permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

Paul Wheaton wrote:

> > Keyline terracing
> > 32508726.riceterracescopy.jpg
> > http://www.pbase.com/mreichel/image/32508726
>
>
> Very cool pics!
>
> More!  More!

I'll post links to several more galleries of those pix.

> I would like to know what the soils are like there. Sandy?  Lots of clay?

Probably clay.

> Where does the water come from?

Out of the sky.

> What do they do each year to maintain those?

Rice growing is a religious affair for Vietnamese. The people in farming 
communities, villages and outlying regions
do all the work partly by hand, draft animals and motor-driven tillage 
machines. Sometimes harvest is done, on
large flat areas, with small ride-on rice harvesters.

> Does the soil get richer or poorer?

They add livestock manure to them possibly each year. The farm animals are 
fed all sorts of green plant material
harvested from around their farms and forested areas. They may leave the stalks of harvested grain crops to rot in the 
field, if they aren't used for cooking fuel or livestock feed.

> As permaculture folks, I suspect that we would want to say "not enough 
> trees", but ....
> where might one plant trees so that the tree roots don't compromise a berm 
> and let all
> the water out?

Forest gardens.

--
Lawrence F. London, Jr.
Venaura Farm
lfl@intrex.net
http://market-farming.com
http://market-farming.com/venaurafarm
http://venaurafarm.blogspot.com/
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech