wildfire, burning brush in the fall, permaculture and community, i am just too weird

I think I have moved into a space that is just too crazy for permaculture professionals.  

I stopped by a montana "resort" a couple of weeks ago.  The air was so full of smoke I couldn't bear to be outside.  I remember that the sun came out, so I went outside to get some sun, and ended up coming back in within seconds because the smoke was too much.  I know that the owners of the "resort" had a PDC there because they are so keen on permaculture.  Here it is, years later, and they are burning brush "to make it look nice".  It is "cheaper" than having that organic matter hauled to the dump.  In the meantime, the rooms are heated with electric resistance heat, and everywhere I see that the grounds are mulched with commercial compost.  

Of course, I know that if I can find somebody that cares and I point this out, then they are gonna think that I am suggesting a chipper.  I am not suggesting a chipper.  I am suggesting that there are dozens of things to be done with that "waste" instead of burning it.  

The "gardens" all looked sad to me.  Their practices had transformed their soil into dirt.  And they were attempting to mitigate that with commercial products, like commercial compost which imports persistent herbicides.



...



I talked to a permaculture guy yesterday that is putting something together about wildfire mitigation.  He showed me a list of all sorts of big name permaculture peeps that are going to talk about different angles on all of this.  And while looking at the topics and the structure and the solutions that this guy was excited about ...   I tried to talk about my position ...   and I realized that my angle is way too weird for even the experts to not wince.

Forestry has evolved into one forester managing 20,000 acres from a hundred miles away.  And the focus is on extracting dollars via conifer based timber.  

I tried to suggest something where there is a permie for every two acres.  And the permie is gonna take out the conifers because the conifers to not offer enough value.  And instead grow a variety of deciduous trees, plus shrubs and other growies.  The permie will build the soil.  Eventually, the driest part of august arrives and nearby forest fires dump floating embers onto the two acres, but nothing ignites.  

The permie has a symbiotic relationship with the woodland.  The permie gets food, shelter and heat from the woodland.

The event coordinator I talked to started coming up with all sorts of rules and requirements for each permie ...   my mind reeled with how that isn't gonna work, but the sentiment is right.  After all, the permies at the resort came to to poor conclusion.  As they burn brush they probably sing some permaculture songs.  

And then came the next part that made me cringe:   the jobs that these people would have to earn money so they can eat.  And then there was the idea of how much of a drive would there be to get stuff and to possibly work ...  

I was thinking it would be a permie every couple of acres.  And 95% of their food would come from the land.  And they would each be gerting it - sorta retired.


Gardening gardeners.  Maybe 40 acres would have 20 people.  


I am reminded of how the average american spends 70% or more on housing.

The mentality I am facing with all of this is that the people are not gonna do it unless they are paid a lot.  And who makes money from hiring all of these people.  So then they need grants?

I try to explain gardening gardeners.  Rather than living in the rat race, there can be hundreds of thousands of homesteads, and people can become a gardener at a homestead with a GG program.  They spend their days gardening, building (natural building), homesteading, etc.  Elbow-to-elbow with other gardeners.  In time, the best take on leadership roles and eventually get a humble home and a large garden of their own.  Any income would entirely be tiny side hustles - probably very aligned with permaculture.  And the total coin for fun stuff, at the end of the year, is more than the total coin for fun stuff at the end of the year harvested from the rat race.


I feel like if somebody spends four years as a gardener in a GG program, then homesteaders that want to get a GG program started, would hire such a person for decent coin.

And, of course, SKIP is in there too.  



Mix into all of that the whole upcoming AI thing and how I think people should not go to college now.  Instead, save up all the coin they can while learning about how to live humbly, learning about gardening, learning about how-to-gert.



I want people to not burn brush.  That organic matter is a brutally valuable resource.  Transform that material into hugelkultur, rocket mass heater fuel, mulch (but without a chipper), junk pole fence ...   there are dozens of good uses.  Better uses.  

Worky jobs, the economy, how all that works is, I think, about to change dramatically.  Contemplate how to prepare. I suggest contemplating a humble home and a large garden.

Wildfires are caused by growing too many conifers, and by removing organic matter from forests via logging and burning brush.  A permie every two acres, trying to grow food, will make different decisions than a forester every 20,000 acres trying to profit from conifer lumber.

Our current community models have a failure rate that is too high.  And there are groups of people where they have a high success rate.  The core poison to the community models is our societal push to encourage personal independence.  Pay for your own apartment and food with money from your own job.  Focus on how to get more money so you can get a better apartment,  better food and a better car.  In time, you can buy a great home (debt), and become a world traveler.  The only solutions people can here are solutions that optimize this path.  

So everything I advocate sounds crazy.  Even to professional permies.

Welcome to the weird club.  

Thanks for making permies so some of us can be weird together.

I also hope for optimization and diversification of the weird permie community path, with a decrease in personal independence focus unto an increase in success.

paul wheaton wrote:I want people to not burn brush.  That organic matter is a brutally valuable resource.  Transform that material into hugelkultur, rocket mass heater fuel, mulch (but without a chipper), junk pole fence ...   there are dozens of good uses.  Better uses.  

Or if you are going to burn it, turn most of it into biochar at the least....

Paul Wheaton wrote:

Transform that material into hugelkultur, rocket mass heater fuel, mulch (but without a chipper), junk pole fence ...

How do you use brush as mulch without chipping it first?

Are you just using it as mulch for trees? (I have done that.)

Are you using grasses as mulch for smaller growies?

biochar:  I just fish out any char i find in the rocket mass heater and set it aside.  There usually isn't any, but sometimes there are a couple of little pieces.

Jay Angler wrote:How do you use brush as mulch without chipping it first?

I usually use my pruners to clip it down to foot long pieces and it it lays right down.  

But if a I want to mulch the top of a hugelkultur, I keep it as a big, branchy thing.  And then make it straddle the top.

Jay Angler wrote:Paul Wheaton wrote:

Transform that material into hugelkultur, rocket mass heater fuel, mulch (but without a chipper), junk pole fence ...

How do you use brush as mulch without chipping it first?

Are you just using it as mulch for trees? (I have done that.)

Are you using grasses as mulch for smaller growies?

I believe that was explained really well here:

Paul said, Sometimes I want wood to be smaller.  Loppers and pruners seem be all I need most of the time.  Sometimes I might use a saw.  
If I want mulch, I prefer the brushiness of whatever it is.  All the branches and twigs help to hold other mulches on the hugelkultur.

https://permies.com/t/80/28389/Paul-hate-wood-chippers#3701436

Permaculture replaces petroleum with people. Paul replaces brush burning with people.

Jay Angler wrote:How do you use brush as mulch without chipping it first?

Or (fire precautions allowing) a big brush pile Here's my examples : https://permies.com/t/264888/Brush-pile-garden-bed-creation and there's a BB for that: https://permies.com/wiki/108150/pep-animal-care/Brush-Pile-PEP-BB-animal#884510

The wildfire podcast i recorded with alan booker

https://permies.com/wiki/148652/Podcast-Wildfires-Part

People change slowly. I think that you can't argue with people when they are not acting responsibly. Something I have found is that if I have a good idea, I tell people, and if they disagree with me, I don't defend it at all. Some day, if my idea is right, they will realize it themself and come to me telling me their amazing realization as if it's their own. If it's not right it will probably be discarded. Many people don't take me seriously, and so if they think it's their own idea, then good for them.

I don't defend or argue for my ideas because I find that in an argument delusion typically wins, and even the truth is made false.

There's also the maturity to take responsibility for the consequences of your own actions... like the long term depletion of soil and wastefulness in regards to wood. All I can hope for at this point in my experience, is hope that through opportunities to be calm, people will some day achieve this maturity and actually think.

I'd like to hear some examples of (types of) groups that show a high success rate at cooperative community living in recent-era USA - without singling out religious groups or paradigms, as that seems like a cart-before-horse solution...?

As far as an economic engine to expand appropriate productive land stewardship, I think there's a big and growing opening for crucial 'pre-development' work at scale to adapt and prep suitable properties for future-ready permie inhabitation, with a tidy income to people with well honed local knowledge and skillsets to perform a package of complementary improvements that would save subsequent owner/developer a lot of time, expense, and complications, while still leaving room for personalized design-build in the following phases. Lots of people want access to resilient affordable living but are overwhelmed by all the obstacles and learning process of starting from 'scratch' - this approach can ease the transition and compensate capable land workers for their well honed knowledge and effort, win-win-win!

Oh, another thing—conifers! This is what Masanobu Fukuoka was talking about how there are no useless or detrimental plants, insects, etc. Each has their own role. Conifers I think are very important for protecting the soil, creating humid microclimates, encouraging soil fungi, creating windbreaks, slowing wind, trapping snow, etc. Their duff decomposes more slowly and slows down water as it flows. White pine are considered the leader of the trees—a pioneer, they grow the tallest and in the microclimate they create other trees can grow better.

So while coniferous monocultures are detrimental, having them mixed with other trees is essential. I think all the healthiest forests I know are a mix of deciduous/hardwood and conifer (usually half and half or hardwood dominated). If it is an alpine area expect more conifers. I believe based on observation that they are essential protectors of forest and the ecology.

There are also nut pines that provide benefits beyond timber, tea, and bark. And most kinds of conifer, pine and spruce especially, have relationships with edible fungi. Hemlock provides good medicine in the form of reishi.

If one really doesn't have a use for woody debris, it would be so good to send it to a greening the desert project.

On the brush: we typically burn one brush pile a year, but I also have half a dozen around my one-acre clearing. We have a composting toilet outhouse, and the proceeds of that go on fruit trees. We have what I call a pisseria in the house, and I dump that bucket on all my compost piles in turn--the ones in the woods composed of fallen branches and such, and the ones next to each garden. Most of the nitrogen and phosphorus humans excrete is in the urine, so this way I capture those nutrients and help spur the decomposition, It still takes wood piles years to decompose, though. I could see the utility of a woodchipper if you have holdings of sufficient scale and if you don't have a source of woodchips. I wouldn't eliminate all conifers, especially if they're dominant locally.
On community, I agree with Paul that his vision of a person every two acres living mostly off the land would be much more realizable if they cooperated. For example, keeping dairy goats can be expensive and time-consuming, but if the herder trades with several neighbors, everyone would have milk and cheese, the goatherder would not need to keep chickens or do a big garden and orchard and  could take occasional trips knowing s/he/they had a reliable person taking care of the goats. Someone mentioned the idea of tiny side jobs to supply cash and I think that's definitely the way to go.
To find examples of thriving communities, check out the intentional communities site at ic.org . I live on a land trust, founded 51 years ago on a ridge in West Virginia. It has only four leaseholds, yet most have been empty most years. This year we got a new blended family taking over the two empty leaseholds, and I have high hopes it will become a real community with lots of internal trade and a model for the larger community. I think what makes this place work is that each leasehold is largely independent, choosing its own projects--so we don't have to have endless meetings arguing out what we want to do. I think this approach is much easier for Americans, as our culture is way out at the extreme of valuing individualism over community, so we're not used to compromise, we don't have the social skills.

Tradeoffs here.

I eliminate all the conifers because they act as a lightning rod sticking above the canopy and if you don't burn off the pine needles then one dry season day you'll be faced with the hundred foot wall of flame rapidly destroying everything in its path.

The native folk burned off the pine woods regularly to avoid the wall of fiery death and open up the understory for hunting.

Ii sometimes wonder how pine was the dominant species when Florida was first "discovered" by white people...and the answer may be the original natives biased things that way via burning.

In the last few years a large market has opened up here for "pine straw," which is baled pine needles, so that may be one use for the pine needles.
They do make a long lasting mulch, which is spread out enough to minimize fire hazard.

Much like using petroleum, machinery, and plastic, perhaps controlled burning  begins the process, enhances fire safety, and gives you results until you can figure out a better way.

Another perfection may be the enemy of good?

Dave's post is another example of how different places require different management--a place where fire hazard is high and pines are the tallest trees.

Definitely, some climates may be different than others. Some ecosystems are fire dependent, too.

I think biochar is a lovely thing to do with excess wood, too—if you quench or bury it as soon as it’s burnt down to coals and then add to compost, that could be a solution that improves the soil a lot.

Oddly, I have never had the problem of excess wood but rather the opposite. I do not have a rocket mass heater (but would love to have one) and because of this, a shortage of wood seems like more of an issue than an excess. I am tempted to pay my neighbors to haul over their brush piles so they don’t get burnt!

If wood really does need burning then it could perhaps be helpful save it up as fuel. Even in tropical climates, wood is good for cooking food. In colder places, it is all the more necessary as heat. Small, brushy pieces are excellent kindling or firewood for cooking.

I do controlled burns of grass sometimes. I think the grass grows better when I do, and makes a little char for the soil. The grass doesn’t really decompose and I don’t have animals here (except dogs and wild animals) so fire chars the grass and stops it from becoming a suffocating mass. But, my aspirations are for a food forest where leaf litter covers and old grass and keeps it moist so that it can decompose.

Re| Brush
   I have several brush piles through out my 26+ acres which I make in clearing land. I chop them down enough  to make a tidy pile and just leave it be. After a season or two I pull out all the branches that have not broken down into a new smaller pile or combine with others and sift the rest for great compost . By doing this season by season I have piles always ready to harvest compost. Low effort letting nature do it's cycle thing.

"they are burning brush "to make it look nice".

Permaculture where a tidy brush pile is considered nice looking.
Put up  a sign "Preparing to plant a tree here. Keeep adding densly packed brush and wooody material here until planting time"
A new little forest floor in progress.  Try it you might like it.