Homestead mailing list

["Marie McHarry" <mmcharry AT gmail.com>]

On 6/8/07, Lynda <lurine AT softcom.net> wrote:
> Since there really is no such animal as "a" temperate climate, that isn't
> something to judge by.

Say what? We have a longer growing season here than we used to, but
the ground is too cold for seeds to germinate before the middle of
April and hard frost is possible any time after the middle of
September. That's a temperate climate.
> ...  For starters, it is a crop you
> start indoors/greenhouse and that means it needs a mere 60 to 75 days in the
> ground.

But as James, for one, has pointed out, you can't start a commercial
crop in a greenhouse. Hemp grows wild and in profusion all over the
Middle West since it was used during WWII for rope. It reseeds itself
efficiently. Still, I'm not sure how many cuttings you'd get if you
mowed it and let in grow back. We generally get 4 cuttings of alfalfa,
if that helps the calculations.

Forgive me for being uninformed, but which part of the hemp is useful
for biofuel? I thought it was mainly the stems and leaves. If you have
to wait for the seeds, then you can only get one harvest a year around
here.

> In areas such as where I just moved from, you can easily, and I do mean
> easily, get 3 crops per year.  There are tons of areas in the U.S. where 3
> crops or even 4 are possible.

But do they have water? Right now, the Midwest is, if not in a
drought, extremely water stressed. This has become the usual pattern
over the last decade, if not longer. In Mason County, where they have
lots of groundwater, the irrigation pumps have been running since
early in May, which is way early. My sister got the electric bill for
irrigation the other day and had to lie down and fan herself.

It's an area that does get several crops a year because with reliable
irrigation, truck crops are possible: peas, green beans, pumpkins,
cukes, etc. So far, our high-value crops are sweet corn and seed corn
because they don't have to sprayed once a week with whatever pesticide
the contracting company thinks is right.
> And you do have the added advantage that this is one of those crops that
> doesn't deplete the soil but rather is a soil builder.

It really depends on what you leave behind. Top soil has improved
immensely since no-till farming was adopted and everything but the
grain is left behind. If you strip off all the biomass, you're mining
the soil, just like everyone else.
> People need to conserve, people need to figure out that it is really
> painless to shut off that light when they leave the room, that you don't
> need to turn on the forced air heating when the temps dip below 70 but
> rather put on a sweater, don't need to turn on the air conditioning when the
> temps get above 70 but rather use a fan, take better care of their vehicles,
> plan so they don't have to head off to the store daily for a quart of milk,
> etc., etc., etc.

It's amazing how quick they learn when the price of energy goes up. So
far as I can tell, price is the only thing that gets people's
attention and influences action. Right now, Illinois is in a crisis
because electric rates, which were frozen for years for several
companies, have been allowed to float. OMIGOD. It's kind of fun to
hear the moans of people who didn't give a thought to their electric
or gas bills for years; I've been paying the higher rates for years
because I'm in a co-op (and co-ops are not regulated by the Illinois
Commerce Commission). I'm sort of used to only air conditioning the
exact space I'm in and only when temp and humidity are both above 98
percent. As for winter settings, I rarely set the thermostat below 50
unless the wind is extremely bad -- and then only to keep the pipes
from freezing.
> Change of habits and getting over the ignorance of "OMG hemp is weed" and we
> would be 90% of the way to self-sufficiency in this country.
No, not 90 percent -- but it could be part of a mix.

Marie