permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lflondon@mindspring.com>]

On Sat, 04 Nov 2000 19:11:11 -0800, Toby  Hemenway
<hemenway@jeffnet.org> wrote:


>By all means check out the keyline website
>http://www.keyline.com.au/ Another one is Australia Felix, Darren Doherty's
>business, http://www.australiafelix.com.au/ where there are a few photos of
>keyline being done. One nice feature of keyline plowing (plowing not with
>the contour but with the keyline--the infection point-- all up and down the
>slope) is that it directs water out of the gullies and onto the ridges,
>allowing infiltration. I think the Keyline site has a drawing showing how
>that seemingly gravity-defying stunt works; study it for a while. And get
>"Water for Every Farm" by Ken Yeomans.
>
>And Darren's got a good article on earth dams in the next Permaculture
>Activist, http://www.permacultureactivist.net out about Thanksgiving (I just
>shipped it to the printers). There are other useful articles on earthworking
>in the issue, too.

Thanks for posting these links. After reading Darren here in this list
over the years I am sure glad to see his website. The Yeomans plow
system is, imho, the definitive plow/tillage tractor implement. I have
seen the benefits of the Soil Saver but I feel sure the Yeomans plow
could do an even better job on small acreage, maybe on large acreage
too.
There is a Yeomans dealer in Pennsylvania. You can get the Keyline
plow system complete with all necessary accessories plus those
for conventional field tillage. Just have a look at the photos in the
catalog, especially the condition of the fields plowed, and you will
see what I mean. I'd bet anything that it would go through _heavily
tall/thick-weed-infested turf_ without bogging down. This year my 5
acres will need disk harrow & bottom plow as the weeds were too thick
for the Soil Saver, which would have required harrowing first.


Lawrence F. London, Jr. 
lflondon@mindspring.com    
london@metalab.unc.edu
http://www.ibiblio.org/london
http://www.ibiblio.org/permaculture