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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] e Small ScalRe: The Integrated Farmstead -AModel for Sustainable Agriculture

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  • From: "J Bailey" <jbmail@isomedia.com>
  • To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] e Small ScalRe: The Integrated Farmstead -AModel for Sustainable Agriculture
  • Date: Sun, 14 May 2006 06:33:49 -0700

Not sure if this is germane to the discussion or not, but we are getting a toe in on integrating our little stead with our neighbors' in some ways. We brew and make mead. He has beehives and grows grain. We make cider and he has a cider press. He mows another guy's hayfield on the corner (absentee owner who needs it kept up) and keeps all the hay. He doesn't raise his own meat anymore but will give us all the hay we need and we give him some of the meat we raise.

Another neighbor still has a lawn and we let them dump clippings in a corner of the pasture. They don't use chemicals, so we use the clipping in our compost, since we use a mulching mower on what little lawn we have. They bring home loads of kindling from a mill, and give us trailer loads. We are putting a gate into a pasture so they can keep dumping grass. They raise all kinds of interesting plants and give us plenty, we give them dried nettles (harvested on our place) for tea.

We've only been here under a year, but are sorting out all kinds of interesting relationships with neighbors. In many ways, we can look at resources adjacent to our own small place as available for use, which is really nice.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Terry Wereb" <frosted-acres@sbcglobal.net>
To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 13, 2006 7:04 PM
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] e Small ScalRe: The Integrated Farmstead -AModel for Sustainable Agriculture


Shoot, A co-op also makes it possible for those that
grow good food, to get the same type of food
(philosphy) that tahey cannot produce themselves. Isnt
trading say, a few eggs for a cobbler a barter type
co-op? If I slaughter a nice lamb, and divvy it up--
say among several people-- and get for what I
deliver-- 10 bales of high quality hay from one
person, 50 pounds of potatoes from another, a dozen
jars of preserved fruit from a third-- etc--(equal
value is not not taxed)--- then I get what I cannot
produce myself, and my neighbor gets what he cannot
produce.
The Arboretum here has a sugarbush, and every year,
one Amish family ( 16 children!!!)tap the trees, cooks
down the sap, bottles the syrup, even makes candy--
The arboretum provides the bottles and jugs,
transports the family, and even has a lean-to shed on
the Sugarhouse for the draft horses to stay in.I do
not know if the family recieves cash, but I do know
they get to take home a certain amount of the bottled
syrup for sale at their own place. Now the Arboretum
may be a "big business" of sorts, but the local Amish
community benefits just as much as the Arboretum does.
Without the arrangement, chances are that Levi's
community would not have the amount of syrup to sell
that it does- and the "English" people who know how to
do the large scale production won't do it for the
arboretum-- they have their own sites to handle.
Local production and distribution has more than one
way it can happen. Neighbor to neighbor, one local
culture to another--

I do believe someone stated here in order to best
promote local food, one has to get used to the idea of
only eating fresh foods when they are in season-
something that will be hard to explain to the person
who really believes that he or she is getting "fresh"
Washington State apples at their grocery store in May.
They have no idea that the roadside stand offering
fresh "Vine Ripened Peaches" in June is really taking
them for a ride.


--- Pat Meadows <pat@meadows.pair.com> wrote:





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