Do you farm? Permaculture? Do you pasture raise livestock? Do you build your own tiny or eco house?

[JamesR]

i like solving problems, and i like getting help solving problems, but this thread seems to me more like idle speculation about vague unrealized notions than actual work on something.

My preferred thread format is one where the thread isn't about the OP but about the topic. That didn't really happen with this thread, unfortunately . Possibly because I'm still in the information-gathering phase and not really providing a good source of topical material. Thanks for your input though, I learned a lot!

[Alphaville]

My preferred thread format is one where the thread isn't about the OP but about the topic. That didn't really happen with this thread, unfortunately . Possibly because I'm still in the information-gathering phase and not really providing a good source of topical material. Thanks for your input though, I learned a lot!

ah, information gathering. ok. sorry for the misunderstanding.

so yes, permaculture has the potential to increase yields relative to effort by harnessing natural forces instead of working against them. nevertheless, it’s not a ticket to utopia.

youtubes and all are okay, but read the sepp holzer book, and you’ll quickly realize he’s not a hippie looking to maximize hammock time, but a smart farmer who grew up in the farm, always striving to increase productivity. he wants his produce in the market. for me, that is the key concept above all else.

and ultimately the proof of the pudding is in the eating, the rest is theory schmeory. don’t get me wrong, i enjoy theoretical stuff, but per the scientific method, a theory must emerge from the object of study from continuous observation and experimentation, not be deduced from thin air and applied willy-nilly like they do in cultural studies: “i’m going to apply foucault to the novel in my dissertation”

my advice again, and i think the advice from everyone here with some farm experience, is to do your information gathering by hand. in the flesh. with the body.

you can watch youtubes along the way and read agricultural manuals from the library, but you need real life experience to convert this random information into actual knowledge.

talking about how pigs are used for this and that is pointless if you’ve never been near a pig in your life. meat computers are very are different from silicone ones. as opposed to abstractions, nature is messy and often unpredictable.

and farmers and ranchers are not stupid: they watch youtubes too, and read books, and take courses, and consult with experts, and use technology, and go to universities, and read the research. they do what they do because it works for them.

if you’re interested in permaculture—go try it. with your hands. nothing can replace the experience.

[Alphaville]

eta: and if you can’t travel to montana, are far from organic farms, etc., (idk your location) let me propose a microtest as a concrete information-gathering hands-on project. you can start small, and grow from there.

proposition: build a rabbit cage, and raise a couple of rabbits for meat at home.

that can be your initiation to permaculture (rabbits can mow lawns too, and provide manure, fur for insulation, etc). this will give you plenty of room for hypotheses and experiments and system building and more.

think small meat computers! a raspberry pi of sorts to get you initiated. guinea pigs are good too, very tasty, and a choice domestic animal in the rural andes. give one or the other a try. less messy than chickens or ducks for sure (ducks are so messy lolololol).

[7Wannabe5]

I was just watching this and shortly after 12:30 minutes Paul Wheaton says that a hundred pounds of food were harvested from a 2 year old berm, which is mainly composed of poor sandy dirt, and never irrigated (except probably at the very beginning).

Does that sound reasonable? Not sure how many square feet he'd be including. I suppose it could be anywhere from 500 to 1000 square feet.

Still seems like good return for low effort if true.

Well, a very good return for high, very human labor intensive effort would be approximately 1 lb. produce/square ft. (not including access space, etc.) over the course of a temperate zone growing season. One popular model for intensive home horticulture is Mel Bartholomew's "Square Foot Garden" method. This is the second method of gardening I learned, after a few years of most popular method which involves picking up transplants and packets of seeds at the local garden center. The average human consumes around 3 lbs. of food/day, but, obviously, other contributing factors such as protein, fat, calorie, mineral content of produce quickly becomes more relevant. For instance, it's difficult to survive long term on rabbit meat, because it is too lean. The sum complexity of the food you eat must exceed the complexity of the system which is your healthy body plus the complexity of whatever you exude as waste.

The first step in Permaculture design method is Observation. However, this usually presumes Step 0 which is Acquisition of Land. So, for instance, you might spend a year observing/learning about the path of sun, soil quality, existing plants, literal lay of land, etc. My recommendation would be that before you acquire land, you should attempt to deep learn this skill and how to apply it to any domain. What you might discover, if you are like me, is that there is an almost infinite regress possible within this first simple step. If I was younger, I would teach myself how to forage/fish/hunt before moving "up" to horticulture (gardening) or "up-up" towards agriculture. Obviously, we are too many humans on the planet to survive as foragers, but so few people attempt it in the U.S., it is still possible to attempt as individual. I recommend this project prior to attempting permaculture, because IMO best case scenario with mature permaculture project is more like fantasy foraging environment rather than lazy version agriculture. If somebody really wants lazy version agriculture then they would be better off getting into hydroponic indoor growing with robotic automation.

[jacob]

It is interesting that "lazy" farming almost always seems to require high inputs of electricity/gasoline.

[7Wannabe5]

Well, even highly-intelligent-management of permaculture project requires the energy necessary to acquire/store/process/share information. I just tend towards favoring applied technology of book over chainsaw.

[JenAR]

Pigs will root up a lawn. Goats are browsers, not grazers. You’d want something like sheep or geese to mow your lawn. And you’d still need to rotate them and manage their manure, water sources, etc.

I think there's still room to optimize the effort:productivity ratio when growing food. A lot of the stuff that pays off the biggest, alas, involves major earthworks with either heavy equipment or a LOT of time and/or people. I think a genuinely lazy person will not succeed, and will probably harm the land and any animals under their care. I see this a lot. If one doesn’t have the experience to judge whether something is a crackpot idea or not, one ends up wasting time on a lot of perpetual motion machines.

I agree with the comment above which suggests that successful mature permaculture will look more like a dreamy foraging environment than agriculture on easy mode.

My cows could survive for weeks at a time on pasture. Cows are big and tough. But it’s not good for the pasture.

Paul’s hugelkulturs are cool, but I haven’t yet seen one producing an impressive amount of food, and they still require lots of weeding, soil building, and irrigation (they have never been irrigated properly; perhaps once they are, the need for irrigation will be eliminated as Paul expects). I estimate that I can easily produce five times the amount of food per square foot in a deep-mulched organic vegetable garden as we produced on the hugels this year, with less than a quarter of the effort. Hugelkultur is valuable for many reasons, and I will be building some on my plot, but I won’t be relying on them for intensive food production for several years—maybe ever, if growing in an established polyculture.

[Alphaville]

let him start with raspberry pi wabbit and container herbs i say—wheatgrass trays? alfalfa?

OBSERVATION: the cradle of science!

[JamesR]

@Alphaville

I started looking at what it would take to do pasture-raised meat rabbits, seems like a great way to get started experiencing what it takes for raising livestock. Could start with a couple does and a buck and see how it goes. Thanks for the tip.

@7Wannabe5

Very good points about Observation and also about foraging, especially when the path of permaculture comes back full circle to a "food forest" rather than a typical farm.

Developing the foraging skill, with the knowledge of identifying edible food, seems like a worthy investment to make since that can be used anytime in both the wild and in a mature permaculture setup. I wonder what would be a good way to pick up this skill quickly, probably could look into a course or find a local workshop/expert + books.

I imagine the flip side of foraging would also be developing the food preparation skills of the past, especially leveraging things like fermentation, canning, etc in order to be able to get the full value of the variety of food that is picked.

[Alphaville]

@Alphaville

I started looking at what it would take to do pasture-raised meat rabbits, seems like a great way to get started experiencing what it takes for raising livestock. Could start with a couple does and a buck and see how it goes. Thanks for the tip.

looking forward to reading that diary!

[jacob]

You could also raise rabbits in the basement ala Possum Living. Beware of all sorts of local ordinances for that kind of adventure.

[7Wannabe5]

hugelkulturs are cool

A combination of alpine strawberries, thimble berries, and borage did very well on small hugelbed on my project. I think they are best suited for forest edge perennials/biennials, because soil is, obviously, amended towards fungal growth (if left for the most part undisturbed), but the exposure is sunny. Irrigation is not huge issue in my area, but it did seem like the hugelbed stayed a bit more lush in brief dry spells. Also, if space is a limitation, the 3-D structure adds a surprisingly large amount of planting area.

Developing the foraging skill...
...developing the food preparation skills of the past, especially leveraging things like fermentation, canning, etc in order to be able to get the full value of the variety of food that is picked.

For better or worse, I have found that plant identification apps available for smart-phones are a great tool. They are NOT accurate enough to be trusted regarding edibility if you have no clue what you are looking at, but used in combination with conventional field guides and books on the topic of foraging in your region they can be very helpful. Just the ability to take a great number of photos for later survey/study is huge advantage. The number of species in a given area can vary greatly. I am pretty much done with identifying/memorizing the major species at my BF's northern near-climax woods property, but the chaotic mix to be found at the edge of a typical exurban hiking path can still be challenging.

One thing to keep in mind when it comes to processing, is that era of horticulture often matches era of processing. For instance, the process of canning was well-matched with varieties bred to ripen all at once in the mid-industrial era.

OBSERVATION: the cradle of science!

Yes! Science, everything from botany to geology to meteorology to soil microbiology to food chemistry to genetics, has definitely been one of my infinite regresses within the Observation phase of Permaculture. History is another relevant almost endless rabbit-hole; for instance, answering questions such as "What did Native Americans of this region eat?" or "What sort of farm was previously on this site?"

[Alphaville]

Yes! Science, everything from botany to geology to meteorology to soil microbiology to food chemistry to genetics, has definitely been one of my infinite regresses within the Observation phase of Permaculture. History is another relevant almost endless rabbit-hole; for instance, answering questions such as "What did Native Americans of this region eat?" or "What sort of farm was previously on this site?"

yes—observation always must take precedence over theorizing and speculation. otherwise the theory is just empty. i noticed the point you made for step 1 of permaculture and connected with the scientific method: observation-[hypothesis-test-observation]-theory (more observation/verification).

it’s all about facts really.

and yes, looking at history and pre-history is an attempt to understand thousands of years of observation (and adaptation, and domestication) by millions of people before us. much better than trying to reinvent the wheel!