Jeff Hodgins

So we have been running the farm on zero outside inputs for 2 years with no animals on the farm. We decided not to use nitrogen fertilizer urea because our soil is rich in organic matter and urea would allow for faster digestion of that material by soil life. The soil is feeding the plants so we don't need fertilizer. If the soil was lacking OM I would have probably used some localized fertilizer.
We want to keep our soil good so we have a few ways to do that. 1 planting fast growing short term crops together with long term crops in order to get the newly cultivated area filled with plants as quickly as possible. 2 allowing weeds to grow to a substantial size before cutting. This isn't giving a direct profit because we have no animals there yet but any living plant releases root exudates to feed other organisms that work chemically on soil. This improves the structure of the soil. The plant also stores any nutrients that it can absorb, nutrients that would be lost to gasification if the soil were bare. 3 maintaining a mixture of plants. 4 Pruning. In many areas we planted bananas but we let the bushes and trees regrow a few times before changing them out for other crops species. This is important if you don't have enough seed or time to cover everything with cover crops. 5 limited soil disturbance after the initial planting.

Newborn piglets yesterday there is no picture option.
My pigs are currently on a diet of corn and wild weeds from the fields around the area.
Soon we will be moving them to our farm where we will grow all of their food. They will have ample sources of carbohydrates and protein although I'm a little more concerned with making sure they get enough protein. It will be very easy for the pigs to meet their energy requirements with the main energy feeds being sugar cane, bananas and taro. These feeds are all low in protein and that is where the protein supplement plants come into play. There are many natural weeds that will be eaten by them but there are also lots of inedible weeds that can become a problem in the tropics especially if selectively grazed. Besides these we are growing a few species for protein supplementation. Sweet potato, jack fruit leaf and seeds, potion pea leaf and possibly the seeds. Rose Apple leaf is eaten by people yet no information is available about feeding it to animals. The same can be said about Cedro odorata. There seem to be varios types of perennial sunflower growing so these will need to be reproduced. I really wish I had more volume of protein and from a more diverse group of plants. Another good one is beans especially soy. We have lost our soy seed but we will buy more soon and this should fill the protein gap for both pigs and humans. Peanuts are also great but like beans they require work open soil and sunlight. We also have a few mulberry trees. Hopefully this mix will supply all the feed requirements for the animals

This is our shower. https://youtube.com/shorts/bCpFTkXGTuw?si=01Geu5ZsxLA42fT9

https://youtube.com/shorts/AIqxpWRY58A?si=gAfUp5HWXPUt5lUY progress

https://youtube.com/shorts/f0tWyNpojbw?si=qyfWhn8i4yv9k996 this is a more recent look.

Normally you would take dead or yellow leaves from a banana tree but you wait until the leaf is substantially yellow or dieing before cutting it this is important because you don't want to go cutting green leaves from the plant Willy nilly as they say. It is even more important not to take leaves when the plant is producing the fruit at this stage the plant will naturally start to look more yellow. That being said if you have lemon grass under your banana you want to cut as much banana away as possible to allow enough light for the lemon grass to survive. So in areas like that you can go a bit harder on the leaves of the younger banana plants and you can also reduce the plant to one mother one sucker. Bewear or tall banana varieties because when they are ripe it's a huge stem that can break branches and it requires a long tool and harvest tequnique. They also take more time to produce a rack of bananas. With proper technique it is possible to harvest purple bananas without injury or damage to other crops.

Key species for the future and some techniques. We don't want our big trees to stop is from having all the other stuff that we want. Our strategy has been planting trees far enough apart. Take a tree like cinnamon, it can be grown at high density because no fruit needs to form just bark. Pineapple and sugarcane seem to share a space well because they occupy different strata. And pineapple with banana is a win because when your pineapple plants look big enough to flower you can do a reset and cut all the bananas easily and that should give you a pineapple cycle. Potion pea planted densely with anything will require pruning. Sugarcane will start to have infection of young shoots if lightning and airflow are not adequate. The infections are mostly red rot and cane smut. I think that sugarcane is a great intercrop plant if older leaves are frequently removed. Thyme tomatoes and other crops have done well near sugarcane if light is considered when pruning and weeding is essential. The jury is still out on whether Taro and sugarcane make good companions. Taro is not much shorter than sugarcane so the have more direct competition for light and space. The area where I had Taro and sugarcane was not weeded well enough to use as an example but the Taro there were still small and so I didn't harvest any from the area yet.

Some pictures