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market-farming - RE: [Market-farming] Critters and monocultures v polyculture

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  • From: "askpv" <askpv AT ozemail.com.au>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [Market-farming] Critters and monocultures v polyculture
  • Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 10:57:23 +1000

one of the great problems of mono cultures is the support of mono-pests.
consider strip farming,
that is,
develop a polyculture, so that the pests have to work through other species to get to the next batch of things they like.
the farm will have less of one thing, but it will be diverse and robust enough to survive several dilemmas such as drought, pests, wind, floods etc.
April
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-----Original Message-----
From: market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org]On Behalf Of Liannan88 AT aol.com
Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2003 1:40 PM
To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [Market-farming] Critters

Someone told me once that the concept of "letting the wildlife have their fair share" only works in Disney movies!  I've come to believe that.  Last year, I lost an entire field of watermelons & cantaloupes to night critters, probably armadillos, possums, pack rats & raccoons.  Never could catch them in the act, but they never bothered to eat just one, always had to have a bite out of all of them to see which was the tastiest!

I've been told that a dog or two would solve the problem, but as a market farmer, with a plethora of small livestock (& cats), I was REALLY hesitant to bring home just ANY old dog.  And finding a semi-purebred dog that wasn't of obvious terrier or birddog mix (birddogs tend to recognize that chickens are birds!) was really hard.  I just brought home a Rescue dog today that is a BullMastiff mix.  He gave up on the cats after one swatted him, & gave up on the chickens when he almost caught one!  He's not interested in either at this point.  Whether he'll take care of the critter problem, I don't know, but I've got my fingers crossed!  Just don't tell the Rescue people that you expect the dog to actually "work" on your farm - they tend to have a cow on the spot that you expect the dog to earn his keep in any way or fashion.  If anyone can get hold of a little pack of Standard or Giant Schnauzers, they were used in Germany to guard market farmers' carts, but I got totally snubbed by Schnauzer Rescue!

About the porcupines:  I know that they love to eat the bark off of fruit trees, & have a special fondness for apricot & peach trees.  Today the house, tomorrow the orchard!  I have a recipe for pickled porcupine to use in Cajun Beans & Rice if anyone is interested.  I dressed it myself & it was quite tasty!

-Maridian Carlton



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