altitude = land falls away in this direction
swales et terracement suivant le terrain = swales and terraces across the terrain
recouperation d'eau = water recovery or rain catchment
potager = vegetable garden
foret comestible = edible forest
parc cochon = pigs' park or pigs' area

The reason you don't use green wood in building is that as it dries it shrinks and then nothing fits together any more. This is one reason conventionally built houses are such crap. A lot of the wood used in them is not dry and stable. The amount of time needed to dry wood depends on the initial moisture content, the thickness and species of the wood and the conditions it is dried in. So there is no way to say exactly how long it takes. It takes until the wood is dry.

When thinking about whole logs, remember that a log is very heavy and one can easily kill you if it falls on you. If you're not going to have any help, think about another way to do what you want.

In a few years I'm heading for north Florida, between Jacksonville and Gainesville. No state income tax. A very favorable homestead liability protection (the only debt they can take your property for is a mortgage on THAT property). The area is rural and conservative with a lot of hunting and favorable gun laws. It's fairly business friendly to small businesses. Land and housing prices are currently depressed so it's a good time to buy. Grow vegetables nearly year round.

Drawbacks: the land tends to be sandy and rather poor but responds well to added organic matter and you can find land that hasn't been farmed recently. Cell phone and internet are spotty. Water is currently in OK supply but that may change in the future, but there is enough rainfall to live off that if necessary. If you think the sea level will rise 400 ft, all of Florida will be underwater, although this area will probably be about the last to go under. It is hot & humid in the summer, but there is always a breeze blowing and the ground never freezes. Personally, I'd rather deal with heat than cold.

I don't know about the farm sale laws.

For those of you in Sherman Oaks - I grew up in Long Beach, CA and moved "back east" about 30 years ago. You would have some adjustment with the humidity, but not as much adjustment as moving to a snowy climate. In many ways the Florida climate is like So Cal, although in other ways it is not. I feel more at home there than any place else I've lived.

I can totally understand you wanting horses (I want them, too) but unless you have some of the best pasture on the planet or are planning on bringing in a lot of feed from elsewhere, I don't think you have enough pasture for 2 horses plus other stock. In fact, I'm not sure you have enough for the 2 horses alone. (Not sure where you are located or what your land is like.) Horses are not nearly as efficient at turning grass into body mass and energy as ruminants. All the other stock you are looking at are ruminants and are more likely to be happy in the set up you're describing. If you want to be self-sufficient you're not going to be able to afford the horses, at least to start with.

At the size of herd you are talking about, I don't think it makes sense to have your own male. So get something you can get bred in your area or by insemination.

Start with something common in your area that will fulfill some of your wants and get some practice in with that. Then go on to something more exotic. That way you can make your mistakes with low-cost stock and not the expensive purebreds. Work the kinks out of your stock raising system and don't try to solve all your problems at once. Stock is not permanent and can be changed in the future.

As far as what sheep will eat, there were sheep at one of my schools growing up and if they got out of their pen they would eat all the twigs of certain trees that they could reach, almost climbing the trunks. I remember willow was one of them.

FlSunshine - I can't comment on the podcast, but earlier posts in this thread suggest a couple of things that might get the ants out of your potatoes: diatomaceous earth and grits. The DE should be food grade and shouldn't hurt either the potatoes or the chickens as far as I know. The grits work because the ants carry the particles back to the nest and eat them dry. With moisture added the corn particle enlarges and kills the ant. If you can't find grits in your grocery store, I bet coarse corn meal would do the same. Of course, that's another reason to keep the chickens out of the garden for a while. I haven't personally tried either of these remedies.

There must be a reason the ants like the potato patch so much - shade, moisture in the soil, a ready made mound of dirt...  If you can figure that out then you could make the potato patch less attractive and make someplace else more attractive to them.

Sherry-
You shouldn't be ashamed, you should be proud of yourself for attempting what everyone said couldn't be done. Growing your own food organically and as sustainably as possible is a laudable goal.

Before you do anything, look more closely. Are all the plants equally infested or are there some with no or fewer aphids? If there are, you can take some leaves from one of those plants, mash them up a bit and put them in some water and leave it all in the shade for a couple of days, then strain the result and spray it on the affected plants. Another thing to try is get some seaweed solution and water the affected plants with it. Neither of these should harm the ladybugs.

Next, simply be patient. If there are huge numbers of aphids you should soon have larger numbers of aphid predators. So many even the ants wont be able to fend them all off.

Longer term solutions:
1. Add more minerals to your soil. An aphid infestation means that your plants are lacking in "minor" minerals. Packaged soils (in my experience) are often lacking in this way. In most parts of the country it doesn't matter, since plant roots can find some minerals from the native soil. But where the native soil is either total sand or very low on minerals from high temperatures and lots of rain, the plant roots cant find all the minerals they need. In the past I used pulverized granite and it solved the problem, but I can't find it for sale any more. I did just buy something called azomite but I haven't had it long enough to know if it will work equally well.

2. Make a place for weeds in the garden. Right now I have some dandelions covered with aphids and no aphids on my veggies 3 feet away. By keeping weeds growing around the garden, the aphid predators have a home and food all the time. Designate a spot or two for weeds and just let whatever comes up grow there and water it along with the garden. I know, it seems wacky to purposely grow weeds, but I've been doing it for years and my garden is healthier for it. Every so often, turn the weeds under or pull them off and compost them or use them for mulch. If you use them for mulch around your veggies, pull them before they make seeds. If no weeds want to grow on their own, you can get seeds of dandelions and some other barely domesticated greens and plant them.

3. You only mention tomatoes, so I don't know what else you might be growing. If it is only tomatoes, that is a monoculture and that is part of the problem. Try planting some black-eyed peas beside the tomatoes (they love the heat). You can get a bag of them from the grocery store (if they carry them) and plant them or buy seed which is more expensive. The black-eyed peas will feed the tomatoes as well as create greater diversity. If you dont want to eat the peas, cut down the plants right after they flower and plant more. You can lay them on the soil around the tomatoes as a mulch.

4. Do everything you can think of to increase the life in your soil. Make compost - as hot and dry as it is there, I would think pit composting would be the best bet. Dig a hole and put vegetable matter in it. Since your soil is pretty sterile you probably need to add compost starter. Keep it moist (you can pee in it) and shaded. Add some potting soil that has live microorganisms in it. Maybe add earthworms if they don't show up on their own. When the hole is filled with finished compost, plant in it.

One thing that would help with your water use would be to line your planting holes with something that would retard the escape of water. Water in sand tends to go straight down more than fanning out sideways. I wonder if putting a large rock or stepping stone in the bottom of the hole would keep water from escaping. Mulch on the top of the soil will keep water from evaporating upward. Generally I don't like to use plastic in gardening, but I wonder if plastic mulch (the kind with breathing holes) lining the sides of the hole would decrease the need for water. You could also use a layer of clay to make a sort of on-the-spot pot which would hold back water and give the plants minerals at the same time. The only source of clay I can think of is pottery clay and I'm not sure if it has any minerals that could be toxic. How about burying large terracotta pots and planting in them? Probably expensive. I'll be gardening in Florida sand in a few years as opposed to worn out Savannah, GA soil so I've been giving these things some thought.

Sorry for digressing, but then everything is connected, right? Hope some of this is helpful.

Claudia

It's been a long time since I did that kind of thing, and I don't have any books on that subject any more, but I'll see what I can dredge up from the memory banks...

Yes you can add organic matter to the clay and burn it out in the firing process. I think the firing atmosphere must be an oxidizing atmosphere at least until the organic matter is burned out. The clay must be heated just to the point where the organic matter burns away and held at that temperature until the organic matter is gone. Then the clay is heated to its firing temperature as normal. The thing I would worry about with the coffee grounds would be explosive combustion of coffee particles that were completely embedded in clay - could result in a crater. I remember being warned about that sort of thing but never had it happen to me and never did any experiments with organic burnout, so this is what I remember from reading. The coffee grounds should probably be dry when added to the clay and everything should be dried completely before firing. Water will come out as steam at a lower temperature than the coffee would burn and could also cause holes in the clay vessel. As long as there is more clay than coffee grounds, it shouldn't weaken it very much. I'm sure there is a point of no return where there is too much void and not enough pottery, but I don't know where that would be. There is actually quite a bit of technology involved with firing pottery, even in a primitive kiln and even at relatively low temperatures such as are used for terra cotta. I would encourage you to read up on the subject or take a class if you are really interested. The whole process of clay to fired object is fascinating and magical but not as simple as it seems at first glance.

One interesting thing about working with clay is that it becomes easier to work with if allowed to acquire bacteria. Freshly dug clay that is too sterile is not as plastic as clay that has been worked a bit and allowed to sit at room temperature for a few days.

There is a picture of something very similar on page 13 of the book Water Storage by Art Ludwig. The caption reads, "Old-fashioned drinking water filter/cooler in a farmhouse in rural Cuba. The owners pour raw water into the depression in the porous carved stone filter. From there, it drips into the clay storage urn. Louvered vents (in the cabinet) provide evaporative cooling."

It is not specified what is being filtered out. If I remember correctly, salt that is dissolved in water bonds molecularly with the water and cannot be filtered out by normal means but only by distillation or pressure osmosis.

As a former potter I know that when clay is fired into terra cotta, it undergoes both a chemical and physical change and cannot be returned to its former state of being clay. So I'm not sure how much soil improvement would be gained by terra cotta fragments in the soil. It would not be the same as adding the same amount of clay to the soil.

Terra cotta does have an extremely porous nature, but the small pores are easily clogged by minerals in water. Disposable ollas should work to filter water of some minerals and slowly disperse water into the soil, but I'm dubious about their utility after they clog up. Hope you can prove me wrong!