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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Water Crisis Coming Soon
  • Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2008 15:06:48 EST



> >There is plenty of water in the desert, just not enough to the millions of
> people and millions of acres of crop land.

Yes, my comment would have been better stated to say there is no water in the
desert for the current misuse of the desert.

Many places have limiting factors. Here (in non-drought times) it's
levelness. Agriculture has to be on the relatively rare glacial valleys and
shoulders
of hills and mountains. My place is high up toward the Eastern Continential
Divide (which is three miles away by road or 2/3rd mile away line of sight.
The mountains are steep and the soil on them is shallow. On my own farm, the
arable land is mainly one shoulder half way up the ridge. The rest of the
flat
land, the bottom land near the creeks, is a skree of alluvial stones with a
light coating of soil. It is ideal for tough grasses and so it is in hay
fields and pasture.

There is some sort of mysterious draw of water several feet underground and
near the base of ridge (cold side) that extends part of the way under the
field
we use for grain and potatoes. Apparently even during the Death Valley
weather we had midsummer, the corn and potatoe roots found their way to it
and we
had marvelous crops of those things. Beans would hardly grow there and the
squashes not at all.

Farming the edge of a receding seasonal lake would be the max! I've always
held that we can reincarnate in any direction in time. Here the
pre-Cherokee
people did as the Egyptians and waited for the Holston River to recede and
planted corn, beans, and squash in the silt. That's one of the reasons
artifacts
from that period are a bit rare. Alas, it's the same here as everywhere.
The South Holston Lake obliterated all traces of some of the best farmland in
Tennessee.

James




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