permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>]

Sally, thanks for the background information on your land and practices. If
I seemed to make assumptions, it's because I work and hang out with many
ranchers in this area, and have a fair amount of experience visiting farms
and ranches in New Mexico. My experience been that most (not all!) ranchers
cut down trees and plant grass, basing their actions on their economic
desires rather than what is appropriate for the ecosystem. You condemned
pinon-pine trees and praised grass; lacking more information, that's what I
responded to. I was trying to restrict my commments to what I knew about
your practices and ideas, and I'm sorry if that put you on the defensive.
Your knowledge about pigweed is fascinating; I'll add that to my files. I
was stating possible causes of pigweed poisoning, not accusing you of
overstocking or excessive fertilization (though I was wondering if that
might be the cause). I realize that in e-mail differences of opinion it is
easy to feel tarred with a broad brush, since writing is such an unsubtle
medium, unless we fill many pages to catch all the nuances (or are more
skilled writers than I).

I'm delighted to hear that you are doing restoration work. I'd never assume
that an "evil monoculturist rancher" would participate in this list--I
figured you were doing something more interesting. I did gloss over the many
places we converge and emphasized the differences, a natural but annoying
tendency.  

My point in the whole P/J discussion is that if we view the existing
vegetation as an impediment to our activities--and I think from your post
that I made a reasonable assumption there--then we will be battling the far
greater forces of nature forever. I was offering a permaculture perspective
on the potential of P/J guilds as a source of income, rehabilitation,
biodiversity, and other resources. Perhaps a little tweaking, a little
removal, and a little species rebalancing will create some opportunities, or
will allow succession to accelerate to a plant community that you desire.
It's also possible that that's not practical in this case.

> You just said that p/j products (because you must know that P/J is
> not a timber product) could provide a far better income.  Can you explain
> that?

We're out of my field here; I'm citing Ben's article and what I've heard
from others in the SW (and a little of my own observation there). Ben
mentions pine nuts, acorn flour, wild fruits, medicinal herbs, seeds, and
miscellaneous live plant material from P/J associates. Maybe Ben and the
others are speaking nonsense, but they are superb observers and designers,
and I've learned to respect their judgement. My observation here in the
Northwest is that when true costs are taken into account, this kind of
wildcrafting and sustainable harvest from agroforestry, combined with
selective logging--even for firewood--yields an income comparable to--maybe
not better than-clearcutting and traditional grazing. But nobody gets rich,
or else, as you say, we'd all do it.

Oh, and I love animals too. I have some. They are essential to sustainable
farming. I have a problem with poor land management (that's not an
accusation!), not with animals.


Toby