Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[charlotte plummer <lovedavid2@yahoo.com>]

Hi I am sorry but I have to disagree with you.  My Dad put up solar panels in the eighties and said he was money well spent.  He even got a tax deduction for it.  He a coal stove also installed made in Germany.  He has to work a little to keep it going but he says it is worth it.  He 85 and still going strong.  I also heard somewhere the solar panels or materials are coming down in proce.  They will be making cheaper ones soon.  Charlotte

TradingPostPaul <tradingpost@riseup.net> wrote:
> Robert, I thought their season extension was interesting, but to tell the
> truth that solar installation had to be financed by thousands in charitable
> donations from somewhere. The solar had to cost far more than the
> greenhouses themselves. They're a nonprofit, but from a business standpoint
> it would be suicide.
>  None of us can repeat their setup and repay the cost
> through our sales. Market farming is a slim profit margin business at best
> today without a huge investment in solar to pay off. Energy costs are
> already putting some farm sectors out of business and it's not just fuel
> but the energy going into building machinery, transporting food, plus the
> fossil fuels that make pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizer. People are
> going to be forced to grow without those energy inputs. 
>
> The arguments about technology saving our butts have all been answered.
> Technology can only increase efficiency, not create energy. I favor wind
> power but all the alternatives cost more money than any government can
> afford and far more than the public is willing to sacrifice for. The bad
> news is most of the cost of solar now comes in the equipment you have to
> buy to use it, and these high dollar gems like batteries and inverters
> don't come down. Rising demand is
>  forcing prices up already. Few people
> have any idea how unrealistic it is for solar to save us from rising oil
> prices. Or realize that solar manufacture takes as much energy as building
> a car. As the cost of fossil fuel keeps rising the cost of energy to
> manufacture solar must rise. There are no alternatives that will let our
> civilization keep up our energy standard of living. Hard fact: If anything
> else packed as much punch for the cost, we'd jolly well be using it already
> instead of oil. So the alternatives will bankrupt us. I've studied this
> from every known angle. All this modern "progress" from the Industrial
> Revolution on was fueled by cheap energy. Mainstream experts of all stripes
> know this and know cheap energy is over. I'd love to have alternatives
> because there's no light at the end of the tunnel.
>  
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1464050,00.html
> http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2155717
>
> Sorry but I have to disagree with some of those points you made -
> historians know it was not the Bomb that ended WW II, and we do not have
> the capability or money to switch it all to solar, and Japan has been in
> economic trouble for years and is hopelessly tied to our own economic
> decline - nor would Japan save our butts if they could. 
>
> I wish all of that was a bad dream. Unfortunately most people won't or
> can't face facts because of what they'd have to do. Still, there are
> millions in this country who need to be more self sufficient in food,
> growing more of their own, swapping with neighbors etc. because they can't
> make ends meet. Two or three generations ago people knew how. They don't
> now. But those who do learn again how to live on the land - without relying
> on fossil fuel inputs -
>  will be more secure. I promote that. It's an
> individual choice.
>
> paul tradingpost@lobo.net
>
> *********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
>
> On 11/30/2006 at 2:23 PM Robert Monie wrote:
>
> >Regarding the Genesis farm in New Jersey:
> >http://www.newfarm.org/features/2005/1205/genesis/sayre.shtml 
> > 
> > This excellent enterprise of nuns growing their own food recalls the
> >legacy of the monastic orders that managed to be self-sufficient during
> >the turbulent Middle Ages (see the book Monastic Gardens by Mick Hales). 
> >I can't help noticing that large solar cell array covering most of the
> >good sisters' roof that now provides at least half their energy. If the
> >solar cell innovations promised by Honda, GE, Konarka, Nanosolar, Nanosys
> >and an increasingly long line of Silicon Valley startups come to pass, by
> >2012 an array of similar size and cost could easily provide ALL their
> >energy. At least
>  one farmer has already converted his tractor to solar
> >using off the shelf equipment--
> > 
> >http://www.motherearthnews.com/alternative_energy/2002_april_may/solar_powe
> red_tractors
> > 
> > And two ladies who live in the tiny town of Paradis, Louisiana, drive a
> >solar-charged electric car--
> > http://www.lses.org/petithome.html
> > 
> > The future is not the past; and the future is going to be different from
> >anything the oil economy brought us. 
> > 
> > In facing the hard times ahead, we must be on guard against the old
> >generals'
> > folly of fighting the last war all over again. Solar electricity didn't
> >exist during the Great Depression. The atomic bomb didn't exist during WWI
> >but it did during WWII and, for better or worse, brought the war to an
> >end. Cuba may not have the capability to develop solar technology but we
> >do, and this time we have Japan on our side, as an
>  equally powerful 
> > solar electric developer. 
> > 
> >Bob Monie,
> > Using an inexpensive Carmanah solar electric system (literally something
> >new under the sun) for three years now and finding no bogey-man "problems"
> >in it. 
>
>
>
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