Mary Cook

John--on the question of humanure being C rich. Ours is mixed with sawdust (and TP of course) and used almost exclusively on fruit trees (I have some doubt about the safety of using it in the vegetable garden but it all gets used up in the orchard so it's a moot point). I've noticed that it doesn't seem to be that potent and concluded that it's because we don't pee in the outhouse--we have a pisseria in the house, and I dump the urine bucket on various compost piles--some next to gardens, some woodrot piles on the edge of the woods. I saw a chart in New Internationalist years ago that showed that most of the Nitrogen and phosphorus humans excrete is in the urine. So if I want to goose a fruit tree more I try to find some manure--because animal manure is pretty much always mixed with bedding (high C) but the animals are peeing into it too so, assuming their N and P is similar, this is more potent on the nitrogen. If your arrangements are similar that might explain the surfeit of clover.

Doug--where does your NPK come from? Sometimes you have to jumpstart the refertilization of your soil. I do bring in manure from outside, as well as chicken manure from my own chickens; compost from my kitchen, the chickens, leaves, weeds from the garden, and sometimes from my woodrot piles in the woods (whose decomposition is hasted by getting urine dumped over them). Taking leaves from the woods is not good but I clear our nearly mile long lane, where the fertility from the leaves is undesirable, chop them with a lawnmower and stash them in wire bins for a year to turn into leafmold. So not all the fertility is coming from within the same garden but most is coming from my own place. I don't apologize for bringing in manure when I can get it--it helps the soil so much, and the person with pet horses and the one with goats are both glad to get rid of some surplus as they don't use it all themselves.

Well I'm gonna contradict others and say, if leaving my land alone was what improved the soil it would have been in great shape after a couple of decades of just being mowed every three years. It may be true that a couple of centuries ago, before anyone started farming here, this ridgetop was wooded and had good soil. Likely prior to 50 years ago when this became a land trust, it was farmed in non-ideal ways that stripped the soil. But also likely that it was always heavy clay. It varies--I put my orchard at the uppermost end where there is more sand in the soil, thus good drainage deeper; next my main garden in the next best soil. Adding a lot of organic matter, whether compost or leafmold or manure, is what has helped the most I'd say; I also add coarse sand. As for mulch, that seems like a given rather than a soil amendment. Although I've wondered how people with larger acreages manage; seems like it'd be hard to come up with enough mulch. The downside is mostly the mulch I can find is hay, and it all has clover and grass seeds in it that sprout and then I have to spend lots of time digging them out. What makes the MOST difference? Really, it's all these things. In my opinion you HAVE to add organic matter or some sort, to replace what you remove and feed the miniature livestock in the soil--and you have to mulch to keep the soil cool and moist in the summer and weedless--ha ha, okay, fewer weeds. Cover crops over winter help too, though I think of them as sort of a substitute for compost/manure/leafmold--if the cover crop doesn't take (usually either because it was too dry or because I got the last crop out and the cover crop seeded too late and winter set in), then I'd better be sure to add some kind of OM in the spring. My worst bed is the flowerbed, which is in a place with especially heavy bad soil, but the real reason it hasn't improved much is that it's mostly perennials so I'm not able to work amendments into the soil every year. I can add enough OM and sand to get a spot in good condition before setting a new plant in, but over years the soil reverts to heavy clay.

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.

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.

I just want to say--you can be fully natural and let all your weeds stay and feed the soil, just as nature intended. You won't get much of any food out of that garden. Let's face it--gardening is inherently disturbing, co-opting nature, to redirect its energies into our desired crops. I do lots of weeding, and usually put the weeds in my compost pile so they can work together to decompose, and then be put into my garden where I think the nutrients are needed.
But this doesn't mean I try to remove all weeds. I leave a few butterflyweed, mullein, yarrow and Flower-of-an-hour because they're pretty and feed beneficials. and there are weeds that take over my beds in winter: purple dead nettle reliably in fall and again in March, when it is reliably joined by chickweed and bitter cress, These are weeds I like because they hold the soil and are easy to pull when I'm ready to plant (their flowers also delight the bees and are pretty--the dead-nettle anyway). I would like information about their utility as a cover crop but all I can find is reports from the all-weeds-are-edible-and -medicinal ideologues. The weeds I'd put in the rogues gallery are not the ones named by others, but mostly what comes in on manure (horse nettle) and mulch hay (clover and various grasses). Yeah, clover fixes nitrogen (and I'm fine with it having taken over most of the lawn) but it takes over--I've had to rip out strawberry beds twice after they got infested with clover. The grasses are hard to remove from my clay-based soil without losing lots of soil, and are especially obnoxious when coming up under (both sides of) a fence. I have one patch of flat ground for corn and sorghum, and a rotation of tomatoes. That ground gets tilled, usually once a year, then I put cardboard down between the (relatively wide) rows, with just a little hay on top. Some years it works to pull up that cardboard in September and plant winter rye and hairy vetch, scritch it in with a rake, toss compost atop any patches too hard to scritch in, and get a good winter cover going. In my 30 raised beds (slightly raised, no sides to these beds) I use just vetch or winter peas, as the rye is too hard to remove in spring--but I do plant a couple beds every year where I plan a late planting--the rye dies back if you cut it when it's shedding pollen around the end of May here...and by then it's done lots of good rootmass growth for organic matter. Often I let a bed go to maturity too, in my quest to to figure out a protocol that works for flour production. I also sometimes grow sunn hemp, if I can get seed and get it in early enough--but it dies when it frosts. And I often add daikons if I can get them in early enough, for subsoil work. Trouble with those is, instead of that 12 to 18" root diving deep in my soil, half of it extends above the soil--where it freezes and rots.
A lot of this comes back to that adage--what works for one garden may not fit with another, depending on exposure, climate, soil type, slope and your intentions.

seemed too soon to fall back on spaghetti our fave--especially since I like to put a little sausage in it and it seems like we've been eating a lot of meat lately, just finished off the last package of sausage. But I was advised to eat fish once a week, so I opened the last can of tuna fish, stirred in some mayonnaise and celery seed and finely minced onion and my husband is going to make tuna melts with it (I just made bread yesterday so fresh bread will help.) So maybe tomorrow I'll make spaghetti, and then a little more of the pound of sausage will likely go on a pizza soon, probably with leftover spaghetti sauce. Here's another leftover trick--open a quart of venison and add carrots and potatoes and onions and garlic and spice and celery, make a good stew. Also make enough dough for a two-crust pie. Then the next day--or a subsequent one--roll it out, dump in the leftover stew, adjust the liquid level if necessary, and bake. Two good meals that are both pretty easy.

Just gotta say--I disagree with a number of things in the last couple posts. I think it's a matter of geography (climate) and likely soil type as well. My carrots have done a lot better since I started planting them in rows--I used to just scatter seed in a block, which made thinning way more tedious. And planting them here and there among other things would make it far more difficult to keep them watered in the first weeks, which they need more than anything else. I've tried growing carrots in fall and got a good crop once, little or no germination the other two times--probably because in MY climate, it tends to be dry in late summer and early fall, wetter in spring and early summer. I forgot to mention in my earlier post that one key is to choose planting time with an eye on the long-range forecast; ideally you plant before a week of cloudy, rainy weather. And carrots can tolerate very cold temperatures, often surviving the winter, but a really hard prolonged freeze may cause the upper part, more exposed to the cold, to rot. A little mulch may prevent this. But you can't expect plants to actually GROW in winter--if they've gotten enough growth before hard winter sets in, some protection can allow you to harvest hardy crops all winter, or dig up root crops in spring.
What I'd like to know is why my carrots are often pale. I might try that Bolero someone recommended.

I had trouble for years--usually they did germinate, but weren't fit to harvest till fall and then would mostly be very small. Often pale as well. Here's what I do now: first of all I once read that if you plant your onions and carrots in alternating rows, each inhibits the fly that bothers the other. I tried it and it seemed to work so I keep doing it. The downside is that this means I don't plant the carrots till April, when the onions are up so the carrot rows are well marked. No wait--that's not first, first is soil prep, which I mostly do in the fall prior to planting in spring. I have clay soil, and I too have found that adding sand--I have added it to ALL my beds but especially for sure those that will have carrots. I add that after turning the soil with a shovel--I don't agree with the "tilling is a crime" idea, though I think it best to keep it to once a year. Then I add compost or preferably, leafmold, and probably sand. Then I work it with my hands till it's soft and smooth, no sizable lumps (I do this also for lettuce and spinach--other crops don't need a fine seedbed). Next, I grow Danvers or Red Cored Chantenay, two varieties that do well in clay. Then I have to water a lot because as others have said, it typically takes two or even three weeks for the dang things to emerge (yes I put a radish seed every foot or two to mark the rows) and they're planted shallowly. For me, they grow very slowly even after emergence--but when I yank the onions the first week of July and put down mulch between the now one-foot-apart rows, they seem to take off and grow faster. By then I've thinned them at least once.Mty best crop was last year, and I think it was because of the longest drought we ever had, from the beginning of June till the first frost in mid November. I watered them a thousand times or so, so they got ENOUGH water--but it was only in the rows, and probably didn't last long. So the worms or flies or whatever it is that makes those black tunnels in the top part of the carrot, barely hit at all--and therefore I was able to leave the carrots past early August, and they got bigger.

I clicked on this one for inspiration from reading others' posts, since I'm not looking forward to winter, now my least favorite season. And I second whoever said they enjoy the beauty of the first couple snows but then they want spring. I once wrote a poem about that, about how a February snow might look like a December snow but it doesn't get the same appreciation from me.
But now that I'm inspired, I'll name the greater energy I have when temperatures drop, and everything about wood heat--well, my husband does most of the work but I enjoy stacking firewood on the porch and then in its spot in the house, kindling and feeding the fire, having hot water that doesn't require burning propane, the smell of woodsmoke outside, and also using the oven a lot without feeling apologetic about the extra heat in the house. Looking through seed catalogs is another winter pleasure.