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  • From: "marc" <marc AT aculink.net>
  • To: <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Re: Greenhouse- milk jugs
  • Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2003 15:44:08 -0700

From: "jay gee" <jgj23 AT mindspring.com>


> An open letter to Dave, Wiilie, Victor, Bob, marc and Leigh,
>
> U.S. forests have been decimated over the ages by
> wildfires, landslides, volcanic eruptions and the like.
> But geologic time moves slowly in comparison to the
> destructive capacity of homo sapiens.

I think you mean city people, don't have a clue about farms and farmin'.
Lots of the starvation over the ages is because power things Conquest, wars,
etc. Burn all the crops & the soldiers take next years seed for food. Mass
starvation and dies-offs. Lots of this in Africa. Highly productive white
farmers getting massacred & the conquerors that take over the land couldn't
grow weeds in a wetlands or manage a empty glass of water. Lots of political
and idealistic reasons they say. Plants don't care about politics or
idealism. Folks starve. Somalia the city gangs wandered round the
countryside took next years seeds and the country had famine and die-off.
Typical city locusts. Feel good today and die off tommorrow. We sent food &
it never made it to the farmers.

Got our four door pickup back from Jake today. He helped us out and didn't
charge us a cent. I'll take my pump rig over to someone's house, fix their
well, not charge them for labor and the church will pay for the parts. Marcy
can get haul water from town now. Had to pay $30 for 1001 gllons delivered
for the 6 weks he had the truck.

>
> I find a warm fire as appealing as you do.

Appealing? It keeps us alive and warms the greenhouse. The folks across the
way have a handmade fireplace built sometime in the 1800's. Their
great-great-great grandpa built it. Still works to heat their 800 and some
odd square foot house. Two 8 by 15 onch logs a night and 1 in the daytime
when it's real cold & they're in the low 60's. Rich city folks build houses
which lose more heat in an hour than ours does in a month.

> I know all
> about cold climates, winter, deep snow and being
> chilled to the bone.

You do! Neat! Where and how? I've worked in it for 35 years doing hard
manual labor. Ever have to bring in calves before they freeze to death and
you've been doing it for three days without sleep? My brother in law does it
every year around calving time. Last time we went up we helped them. No time
to party. We live out in the country. Get no snow plows here. Have no salt
and the power goes out a lot when the weather makes us need it most.

> As farmers, most of you have access to manure of
> various types and green plant waste.

Yep use it for fertilizer and soil improvement. Use it for bug condo's and
the chickens use bug's for protein. We get meat and eggs from them.

> If you are
> removed from the city, chances are your home has
> a cesspool or septic tank used for eliminating human
> and household wastes.

Yep. Gotta poop. Need sanitation. State requires every drop of house sewage
to go back into the ground.

> Biomass energy is downright efficient in converting
> wastes and old dead green plants into heat which
> may be transferred for home heating, water heating
> and even electric generation.

Good you got a bit of knowledge about this stuff. Keep reading. Seen many a
pile of mulch, lumber and stacks of other things smoke and sometimes turn
into big fires. I remember the fire department guys in gradeschool talking
about the reactions that even dirty rags can do mmm.... bout 45 years ago.
It's good you city folks are keeping some of the knowledge alive there.

You learn these things early on a farm. Piles of anything on a farm is
something to keep an eye on. Piles of split wood and logs are wonderful
skunk condo's and can burst into flame cause the bottom composts. That's why
it's good to stack it.Probably work great for heating houses and lighting
bulbs if you don't farm. Converting them to heat takes nutrients from the
land. Better to use things like wood, coal, oil, Natural gas, LPG, etc. Long
time to compost is good home heating stuff, short time to compst is good for
soil improvement. Time is measure in planting cycles and the cutoff is one
year. Over a year is heating fuel.

It would work in the desert. Fertilize the sand and plant and water like a
hydropnics set up. Grow biomass for heat and electric. Incompetent to do on
a farm that's trying to grow nutritional food without the chemical
companies.

There's a farm entrepenuership for ya Jay. Go for it! Any land in the Mojave
available? Probably no water.

Sewage from the home could be interesting to look at as never use that stuff
on the crops. Have to get a special sewage permit and state license. Make us
add a fence as it's a processing plant and pay for water tests to make sure
we aren't polluting. Require a state certified Waste Plant Operator to
certify once a month. Damn city folks environmentalists and consumer
protection adult children have raped the farm waste conversion law that used
to allow us to do things like that. Everything has to be monitored and their
looking at manure next. Even fish water from the tanks is considered fish
sewage and must be licensed and monitored with the State Health Department
even for on farm disposal.

> Other byproducts
> include methane gas (trappable and usable for
> any natural gas purpose) and peat which may be
> dried and burned like wood.

Sounds neat. Maybe the urban sprawl locusts with big houses and lots of
disposable income would be able to have the extra time and money to play
around with it. They usually buy up the best land and plant houses on it.
Damn big ole houses seem to pop up over the hills like toadstools overnight.
About as toxic too. I somehow gotta figure out how to feed all the breeders
of more breeders of bright ideas of what I ought to do with my farm. They
keep coming up with ideas that have nothing to do with food production.

Maybe they could plant biomass since they don't need nutritional soil and
can use them nasty chemical fertilizers. Maybe it'd distract them from suing
the farmer next door to them 'cause a damn cow farted or pissed in front of
their trophy wife when she was off to jog in the open space the county
condemned from the old farming couple over the hill rather than allow them
to sell it for their retirement. Last we heard they went to LA to live with
their kids and got kicked out and are living in some cardboard boxes with
the other homeless types. Tried to reach then - we got a bit of extra room -
No luck - their kids fell out of touch with them.

> You all might spend a little time searching out
> biomass information on Google while enjoying
> your fires.

There's that city boy pleasure word "enjoy". Lots of folks only have email.
They pay by the message and it's length. No browser capability. They use
cell phones and have to roam. $0.47/minute, last I heard. Folks a few miles
south of us have no electric. Power Company needs $25,000 to run the poles.
No computer and a propane frig. They use a solar charger to charge their
'AA's to run the little radio they picked up at the auction for a quarter.
Walk into town for church. Must be good exercise I figure as they seem to
talk alot and smile as they're be-bopping along.

> One day the trees might run out.

Nope. Trees run out cause the pleasure oriented city Locusts keep breeding
and breeding and raping the land. In California they shut down half the
states areas of agriculture to keep them pools filled in LA. Took a lot of
trees to build them condo's.

Our farms are built with old red brick and been around since the 1800's.
Them city folks'll knock down a house and put one right up on the same spot
to get a layout they like. In Boulder, CO even those socially and
environmentally awesome paragons of prairie dog preservation will knock down
an entire house and dig up the foundation and damn near build the same
thing. You know I've been to a worlds fair, a hangin' and a buzzard hump and
ain't never seen nothin' like that! Probably even do it in Berkeley - home
of the worlds smartest enlightened ones. Maybe I should start burning US
flags. Naw..Just kidding.

> Jay Gee
> not a farmer - but interested in farming
>

Marc Nameth





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