Tokies Pop

J Blair wrote:this year I was diligent about cover cropping, mulching (with cardboard, and some very weedy/grass areas with black plastic) in an attempt to not have bare soil.  One unfortunate result was that voles have found the cover to be quite convenient.  They ate all my brussel sprout plants almost as soon as I set them out.  I also think they are eating the stems of my squash - not the squash, just the main stem which of course kills the whole plant!  At first I thought it was gophers (which I continually trap), but I have found pathways under the mulch, and I saw a vole running through the squash, so now I think it is probably voles.

I don't want to leave the soil bare!  Anyone have advice for having mulch and cover, and also not losing plants to voles?

cardboard honestly was to good to give up. I ended up using biochar soaked in  concentrated castor oil . and I mixed it into the base layer of the cardboard and woodchips. Sometimes I use a thin pipe and will stick in more concentrate from time to time in areas. So it doesn't taste good.  This is something I do only early on in the trees live. After a few years in I still do cardboard and woodchips but you don't need to do the  concentrated castor oil unless your replacing a young tree that died. Then be agressive about it. To be honest if you have cats it helps a lot so they don't get comfortable. If you run livestock dogs they normally hunt some.  Just the dog being in the area marking can make them uneasy. We use a lot of vernal pools to make sure we have toad spawn and other things on property. Those tempary pools are probably why we are in the battle. But a farm is an eco system. And sometimes you invite a guest on property for the bigger picture. And those vernal pools are so important to a farm eco system, hell ranch eco systems as well.  Good lock on your issue.Don't give up and do bare soil. Sometimes you can win every tree. I always keep some in containers going just to plug into dead spots. It really sucks to lose plants to them. Oh and don't forget to setup barn owl nesting spots.  You can never go wrong setting up a barn owl nesting spots. BEcause they don't go after chickens just rodents mostly. The key is to make them uneasy at best. Which solves a lot of the issue over time.

C Gillis wrote:
Why in your opinion do you think that there arean't tens of thousands of Mark Shepard-style farms and systems being designed and built in the last years?  

farming, ranching, large-scale Market Gardens, are not a meritocracy. Out of all the professions out there farming is in a modern sense one of the least meritocratic professions. It requires land and captial. Even at the small scale of just quarter an acre. In certain states it's more expensive then most people think depending on where you live. In certain countries they offer public land, or public farming options USA doesn't they do subsidies and other programs. Those programs cater to cash crops. But they are extremely easy to sell into. If for example there was a secondary market super easy for small farmers or beginer farmers or old farms to shift to to sell. In the same easy way. Plus the USDA and other groups offered the same kind of money there might be more programs. But the voter base would have to push for it. Big Ag is very much in control of rural voter power. Even when it works against 89% of the farmer and farm labor. And keep in mind in the USA lot of people who own farmland right now don't even farm on the same scale that they own land at or don't farm at all. Think  of them like cash crop pump and dump farms. Why invest in a long term plan real plan if the whole of Ag isn't setup for it and doesn't care if you do?

I've been wondering about compost layers mix with biochar for years. Something fungal under the bees like a forest floor.

Carla Burke wrote: My understanding is that they mate for life, so the male to female breeding ratio is 1:1 - not exactly an economical ratio, like chickens.

No you are thinking of Emu's perhaps? Ostriches do not mate for life and are polygamous. They will actually use the trate to put the eggs of the most dominate female in the center of the nest and use the other females eggs on the outside so that those ones get taken out first. The male watches the eggs.

But your right almost the whole thing except the fat, bones, blood and maybe the claws are worth a good deal in the market. Again if I was a small holder I'd not mess with them because it's just too much investment. The only way I'd do it if it was a co-op. IE a cluster area where 30 or 40 people were all going to get this setup in the same general area. And more than 50 birds for each person. So that you'd be able to sell out as a large market force. It's not homesteader/hobby farmer stuff. It's a real biz, with a biz plan, and a lot of networking. Plus, a lot of understanding but again. Tons of things on them that can be used and held on to for tough times.

tony uljee wrote:been to some ostrich ranches in s.africa, they are in the drier regions very sparse vegetation lots of open ground, these birds range far in wilder situations but ranched sees them in large high fenced paddocks and fed a formulated type ration plus fresh cut feed, they were mostly grown for the leather/hide industry ,higher end of it ,shoes and luggage bags ,briefcases  and smaller pieces made into hats and belts ,sandals ,wallets  and trinkets being the last end use.The feathers were in demand awhile ago as trim decoration in fashion clothing industry, the meat and eggs were almost secondary to the operation .They were all special hybrid livestock ---much bigger than their wild relations --grown for size and feather colour/conformaty---for bigger hides  and the pattern left in the hide after feathers   .All thorn tree or barb wire excluded from paddocks , bred from a mix of sub species from african countries. Kept in flocks of age,size and sex rated , breeding stud males kept away and sub standard males used as a foster dad --they help rear , So not an easy animal to just smallhold in low numbers i think----and dont wear sunglasses ,watches ,rings in ears or on fingers or any thing with buttons.

I think what a lot of people miss is that these novelty I guess they call it items are long term money. once a market is develope they tend to weather better than most crops. Even in an ecomical down turn things like luxury skins, pearls,  whiskey, bonsai, aged Parmesans hold over until the market recovers in a way few other crops do. It use to be super common for USA farms to have some of these bullet proof luxury aged market items as biz before Reagan. Why so many farms/ranches aren't as weather proof as they could be. Even in permaculture or conventional farming. They lost their full systems even tons of permacultures farms lack it.


That luxury market is so under looked at. luxury fruit market that allows you to employee a lot of people like in japan's farm. Then luxury food/clothing
Always thought water buffalo, bison, elk, osrish, and alligators were missed opportunities for permaculture large scale operrations. Because you could rotate and stack fuctions if you had muliple things that work together well. A slaughter house and alligators & water bufflo for example. Or alligators and cockroach farming. Since young alligators actually eat a lot of insects.  Elk and osirish have oddly enough nearly simlar fencing requirements. If you had say rabbts and goats/ cattle it would go well in a rotation. And you could use that area to fence train goats, chickens, turkeys/goose, and pigs.

It's really hard to be fuctional farm because so much poorly place subsidies that have 90% to do with electoral college and 10% functional robust food system.

Ryan M Miller wrote:I just learned that another drawback to using fennel as a cover crop is that the plant is a perennial and not an annual. This may cause problems when it comes time to chop up the plants into the soil, especially if it can clone itself from root fragments like dandelions or creeping thistle. I'll do some more reading.

If you ever pasture crop things like pumpkins, wheat, oats, fodder beats.  PAsture cropping is where you double graze hard in an area then no till drill a normal seed mix. Ie okra, pumpkins, wheat, peas, sainfoin, alfalfa, sunflowers. So forth then you crop those like you are cropping a normal crop and you can sell it in market. If it's pumps and you want it to look pretty you can actually walk your pasture and spread a lil bit of cardboard boxes under plans and then some woodchips on top of the boxes to help it along. But honestly grows fine without it. You can also feed it off directly to live stock but certain crops we found we can take it to market depending on how many days it's been since livestock has been in the field. Certain crops are just too short to turn around and try and sell it. You could treat Fennel as a high value pasture crop like we do sainfoin and alfalfa. It would probably be a great crop for a pasture that sees a lot of rabbits and quail.

Yeah, I kinda agree very hard to keep them. But very profitable and a miss opportunity there's this place called fossil farms. That works with them and keep them mostly on grass. First time I've ever seen anyone pull that off. But there's a bunch of things like elk, and ostrich and a heavy area for fence training herds/animals. That could go together in a rotational setup on like 100 acres. about 20 acres in heavy fencing maybe in a tiktock like kingbird farms use to do there poultry. It could be done but it would be so expensive. It would actually be easier to do in a place like NZ, which allows these large herds of things without fencing as extreme as USA requires to raise this stuff. But they'd be Emu's probably.

You could probably come up with a setup that would make it work as long as you had something that you could grow out low fencing on the rest of the acres.

If you rotional graze it's less of an issue to feed on ground. I mean move every two days not leaving a pig and feeding in the same area for week or more days. I mean real movement. More so if you are also not in a "nut season" or food season when you put them into the area they are digging up. Always feed in a feed container. You can put a tire feeders for pigs and put it on a drag chain. Half cut barrel feeder sled.  Part of the reason homesteaders run into issue apose to professional rotational grazer with pigs is the feeding on the ground and dumping feed on ground. wasting of food on ground. Yes the pig will get a lot of it but some is simply wasted as well.

you want it high enough so they can't put there feet into it and low enough so only the head can go in. Line the inside of the feeder so it's easy to clean out. A lot of people make the mistake of feeding on ground and think they can gentics breed out of the problem. Sometimes you can if you are grazing and moving away from the problems most of the time you can't. Also, good to setup a feeder because you can feed out soak feed on top of dry feed cutting down water pigs. If you dryland farm.

it isn't an awful thing to do but it's kind of one of those................. not thinking it out. now I'm going to have to hope for "gentics" miracles.  Or I can spent 20 bucks using a couple of pieces of log, a free tire and lining it. and just win win win as I now have wet feed options as well.

Rusty Shacklefurd wrote:Sorry for the resurrected post but this is the first result in Google (2018) so I thought I would help other people looking also.

I can not see any aphids but I am also a very novice gardener so I doubt everything I do.

It seems that these ants are just ripping up my corn plant and drinking from it or possibly eating it also?

Please help. I am going to try DE but from what I have read ants won't/can't eat fibers like that and I am intrigued to hear from someone who knows anything.





If this forum doesn't allow new users to post images in posts here is direct links
https://i.imgur.com/Z9Uvl1S.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/fZIiG40.jpg

that is some real damage. normally its them acting as farmers. i'd see where they are going then just pour hotwater down the hole. those are pretty big ants. almost like a carpenter ant. but they look a little too round for that.

Ann Torrence wrote:One of my 5 goals is to sell something at our tiny farmers' market this summer, as a practice run for when we have our fruit products. We have a "real" farmer who brings in veg and goat cheese; he started the market and I'm not going to compete with him. But no one sells flowers. I'm going to try it. Annuals, but if it works, it would be pretty easy to add things like echinacea, lilies, etc to the mainframe project. And our market is small, mostly weekend homeowners and retirees, so it's more of having a presence until the fruit comes in and it's not a huge investment to try it. Worst case scenario is that I get to hang out with my neighbors for a couple hours a week and fill my house with cut flowers.

Had anyone done this? Tips?

did you end up selling something at the local farmers market?

if it didnt work think about this

this is left the field. I've started growing flowers like food base flowers and using them in salads and bouquets.  I sell the high-quality pictures of them on things on istock. it's not a huge money spinner but it's decent pocket change. If i was better at making bouquets I'd proudly do better. I've seen people show them off on Instagram that are super nice. think about combing the two. I've recently been looking into selling them local area only same day mail through the internet. to places like small biz so forth. or possibly setting up an arrangement to deliver them to restaurants regularly or small hotels or B&B's . I havent figured it all out only the istock part which has paid but you might want to think outside the box a bit more you might get suprise. it may not be a stall it might be something even better.