Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

Fascinating about the problem with Xmas and with WWOOFers. We see some people 
buy a live tree and plant it outdoors for a Xmas tree. I suspect the problem 
with WWOOFers is even worse with hosts that don't really have much to teach 
and just need grunt work done. And suspect for some it's just a brief break 
from college.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 12/25/2010 at 6:12 PM John D'hondt wrote:

>From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
>> Sure, add more. We're not in the city anymore, not isolated but too far
>> from stores to bicycle and if predictions hold horses will be very
>> expensive. Rural or city, my best guess is too many things will start
>> getting too expensive in a matter of months - and hope I never see it.
>Gas
>> #1, food a close second. I don't quite like the word crash because it
>> sounds too all or nothing. It appears this slow motion economic
>> contraction is irreversible for multiple reasons. And what we're seeing
>> already is desperate cuts in several state and city budgets, loss of
>many
>> social services and safety nets - and some pension defaults dead ahead.
>> So it looks like gradual worsening of family finances and a lot of big
>> bumps in the road, more downhill than uphill. With local networking
>pretty
>> iffy for many of us the Internet is a poor substitute. Still it's nice
>to
>> be able to communicate over vast distances with so many.
>
>At the very moment there must be thousands of horses, definitely in
>Ireland,
>looking for a home for next to nothing.
>But whether it is a good idea to get one is another question. Horses do
>not
>need to get shoed. They can be made used to working without expensive
>blacksmith work. But to be useful they will need some harness; collar with
>haimses, straddle and bridgins, head collar and bit and at least a cart
>which people will find much more expensive than buying even a trained
>horse.
>I could buy at least 20 good horses here now for the price of one new neck
>collar. But I won't do that for I got a few already each with their own
>harness for the leather has to fit the horse.
>Working with a horse also requires a learning curve from the owner. It is
>not quite as easy as driving a tractor and if you try to drive horse and
>cart like a tractor you are likely to loose the cart the first time you
>drive in or out of a field that has a gate or pillars.
>Good to know also is that a big horse,16 hands and up, will likely eat as
>much as two cows. In my location a horse that size needs about 2 acres of
>grazing to survive for the year. But luckily there are small pony races
>that
>pound for pound out-pull the big ones.
>
>As to networking in a basically hostile neighborhood....it is hard enough
>to
>keep going with what we have been doing for over twenty years. I reared
>four
>fantastic children and thaught them all the jobs going to survive and then
>the three oldest found a mate that wanted something else from life leaving
>us a bit understaffed at most times. I then tried to find maybe a wwoofer
>or
>two who could fit in what we are doing here. Must have had a hundred over
>the last few years and found half a dozen who would fit in. Unfortunately
>these all have a goal in life, know what they want and have plenty of
>drive
>to get it. They came here for a limited time to learn something specific
>and
>left.                                                  . A few
>of these wanted to stay but they would have destroyed us if we had let
>them.
>I then advertised to get a young family here offering to share everything
>we
>have, plenty of food, a dry roof over the head a chance to live with and
>in
>nature. No takers. Nada. Well I suppose this might be even more tricky
>than
>finding a good single person.
>Most people still can't see what is coming and that is that.
>>
>> Without kids at home we don't really do Xmas or shopping with the
>madding
>> crowd, so 25th is just another day here, and long as the ground doesn't
>> freeze I can get some more wheelbarrow work done. The next two months
>> won't let me do much with the garden.
>>
>
>It is the same here Paul even if we do have some adult children and even
>some small grand children not too far off. A long time ago when we were
>still in suburban Belgium we were part of a neighborhood group of young
>parents. There are about a dozen couples and a few singles who apart from
>mutual help all the time came together once a month to talk openly and in
>complete honesty about a particular subject. One month that was about Xmas
>and all the hype surrounding it. We found to our surprise that just about
>everybody there hated Xmas and everything to do with it but we all went
>along with the mass hysteria because that was the only thing imaginable.
>Most of us would have preferred to live with a primitive tribe along the
>Amazon that had never heard of Xmas.
>That two hour long meeting definitely changed the life of this family. We
>became eccentric while thinking that all the hype was not necessary unless
>life through the year was too empty and without purpose. One can teach
>children anything, even that once a year we have to chop down a small tree
>and then see it die inside the house for a while. You can also teach
>children that a 60 foot tall living tree outside is something else again
>and
>that there needs to be a very good and better reason than "everybody does
>it" to kill a tree.
>
>End of rant, all the best for the new year,
>john
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Livingontheland mailing list
>Livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
>http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/livingontheland