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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Closed loops: homesteading, permaculture, biodynamics and more
  • Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 11:52:03 EDT

> If only I could persuade that septic tanks are a waste of the finest
manure in the world.

It wasn't designed for this purpose, the design was pragmatic for a septic
field, but when I had the field dug I was flush for cash (ha! flush for cash,
I
love it!) and opted for a rather large tank and field, 1100 gallons and 900'
of field. That field is now pasture grown over with fescue and clover whose
roots are deep enough to take advantage of it. It's not the most efficient
use
of the nutrients, but not a total waste either. Gray water isn't put into
the
septic system so the arrangement should last about 10,000 years.

>My design is to grow only what I consume.

Hear, hear! We talk a lot about how farms will feed people in the future,
but another reality may be that people will be expected to produce their own
food much as they are expected to brush their own teeth and wipe their own
.....
nose. To every prospective CSA'er and market gardener I talk to, I urge them
to try to supply their own table first and then see where it goes from there.


That's my design too. I am surprised at how much of theme this has become
for this homestead while being largely unconsidered before. The
concentration
on growing all we eat is not any more important that the idea of eating all
we grow.

I need to find a better way to express this, but the effort and economic
distance between the garden and the house is small (the gardens are 1000'
from the
house so this metaphor works) but as soon as produce and products reach the
front gate, the economic distance is much, much greater. By the time it
reaches town, the distance is infinite. That is, while it is relatively easy
to
feed yourself, it is much, much more effort to put that much food into the
market.

Of course, I have a house full of teens and pre-teens and sometimes a whole
pig is just an appetizer!

>Of all manures I wish I had access to horse

Horse manure all around is the best. A horse here is indispensible. He
plows, harrows, hays, and pulls logs. But I get an S10 load of horse manure
twice a week using gasoline I as going to use anyway (manure is a bonus, not
the
reason for the trips). From all sources I've brought in about 25 tons of
horse
manure so far since fall. I can't keep it up forever, but it's like a
biological savings account.


>But what will we say to
>those millions of urbanites and suburbanites that we urge home food
>production upon? To feed themselves, gardeners must feed the soil. How
>shall they do that on postage-stamp lots?

This post caught me in a (thankfully) rare flight of pessimism. I had just
finished reading an article (http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3702#more) that
shows how the average yield of grains per hectare has gone from 1 1/4 tons
(metric) when I was a child to more than 3 tons now of days and it has done
this
by genetic skulduggery and artificial nitrogen fertilizer.

Now, one sacrifices maximum yields per square foot (if God had intened us to
use the metric system there would have been ten apostles instead of twelve!)
when one expands to a scale that requires machinery, even horse drawn
machinery. Going back to the yields of 1960 on the million acre wheat farms
would put
the world in starvation in a hurry. But that same area tended by hand with
diverse crops including wheat would more than feed us and to spare. IF we
had the soil nutrients to do so. Alas, that's a reall big IF because even as
we
speak we are eroding away what soil there is. And I can testify having done
it most of my adult life that soil building, even with tons and tons of high
quality manure and other materials brough in from outside ... it's slow and
patient work. It simply will not be rushed. Ten years work can wash away in
an
hour if precautions are not taken.

Almost twenty years ago (and when I was almost twenty years younger) doing
the prep work on this soil was gut busting hard work ...inhospitable clay
that
would bake like concrete on a hot spring day. Now any old feeble geezer
could
prepare the largest bed in an hour. In fact, most beds can be planted on
without any preparation at all but I still turn them with a shovel between
crops
because I like to. So when I go about and with the small-holder's eye size
up
each plot of ground I see stuck here and there an imagine what a person could
grow there, I am all too aware of what it would take to make that patch of
clay, or sand, or such into a garden spot.

And then I am less hopeful. </HTML>




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