Nathan Huntley

This may not be helpful at all as it is only 1 dog  but i have a great Pyr. He showed up looking an awful mess in a rainstorm when he was just a little cotton ball looking pup. I didn't realize he was looking for work.
I never trained him. I wouldn't know how. He made us and the chickens and whatever else we bring home his clan and he guards us with his whole being. Pigs, lions, coyotes, bobcats, skunks, raccoons, they have just started staying away. We now have a rather large flock of free range birds and there is no way we could do this without him.
He eats but he supliments what we give him with gophers or the like. We raise the extra stock for him. He only eats a hen when its already gone and given to him. He is well well worth his keep.
His coat is amazing. He gets in the nasty mud and is snow white in an hour. Sprayed by a skunk? Can't smell it the next day. He needs brushing as the weather turns but this is my great pleasure.
He adores my son. If a car comes down the driveway he places himself between the car and my son and barks. I believe he would take on the car if it came to that. He is also so kind and gentle to all of us. He is a member of our family but like the rest of us he earns his keep on the homestead. We will get another one soon for him to train. I guess they don't live long and that already hurts my feelings but its also life on the homestead. Fluffy has been the single best addition to our homestead since we started.

Arthur Ashe said "Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can." There is no praise there. There is no blame there. There is only a goal and the next step toward it. While I do personally still avoid blame and crave praise, I am taking steps to free myself from both even as I try to free myself from plastic. I think this is as much the point as anything else. Freeing myself from the pollution within while i free myself from the pollution without.

Eggs are higher than Tommy Chong!

elisa rathje wrote:you might like our bicycle grain mill. we made a film about milling grain at home:

pedal-powered grain milling at home for self-reliance, in the appleturnover farmhouse
https://youtu.be/U7t8cxdPcpE

elisa

This looks really cool. Part of our farmstead business is we recently opened a small farm kitchen bakery. We have gone back to pre-milled flour because the kitchenaid and the vitamix don't keep up with the demand and don't grind as fine as we would like. They were good for just us but...

Anyway this looks cool. Does anyone have other suggestions? I'm certainly not against a plug-in device that will mill fine and in quantity. I would maybe consider doing both the pedal power and something electric for preparedness and long term but also to keep up with demand now. We primarily mill hard red wheat but also do small amounts of rye and a few other like triticale and einkorn. So anyone with experience similar that could point us in the right direction we would be grateful.

I have watched a couple of her presentations. Exciting work. Excellent science. The reason her work is sometimes undervalued is that her books have mystical tone and shamanism is a constant theme. So sometimes science minded folks can't seperate the spiritual journey from the scientific value of the work and throw the baby out with the bathwater. At any rate I encourage everyone to read the actual studies and decide for themselves about the methodology before they read her book. At any rate it is clear by her research that plants can learn in many different ways in spite of thier lack of central nervous system.

Michael I do hope I am not too late and reviving an old thread no one cares about. You and I have a lot in common sir. Your climate it a bit hotter but we are both very dry. I am in a southwest Oklahoma. But the biggest thing we have in common in soil. I am sand above sandstone on 40 acres of dust bowl and bad farming degraded landscape. My scrub tree is oak but I do have some mesquite and some redbud and some black locust. All I can tell you what I have been doing that has been working and what hasn't.
1st the biomass stuff is no joke and you are well on the right track. I suspect that your soil is about like mine judging from height of trees. Mine is about 3 feet before you hit stone. That is the bad news. The good news is that once you hit that 3 feet that is where the water flows. Some of my neighbors will even get a seep in a place where the soil is thin. Not me but some do.

So two things have worked for me and another I belive will from small experiments. 1st is biomass in spots. The black locust tree and the redbud rain down organic matter so I will dig a hole right down to the sandstone and way too wide for the tree I want. No less than 4 feet round. Plant the tree you want right next to that locust (or mesquite in your case) and fill that whole thing up with compost. I know it's a ton of compost but it's amazing how fast this will expand. Now put in your hardy ground cover. More nitrogen fixing will be key as this is likely what your soil lacks most. Also never pee anywhere but on your trees. That mesquite should shield from deer or the like as your tree grows up. On the nitrogen fixing front I bet it is fixing but not enough is share because it moves away so quickly in the soil. Remember that sharing happens at the roots. My redbuds don't seem to fix until I trim them. Then I get a flush. So that is my suggestion. Coppice or heavily trim that mesquite once a year to extend that growth. Do before or during the rainy season.

Now for your water holding. Bentonite in small amounts will help a lot. Too much makes concrete so do a handful for a square yard or so at first. If you add more you get water retention. Of that what you want, say for the bottom of your swales, then cover it thinly but completely over the surface and then add a layer of rock free soil over top of that to keep in place. Then fill it to get it started. Before you add the cover soil layer it should like it snowed an even covering on the ground. This will be easier and cheaper than concrete.

Next one I have not expiramented with but will begin to do so this fall and winter. Biochar. There a bunch of ways from cheap and easy to expensive and complex to make it. It makes great grit for your chickens  (they may not need it on your soil but still) and when it comes out of the far end it is activated. You want it activated because of its not it will rob the soil of nitrogen until it is and you can't have that right now. This should help get your soil life rebounding quickly and it can easily be spread across the broad acre once activated  (you can also use compost tea and bubble it with an air stone) just by spraying or spreading. Anyway I hope that there is something here that works for you. I would love to gear about your progress as I belive we have a similar situation and maybe a bit of cross pollination can help us both!

Works great! Thank you Paul and team! You folks are awesome!