permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>]

Black Soldier Fly Larvae as Fish & Livestock Food
http://blacksoldierflyblog.com/

crickets, mealworms, and red wigglers
http://www.wormman.com/breeding_crickets.cfm

Dan Barber: How I fell in love with a fish
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EUAMe2ixCI&feature=player_embedded
Uploaded by TEDtalksDirector on Mar 10, 2010
http://www.ted.com Chef Dan Barber squares off with a dilemma facing 
many chefs today: how to keep fish on the menu. With impeccable research 
and deadpan humor, he chronicles his pursuit of a sustainable fish he 
could love, and the foodie's honeymoon he's enjoyed since discovering an 
outrageously delicious fish raised using a revolutionary farming method 
in Spain.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances 
from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers 
give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have 
included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill 
Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One 
Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and 
mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" 
producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, 
Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as 
science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and 
translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on 
TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate. Watch a highlight reel of the 
Top 10 TEDTalks at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

US Made PTO Pellet Mill by MakeYourOwnPellets.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoDdlc0dpUg&feature=player_embedded
Uploaded by makewoodpellets on Jun 11, 2010
American made PTO pellet machine by www.MakeYourOwnPellets.com. The 
machine is able to produce 500 lbs/hr of biomass pellets. Here we are 
making recycled cardboard pellets used by a horse farm in Ohio. The 
machine was designed for making pure wood pellets at a rate of 250 lbs/hr.

Backyard Aquaponics Pty Ltd, is a leading edge aquaponics company based 
in Western Australia. Originally started by Joel Malcolm as a means to 
provide information packages to people, who were interested in learning 
more about the subject, the company has now grown and changed quite a 
bit since those early days. The company has now become an amalgamation 
of many different people, who are passionate about aquaponics, about 
furthering the spreading of information, and about helping people with 
their own aquaponics systems.
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/

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the works of Hazelip and Bonfils:

souscayrous' biological farming & permaculture collection
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech/souscayrous/
Collections
Emilia Hazelip's Synergistic Agriculture - Collected Papers
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech/souscayrous/EmiliaHazelip-SynergisticAgriculture
Marc Bonfils' Agricultural Research
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech/souscayrous/MarcBonfils-AgriculturalResearch
souscayrous' albums (the two above) on PicasaWeb
http://picasaweb.google.com/souscayrous
And new links:
http://seedzen.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/soil-fertility-life/
http://seedzen.wordpress.com/2011/07/page/2/

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Sustainable agriculture:
A holistic community development program in Samantar, Nepal.
Video

Uploaded by BernMaurice on Sep 3, 2011

A holistic community development program in Nepal is enabling villagers 
to earn a living through sustainable organic farming. The program was 
initiated by Tevel b'Tsedek (The Earth in Justice), an Israeli NGO.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLurSQW9wtQ
or
http://youtu.be/KLurSQW9wtQ

...very interesting and innovative water impoundment and irrigation 
methods, cropping & greenhouse; views of rice farming in mountainside 
terraces

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Inland fish farming (in Kerala, India, long video, excellent)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9dH8WCJIGc&feature=related

This video covers pond construction and maintenance, raising of seedling 
fish, culture and feeding of fish, harvest (nets, draining ponds), 
raising fresh water ponds, food cropping and integration of ducks into 
an agricultural system. This is one of over a dozen videos by this 
group, well worth viewing.

The author, KissanKerala's, YouTube page, a good place to start viewing 
the collection.
http://www.youtube.com/user/kissankerala

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Excellent blog: jordforbindelse (latest: notill & chop&drop, biochar,
seedballs
http://jordforbindelse.wordpress.com/
"**
           New post on *jordforbindelse*
<http://jordforbindelse.wordpress.com/author/jordforbindelse/>  Maintaining
the
garden<http://jordforbindelse.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/maintaining-the-garden/>
by Thomas P Jahn
<http://jordforbindelse.wordpress.com/author/jordforbindelse/>

There are also many good external links there too, see especially the
one  to the new Seedballs, a replacement for the original Jim Bones'
Seedballs site, which was the best on that topic for a long time.

I received the following link from the Fukuoka Farming list; this is a
real delight to me as I like the type of lifestyle depicted in the four
page photo gallery:

fruit production, no till agriculture, seedballs, simple/frugal lifestyle

naturalfarming's photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/naturalfarming/

On Seedballs
http://sites.google.com/site/onseedballs/

WHAT
HOW
WHY
WHO
WHERE
WHEN
Restoration projects worldwide

<I think this may be a restoration of the famous Seedballs
website created and maintained by Jim Bones.; this is a world class
information resource>

Biodiversity Heritage Library
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/Default.aspx

"Welcome to the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is a consortium of natural
history and botanical libraries that cooperate to digitize and make
accessible the legacy literature of biodiversity held in their
collections and to make that literature available for open access and
responsible use as a part of a global “biodiversity commons.” BHL also
serves as the foundational literature component of the Encyclopedia of
Life (EOL). BHL content may be freely viewed through the online reader
or downloaded in part or as a complete work in PDF, OCR text, or
JPG2000 file formats. For help with downloading content, please see
the Tutorials page.

To perform a simple search of BHL, enter an EXACT PHRASE such as
"proceedings of the academy" (without quotation marks). Entering
keywords such as "proceedings academy" will not return results.

For advanced search options, please use the Books/Journals, Authors,
Subjects, Scientific Names, or Citation Finder (BETA) tabs above."


A good book on fruit growing:

The Fruit Tree Handbook - Reviews - The Ecologist
http://www.theecologist.org/reviews/books/1116060/the_fruit_tree_handbook.html

The Fruit Tree Handbook

Andy McKee

3rd November, 2011
"Packed with helpful hints and detailed explanation, The Fruit Tree
Handbook is a must-read for ‘top fruit’ enthusiasts, says Andy McKee

If you’ve ever thought about turning an unproductive grassy area into
an orchard and then quietly filed it away under 'wouldn't know where
to start', it may be time for a rethink. The Fruit Tree Handbook is
fairly hefty for a paperback but fruit growing is a big topic and
deserves the space. All too often 'top fruit' [apples, pears, plums
etc] is relegated to a couple of chapters in a general fruit book,
losing out to the easy virtues of strawberries and other soft fruit.
Given such cramped conditions, it's small wonder that people get
confused about pollination so a well-written specialist book like this
one is a welcome addition to my bookshelf.

The author, Ben Pike, is the head gardener of Sharpham Estate in
Devon, which contains 150 fruit trees. This is a man who clearly knows
his subject inside out, and isn't afraid to take a pragmatic approach.
As such, he advocates eco-friendly but effective measures rather than
trying to be strictly organic. He keeps his tone light and friendly,
especially in the more technical sections. In the pruning chapter for
instance, he reassures the reader that it is very likely that their
trees will not look like the ones ‘in the book’ (and for that one
statement, Mr. Pike, I am almost pathetically grateful). The aim of
the book is to be useful for novice growers as well as more
experienced types, and on the whole, Pike pulls it off admirably.

The Fruit Tree Handbook covers everything you'd hope to find in a
dedicated top fruit book, with chapters on choosing, buying and
planting trees as well as a dedicated section for each type of fruit.
Pollination groups are explained clearly, and there are some welcome
surprises too, such as a chapter covering much neglected quinces,
medlars and mulberries in reasonable depth. There's also a chapter on
dealing with rootstocks (often a source of mystification to new
growers) but I was particularly impressed with the chapters on
planning new orchards, renovating old ones and starting a community
orchard. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised to find them, given
that the author runs Orchard Link - an organisation dedicated to
saving and promoting small orchards."

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http://soils.usda.gov/sqi/publications/publications.html
free online book :Soil Biology
The Soil Biology Primer (USDA)
http://soils.usda.gov/sqi/concepts/soil_biology/biology.html

You can watch  Dr. Elaine Ingham talking about Soil Food Web:
http://vimeo.com/21689321

Here are more resources on Dr. Ingham, Soil Foodweb, soil microbiology
and how to understand and apply the resources that Elaine is sharing 
with those of us who favor farming with nature.

Microbe Organics
website includes a microscope advisory
http://www.microbeorganics.com/

Gardening With Microbes
Putting Nature Back In Control
http://gardeningwithmicrobes.com/index.shtml
see also:
http://gardeningwithmicrobes.com/microscope.shtml
"Here is a microscope advisory written by Tim Wilson of Microbe
Organics for looking at organisms in compost teas. His website is
www.microbeorganics.com. I found his knowledge invaluable when
researching microscope for my own testing.
Tim has also created a DVD for microbial identification. It is a 2
disc set and is available by clicking here or on the picture below."
http://simplici-tea.com/microscopedvd.htm
Found this in a thread at permies.com:
http://www.permies.com/permaculture-forums/11093_0/permaculture/celestron-deluxe-digital-microscope
Celestron Deluxe Digital Microscope
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http://www.celestron.com/c3/product.php?CatID=81&ProdID=605
LCD Deluxe Digital Microscope
Item #44345
$299.95 USD Add LCD Deluxe Digital Microscope to Cart
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"Having just completed a 2.5 day training with Elaine Ingham, I can
envision quite a few ways to use a microscope for permaculture.

- direct counts from a soil sample of bacteria, protozoa, and fungi
- assessing if the soil microbiology is appropriate for the crops you
are trying to grow
- testing the quality of compost
- verifying the aerated compost tea you just created is fungally
dominated, bacterially dominated, or full of anaerobic pathogens
- verifying the beneficial nematodes you just bought are actually
present and alive
- verifying your "microbial inoculants" such as Effective
Microorganisms(tm) are actually present and alive
- assessing the trends in soil biology over time

"Hope these are good ideas and could probably be its own thread. But, to
do all this, you need to be able to identify what you are seeing in the
slide. I haven't some across a lot of good freely available materials on
the web that helps to ID all the microbes.
Dr Ingham recommended a trinocular microscope with a condenser for all
the above work. Without the camera, the price is the same as LFL's choice.
http://www.microscopenet.com/40x2000x-trinocular-compound-microscope-reversed-nosepiece-p-9047.html
And she suggested calling them and asking that they change out the 100x
objective for a 40x, since the 100x is never used for the above work.
And the 100x is so long that you stand a chance of smashing it into a
slide accidentally anyway.
Her camera suggestion was Celestron #44421, priced about US$40."

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