Andreas Poleo

Hi everyone, I've just recently moved to the north of Norway and have started working in a conventional dairy farm. To say the least, I can't wait with getting started with my own permaculture operation as soon as possible! Anyway, as the days pass and I observe all the things I'd rather do differently, I've had an idea. What if I got the farmer I work for to agree on letting me take some bull calves and castrate them, and then use them in a Salatin-style rotational grazing scheme?

Obviously, the mindset of the farmer also being rather conventional, it mostly feels like we're speaking two different languages when discussing these issues. In other words I'm in desperate need of some support from likeminded people, and even better someone with experience with the matter.

The facts:
Conventional farm operating with conventional means, i.e. plenty of diesel, artificial fertilizer and concentrated pellet feed (usually a mix of Norwegian grains with supplements of soy from Brazil - lovely).
The animals are a Norwegian milking breed, the so called Norwegian Red, which apparently have good meat characteristics too.

The questions:
Can I just go for it and use some pasture with some animals and rotate them? What I'm asking is, can I rely simply on grass and no supplemental feed?
How many animals would I need to use? Is it realistic to use only one, for instance? Or four? I realize that it depends on pasture size, though one doesn't really put the mob into mob grazing...
As a thought experiment, how would one convert an entire conventional milking operation to being grass based? Probably not possible?

I've read plenty of Salatin's books and have also informed myself on Holistic Management, so I realize that rotational grazing and HM aren't the same. I trust that I'll be able to develop a good grazing strategy with time and experience, and right now I'm looking for a good place to start. Thanks for taking your time, looking forward to hearing from you!

Thanks for replying. I've come over some of Salatin's books and they seem rather to the point. I'd really like to experimenting with building up the soil from the very early days and thus also not plow, but perhaps I haven't understood this well and these don't follow each other consequentially.

I will check out the film mentioned and also the writers/people.

About hiring work done I will definitely be looking into enlisting the help of some piggies. I've seen them in action on a nearby farm and it's really quite hard to believe their efficiency in turning everything upside down.

Hi, I'm about to get started on the first season of my newly purchased smallholding in Norway. We're very much interested in avoiding owning a tractor, at least in the beginning, and wish to know more about no till/no plow methods of farming. I have read bits and pieces about this (amongst other on this forum), but have yet to come over a reliable source, perhaps a book, for in depth reading. If anyone has input I'd be very happy!

Thanks for the feedback guys, since last time I've read a bit more around on the interwebs, and it does seem feasible. I have to say though, Randy, that what you write is close to the most optimistic news I've read - it indeed sounds within reach. Now, the next question, since I live a bit away from things, is going to be concerning the economics of it all. I live two hours outside of Oslo, the capital, and one of the people in our homestead works there fairly regularly. If he were to haul home a decent amount of litres every so often, when he's driving home anyway, surely the possibility for both being quite environmentally friendly, helping out a chip shop owner and saving quite the dough must be very present? I am trying to look for weaknesses in the plan - in any case I've got a machine engineer friend of mine coming around to talk conversion - super exciting! Thanks again for your replies!

Hello, I just had an idea and thought I'd post it here for discussion. I live in Norway, in a 100-year old house that came with a central heating unit that's diesel powered. Since I'm not all too fond of the whole petroleum game, our homestead has been using wood this winter, and we've left the diesel beast alone.

Then, all of a sudden, I thought, surely there must be a way around this? Surely I can find some scrap oil somewhere and use that in the furnace? Everywhere I read about these sort of things people have such stories, of how they got their car to run on discarded vegetable oil, their lawn mowers on old crankcase oil or their helicopters on fizzy drinks. There must be a way?

There's a catch though, and that is that I know nothing about these things. Does anyone here know what I should look for in my current heater to know whether it'll accept an alternative fuel, or whether it can be modified to do so? Does anyone know what alternative fuels are the most likely to work? In short - do you understand what my intentions are, and if yes, do you know anything that may help me along?

Thanks for reading, all the best!

Hi again, thanks for the feedback and warm welcome!

We've tried hanging up stuff for them to have a go at, but it doesn't seem to do much - the small ones are terrified of the big ones no matter what. The latest development is that after about three days isolated from the rest of the coop, today I let one of the abusers out into the main room again. The beginning was ambiguous at best, and I'm going to check on them again soon to see. It did seem however, that the abuser was slightly less confident without its friends.

The smaller chickens are smaller races sadly, so them getting bigger isn't an option. In other words it's looking bad for them if the isolation trick doesn't work and nothing else comes up.

Anybody heard about vinegar in their water? I've read about this, but it seems like wishful thinking - I can't for the life of me see what the mechanism would be, nor can the articles advocating it give any reasoning...

Clipping anything that's part of them is not happening, that much is certain. At that point I'd rather make a soup.

Anyway, I'll keep you posted as to how things go with our coop in the coop process, and thanks again for your time!

Hello, this is my first post on this forum, so I hope I don't commit any faux pas. I reside on a small farm in Norway, and it goes without saying that we're very inspired by permaculture - that's why I'm here.

We have 7 chickens: one rooster and the rest are hens. We originally had three hens and one rooster (all siblings, thus the same size), but wanted to expand, and were given three new hens and another rooster (for good genetics). The old rooster was then turned into coq au vin, and we started observing trouble in our chicken coop. Two of the new hens are a slightly smaller breed (Norwegian Jærhøns), and they get chased and picked on all the time. We were told to expect this in the beginning, but the problem prevailed and now we're getting frustrated that they won't just stop. The bigger chickens have a clear agenda of being nasty to the small ones - there are two feeders and plenty of room for them (they're inside only now, outside it's snowy and cold), so they could easily eat apart from each other or even in turns. Yet the big ones seek out the small ones without it being feeder related (or so it seems), and they're just being real bastards to be honest.

Having read about the problem, I have had suggestions that it could be a room issue, but they have lots of space and plenty of obstacles and such, even some veggies hanging around for them to pick at. Then there's the pecking order, but if that were the case the big ones would eat first, then allow the small ones to eat. Now they aren't even allowed on the floor of the coop. Today I tried another thing, which is to isolate them (plenty of people advise as to doing this at once when the new ones arrive). The old ones that are nasty are now in a confined area at the back of the coop (with the bare essentials) and I've put a feeder on each side of the fence so they can "eat together". I'm hoping this isn't just a shot in the dark.

Anyway, do you have any ideas? All suggestions would be greatly appreciated - it's really causing a headache that the birds can't just be friends. Their lives seem so plentiful - space to play around, a pit of sand to bathe in, lots of clean bedding (going for a deep litter situation), plenty of brooder boxes, organic feed in abundance, supplemented with fruit and veg of all sorts, yet they complain. It isn't only in diet that they have a lot in common with humans...