Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

That's always germane; it's what our list is about.  We can't be 
self-sufficient in a bunker (like some survivalists seem to imagine). It's 
about self-reliant communities, learning to live local, less and less 
dependent on fossil fuels.  Food, water, clothing, shelter, and human contact 
are the necessities of life.

   “If economics is reconceived in the service of community, it will begin 
with a concern for agriculture and specifically for the production of food. 
This is because a healthy community will be a relatively self-sufficient one. 
A community’s dependency on outsiders for its mere survival weakens it. It is 
often unable to develop the policies it desires for the sake of its own 
members, since its survival depends on terms dictated by others. The most 
fundamental requirement for survival is food. Hence, how and where food is 
grown is foundational to an economics for community.”
   --Herman Daly and John Cobb
http://www.serve.com/ecobooks/comgood.htm

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 5/14/2006 at 6:33 AM J Bailey wrote:

>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.
>>
>>