Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Steve Diver <steved@ipa.net>]

Greetings Art -

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, and the perspective
on your own life.  I'm sorry you lost your wife, and
faced that kind of "downsizing".   But it sounds like
you're adjusting and ready for the next phase.  Good luck.

In the 70s there was a huge back-to-the-land movement
and the feeling was there would be an economic collapse.
The collapse never came but a lot of people earned skills
with landcare, gardening, and homesteading in the process.

Carla Emory had me on her Internet radio program
about three years ago, and then two years ago I
finally met her in person at the Small Farm Conference
in Missouri.  She gave an entertaining and educational
workshop on homesteading.  She was a pioneer
in the homesteading movement and right up to her
untimely passing earlier this year she lived a simple life
dedicated to sharing her skills and knowledge with others.  

I've got friends all over AR and MO that are living
on the land and growing gardens, but few people
are truly living "off the grid."   It frankly takes a lot
of $$ to buy all the technology and gadgets that
enable that kind of lifestyle, far beyond the reach
of working class and fixed-income folk.    I guess
we'll figure out the essential aspects of self sufficiency
real fast if a collapse becomes reality.

But in the meantime there are supplies and
skills that people can acquire to prepare for
a collapse scenario.  Preserving food is
just as important as growing food.  

In addition to a few key garden tools to
prepare and plant into soil, I realized that
a scythe will be an important hand tool for
cutting hay and straw to use as mulch, lots
and lots of mulch.

Take care,
Steve Diver


art corbit wrote:

> I Steve,
>
> I was set up pretty good until I lost my wife a year ago last March. She was
> the money maker in our family (Registered Nurse with 38 years on the same
> job). I very quickly lost about every thing we had. I have been very badly
> disabled for several years and I could not pay for our home on what little
> SS I draw. I am in the process now of trying to get set back up but it is
> going to take me a while. I bought a cheap mobile home to get me by until I
> can do better. It's in a small park so I don't have mush room to work with
> either. I do have a small garden but there are so many large trees close I
> only have a small spot that gets about 5 hours of sun a day.