Market Farming

[Sojourner <sojournr AT missouri.org>]

Elizabeth Pike wrote:
> 
> Then how do deer get it (or other pathogens)??

They still GET it occasionally, but the consequences are nowhere near as
severe, and it doesn't get passed around as widely or as quickly.  I've
only seen two studies on this issue so far (diet as it affects e. coli
transmission and severity) so I'm not saying all the facts are in yet.

The study done on cattle being fed hay (control group fed grain)
indicated that while e. coli 0157 was still present, it was present in
smaller numbers, and it was far more susceptible to degradation and
eventual destruction by human stomach acids.  What this means for people
is that even if you did manage to ingest some e coli from one of these
animals, it wouldn't be able to reproduce or persist as well as e coli
from a grain fed animal.  So your chances of actually getting sick are
reduced, and the severity of any illness would also be greatly reduced.

Jury's still out, but its not a hopeless situation by a long shot.
 
> Wouldn't this take ALOT of trees to do all this??

Not really, no.  Planting trees about 60 feet apart gives you a
noticeable improvement over a treeless pasture.  An acre is roughly 207
feet square, so thats about 9 or 10 trees per acre (roughly, doing the
math in my head).  Part of the improvement is due to the increased
number and variety of soil critters that can move in and help make the
whole shebang a healthier and more varied system.

Trees in the pasture used to be quite common, but the advent of powered
farm machinery rang the death knell for that - trees were "in the way"
so down they went.

> >Even in the small orchard area I put in, I will occassionally turn
> sheep and chickens in there to clean up windfall fruit.
> 
> Deer droppings cleaned up??

LOL!  No, I imagine any deer droppings would be long ago degraded into
the soil.  I've seen deer TRACKS up here but never any deer SCAT.  It
must be here somewhere, but I've never seen any.  No matter what I do I
can't stop deer pooping all over the place - I've got 26 acres, and
there's only one other house for a mile in any direction.

> But I do want to reach my fruit, reduce insect infestations &
> disease, & control the tree's growth for maximum production.

That's why I say my views on pruning are unconventional - no matter what
the tree produces its already more than I need, I already have more land
than I need, I'm undoubtedly going to end up with more fruit trees than
I "need", so the only thing I'm interested in maximizing is my leisure
time.  <VBG>

Insect infestations are much less if the tree is situated in a healthy
system to start with, if you keep windfall fruit cleaned up (or let your
livestock do it for you), and if you don't concentrate 100s of the same
type of tree all together.  The harder the bugs have to work to find the
trees, the harder it will be for them to turn into a full-blown
infestation.  Mono-cropping, IMHO, is always a bad thing.  Diversity is
Good.  Just my opinion.

Once you start heavy pruning, you will have to keep it up.  But our
apples were almost never sprayed, seldom pruned, largely ignored, and
still produced more apples than we could use.  They were all old
varieties, now.  Many newer varieties are often much pickier and seem
more fragile than old apples.  There are only something like 22,000
different named varieties of apples, I'm sure I can find a COUPLE I can
freely abuse!  <VBG>

If you're interested, you might consider reading Gene Logsdon's "Organic
Orcharding - A Grove of Trees to Live In".

-- 
Holly ;-D
Contrary Peasant
sojournr AT missouri.org