Homestead mailing list

[Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>]

Lynda wrote:

> You are starting from a false premise.  The reason the non-natives are doing 
> so well is Round-Up, Oust, soil disruption, fertilizers, pesticides and so 
> forth and so on.
>
> People go in and plow under the natives because they brought with them the 
> plants they were familiar with.  With all that man made help they did well 
> to the detriment of the natives.
>  
I'm really not following why chemicals should affect plants from another 
region more so than "natives".  No one really cares that much exactly 
which pretty little flowers grow in the ditch, as long as some plant is 
there to prevent erosion and produce our oxygen.  Your attachment to 
them is purely emotional.

> AND, not planting natives just because you are peeved at what you call 
> enviro-whatsits is just plain silly.
>  
Many "natives" are useful to us as well.  This is a false conclusion.

> Your seed mixes are there because someone is making M-O-N-E-Y.  Not because 
> they will do best but because some seed company could make $$.
>
> You want legumes, there are lots of natives, Trifolium macrocephalum, T. 
> wormskioldii, and Vicia americana, just to name a couple or three.
>  
If you try to buy these "native" seeds, you'll pay a whole lot more.  
BTW, T. macrocephalum is an annual, of no use to me.  I need forages 
that are instantly available the moment the rains begin, not six months 
later.

So the whole of OSU research into forage crops is all about making 
someone money?  I mean, I'm cynical about everything corporate as well, 
as you know, but you really should talk to someone who has had 
experience planting all these crops and understands why they're so 
useful.  For instance, reed canary grass is considered to be about the 
only option for vigorous forage production on swampy fields, and it's 
definitely one of the plants banned under the New England states' new laws.

Maybe farmers can be overburdened to the point of being convinced to 
give up farming altogether, to let the competitors make more money, and 
return more of the land to nature.

> As to permaculture, that would be defined as "an ethic of caring for the 
> earth and interacting with the environment in mutually beneficial ways" and 
> how is that going to end simply because folks learn to use natives and 
> collect their own seeds?
The burden of proof is upon you to show that planting non-natives cannot 
also fit in with this notion.

Much of Mollison's work focuses on Acacia.  That's because you can 
harvest as much biomass in five minutes from a patch of Acacia as you 
could in half an hour of clover mowing.  There's only one species, or 
perhaps two, that are reliably hardy here.  Out here the temperature 
will inevitably tumble to -10 C. or lower, and the tops on all Acacia 
species will be killed.  The "invasive" ones are precisely those which 
sprout again from runners, obviously, for without this ability the crown 
would just die out.

I discovered this loony attack on our freedoms as a result of 
researching online the things I read about in Mollison's book.  Over and 
over you'll see Acacia praised by researchers for its ability to produce 
biomass for African villages, for example, but in the US it's under 
attack.  This discrepancy between the academic and the commercial is 
what led me to look deeper into the matter, and I found that nearly 
every cover crop --those commonly used by people with good sense who've 
actually gardened or farmed-- is under attack as well.  Obviously white 
clover is invasive, and that's what we like about it.  I can't help but 
think, beyond the obvious attempt to kiss the timber companies' arses, 
and getting the message to illegal aliens that the party is working for 
the "true natives", that it's just better if Americans are stripped of 
their ability to compete effectively in as many ways as possible, for 
the need to have a nation consisting exclusively of dependent, naive 
consumers is perhaps the most pressing of all.

Monsanto will receive their big gift later from the "natives only" 
wackos when they demand the removal of all the big-leaf trefoil (L. 
uliginosus) from the ditch along US 101, and everywhere else.

Bill