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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Beyond organic/ was seeds
  • Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2006 08:34:33 -0700


Cheryl, we'd be interested in hearing your plans and approach to growing and
marketing there in MO, esp with all that goat manure to kickstart your
operation.

We know plenty of small farmers and market growers are avoiding bankruptcy by
finding niche markets and value added food products, but what about the
biggest part of our food budgets? Our starting point here, like Soilmakers,
is the conviction that building healthy soil with high humus levels can be
the most economical and profitable - not to mention sustainable - way of
growing. And personally I believe sustaining the farmer or grower is the
first principle of sustainability. Without growers who can afford to grow,
there simply won't be any kind of growing.

We're way beyond organics here. We should have learned something in the 50 or
60 years since J.I.Rodale met Sir Albert Howard in London. Let's think
return on investment and labor, whether it's backyard or market garden.

A couple months ago we debated raised beds or whatever you want to call
them. Most growers around the country would likely rule out permanent beds of
any sort for anything but backyard gardens, but I disagree. Too many suffer
from the myth of "get big or get out". Plenty of farmers go broke working
100 or 1,000 acres when they could make a profit on one acre. Which is
better? They claim intensive bed growing is too much work, and maybe it would
be for 1,000 acres. But when they can produce several times more per acre or
square foot with intensive beds, they don't need all that acreage or all that
expensive equipment they went in debt for. And if they combine intensive beds
with appropriate no-till techniques, saleable varieties and local marketing,
they have a good shot at making a decent living by farming. That would be a
realistic option for 20 or 30 million people with meaningless jobs, who could
turn to growing for local markets and support their families far better than
slave wages at China-Mart. Too, the time may not be far off when there are no
other ways to live. We may not have a choice then.

paul, tradingpost@riseup.net
---------------

The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not
television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism. Only
those who know the most about it can appreciate how little we know about it.
- Aldo Leopold in Round River, 1933
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********

On 3/25/2006 at 6:31 PM Cheryl Modjeski wrote:

>Hi everyone,
>I joined one of the soil lists a while back and then went on no mail
>because
>things got crazy in my life and in the end DH left. I have not gone back
>to
>the lists until this change was made and it started coming into my mail box
>by itself again. It could not have come at a better time. I live with my
>11 year old daughter, on a 20 acre place in south central Missouri, that
>has
>a couple greenhouses and several large growing areas. There are many
>different verities of Iris and Day Lilies as well as Daffodils and many
>other flowers. We have a barn full of goat manure. So... I am going to
>grow a market garden and save some seeds and see if I can't "save the
>farm..."
>I have a lot of books, and I have a lot to learn. They tell me this place
>was kept pretty well chemical free for the last 30 years so I am seeking
>methods of gardening that will help me keep it that way. I do not post
>often but I read the list and am hoping to learn from everyone here.
>
>
>Sweet Spring Garden Treasures
>Cheryl Modjeski
>Birch Tree, Mo. 65438
>
>paperrain@semo.net






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