Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Dan Conine <dconine@bertramwireless.com>]

Hi Mark,
    I don't think much of the discussion seems to be getting where you intend to be. The lack of water is your key point. I think most of us have places with at least some water available as drip irrigation or ponding. I am reading Wendell Berry's book, "The Gift of Good Land". There is a chapter on native peoples' dry land farming on the Mexican border that will probably interest you. The key is knowing your particular place. It may not seem farm-able to most of us here, but if you have the land, the idea is to understand what you can do with it. Trees or shrubs that hold the soil, plants that maximize available moisture, long fallow periods (some places in the Andes have 7 year fallow periods) in the rotation so that native plants can grow and build soil. Have you looked into the various methods of moisture capture from other dry lands (rock cairns, etc.)?
One of the factors we all must consider is the labor availability. It is hard to plan for a large operation when you haven't had much success yet to know the value per acre. Generally, an acre of land is the maximum one person can take care of without machinery (oil). We adjust from there to hire help, cut back the amount of land, or use machines (or animals) to do the work. If the land is a type that requires hand work to prevent erosion and to selectively tend to integrated crops, then the primary decision driver is how much it can produce with the resources available. If it doesn't have water for maximum production, then putting extra money into labor and machinery won't make it any more profitable. What kind of wild biology does the area have now? What similar things can you grow?.....those kinds of questions...not typically what the county extension agent is going to be used to dealing with.

Good luck,
Back to making hay today..

Dan C.
Belgium,WI