permaculture

["Darren Doherty" <ozfx@bigpond.com>]

Absolutely....



----- Original Message -----
From: <permed@nor.com.au>
To: <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2002 7:10 PM
Subject: Re: [permaculture] (Fwd) Interview with Bill Mollison Part Two


> > Hundreds of
> >> thousousands of dollars were pumped into the property,
> >
> >Robyn, is this number for real, or are you "pulling a Bill" ? :-)
> >
> >I remember visiting your property and being quite inspired by it, by the
> >ponds in particular...Do you think, learning rom your mistakes, that you
> >could manage the fish ponds successfully now ? could you make Bill's
boasts
> >a reality ?
>
> No, I wasn't spinning a tall yarn here with the figure. If one took into
> account the massive amount of human effort and time invested in the
> property it'd be much more.
>
> Re the fish ponds, if I wanted to be a serious fish farmer and manage
> those ponds successfully I'd take 2 years out and do a course on
> freshwater aquaculture, get to know all the chemistry and biology
> required to understand and manage the system and spend another year or so
> checking out the industry....
> I lived with a qualified aquaculturalist for 17 years who wondered why
> the folk on this farm never consulted him as he'd offered to give his
> expertise for free. By the way he was given the Designers Manual chapter
> on aquaculture to proof read, found a lot of inaccuracies, none of which
> were amended.
>
> Some of the mistakes with the property in question that can be taken on
> board include:
> - don't buy land just because it's next door and for sale unless you
> really have a clear purpose for it.
> _ don't buy more land when you can't adequately manage the land you've
> already got
> - make sure you check with local council regarding planning guidelines
> and conditions when you think you've come up with an idea and don't tell
> them they're idiots if you don't agree with their conditions (there's
> usually a good reason for these things)
> - don't ignore council regulations and let people build and do things
> that need permits and invite the public in and expect to get away with it
> - respect your neighbours and develop a rapport with your local
> neighbourhood, if you get them off-side and want to get away with things
> they might blow the whistle on you to council
> - design your property and do your homework including at least a basic
> business and management plan
> - if you're inviting other people to set up enterprises and projects on
> your land have a clear understanding with them about things or there'll
> be major misunderstandings and folk (including oneself) can get 'burnt'
> - just because you pump hundreds of thousands of dollars into a property
> it doesn't mean the property value will increase by the same amount
> - when you put in dams and swales be clear about why you're creating
> them, their function, purpose and how they'll relate to surrounding
> plant/animal systems and land use - and it helps to check the soil to see
> if it'll hold water
> - don't go introducing noxious floating water plants onto large dams -
> makes it hard to go swimming and costs a fortune to remove them when the
> weed inspector finds out
> - when you plant hundreds of valuable fruit trees into grassland on a
> remote part of a large property without pioneers, groundcovers and follow
> up management don't expect them to grow into a jungle in 3 years -
> they'll just get lost in the grass and weeds.
>
> That's enough for now...
> Robyn
> _______________________________________________
> permaculture mailing list
> permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture