permaculture

[Will Carey <cure@rtinet.com>]

Claude...

I'm not sure about the difference between ruminants digesting grain and
grass.  But the same kind of thinking could be applied to all of the
barnyard feeds.... Alcohol can be brewed from grains too and the by-product
will be more digestible... Also other sources...

<http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/ethanol_motherearth/meCh6.html>

This book is a great read on the subject of Farm Fuels... Here's the index
page...

<http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/ethanol_motherearth/meCh1.html>

Methane digesters for processing manure on the farmlot, yes... That's a
proven technology now and a lot of grant money's been spent of good pilot
projects for just that in the last few years.  But these kinds of ideas have
been around for 30 years now....

For developing a mental picture of this concept, you really should pick up a
copy of Radical Agriculture, Richard Merrill, Ed. 1976. This was one of the
finest of the early books on Sustainable Agriculture.

<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060903376/qid=1138483350/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_
xs_ap_i1_xgl14/002-7349155-9848833?n=507846&s=books&v=glance>

Sorry for the Amazon link, but Powell's doesn't have it....

Anyway...

All of part 5 is devoted to "Food, Energy and the New Rural Renaissance"...
Particularly read Merrill's own Chapter 16 "Toward a Self Sustaining
Agriculture".  For an actual drawing of something similar, check Figure 7,
An idealized polyculture farm.......Which they were developing at New
Alchemy about that time.

BTW... While those were the years just before Mollison & Holmgren first
published but a  description of emergent  Permaculture concepts is shown in
fig. 6.

Chapter 20, Local Energy Production for Rural Homestead and Communities is
also very helpful and includes good concept diagrams on energy conversion
between sources.  

Will from Oregon 

on 1/28/06 09:00, permaculture-request@lists.ibiblio.org at
permaculture-request@lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

> Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 15:10:57 -0500
> From: Claude William Genest <genest@pivot.net>
> Subject: Re: [permaculture] Soil & CO2
> To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID: <0F8D1CE6-D72E-4B0D-8387-B124C750ACBF@pivot.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed
> 
> Wow great input - so concise too ! Yes it came from Abe who's doing a
> whole Yeomans style makeover of his farm. I think the idea of soil
> creation and carbon sequestration might come from Yeomans ?
> 
> Re: methane - I understand that what makes cows so flatulent is the
> grains and that this is reduced by pasturing ? also, there are the
> biodigesters for recuperation of methane = electricity....
> 
> I wish we had a drawing of what you are describing....
> 
> 
> Best Regards,
> 
> Claude William Genest