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Bachelor Farmer, stay well, and good luck in life!

i know it must have been a tough decision to make, but i’m sure you had solid reasons, and i support your decision!

good luck!

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all well here too!…

was worried what happened! good it’s solved!

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the wood gas truck rocks!

i’ve been researching into the system for a while, and it’s awesome!
there are a few systems, Imbert downdraft gasifier is the best one.

with a gasifier one can burn all kinds of wood and/or organic material. waste building site wood, windfall, anything.
now, i may be an enthusiast, but this system has its “drawbacks”: it needs time to start, about 10-30 minutes for the gasifier to start producing the gasses.
then, the engine is about 30-50% weaker than on gasoline, so it’s better on rather flat country. it is weaker because the mix of gasses is inert nitrogen about 50%, with flammable gasses: carbon monoxide, hydrogen, and methane making the rest 50%. and on top you need air. so even if that mixture of flammable gasses per se is stronger than gasoline, because only about 30% of the gasses that enter the cylinder actually ignite, the engine is weaker.

not to mention that one has to prepare the fuel. and that wood’s a bulky fuel.

but, with fuel prices rising, it is becoming a viable option.
and besides, with all that waste wood around, one could have a good drive for little money.

the waste products are ash.

here is a Swedish site, Swedes are the most experences concerning wood gas.
if you need other links, let me know!

few vids:

wood gas pick-up

modern truck

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSgL0Ie4zrI

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@jac 21579 wrote:

Apparantly when the Romans left Britain we managed to lose ability to make the wheel in what was known as the dark ages !!!!:eek:..
John

i think (think, so i don’t know for sure) wheels were still made, but they were crude and heavy anglo-saxon wheels, taken with the saxons when they crossed the channel. no reason to believe there nations didn’t know the wheel.
only, with fall of Rome many roads fell into disrepair, and with the usual mud in the countryside, pack horses were better suited than wagons.

the roman level of wheelwright was not again reached in europe until the 19th century.

about the mayans, i don’t think they relied on muscle power alone. see, i think many ancient civilizations additionally relied on now lost technologies connected with manipulating the weight of stone blocks through frequency (meaning: musical instruments). one such case was recorded in Tibet in the 30s i think, there oxen were used to haul a stone block neatr the site, and then a chorus of priests with instruments aimed at the block began. the block lifted up and set on its place on top of the hill.

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my suggestion is raised beds. these are wooden or whatever “boxes” isolated with mylon or rubbish bags(?), filled with compost and earth. very nice to grow lettuce and everything else on.
they could fill at least the part of the crops, if it isn’t a problem with archery…

a must – composting heap

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here’s what i know: biochar was used to improve the sandy soils of the amazon basin, and the wood “wasted” that way isn’t wasted at all, it’s investment worth gold in certain soils and climates.
this means mostly sandy soils, who are not very fertile and who don’t retain water.
now, carbon retains water, so the soil will retain water more. second, then one fertilizes the soil, it may help that biochar will bind with manure or organic fetrilizer and enable it to stay in the soil longe. an idea anyway.
third, biochar may provide home for microfauna and flora.

i would try to use it on sandy soils, that’s as far as i know.

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Hi yal!

hope i’m not too late to chip in, here’s a page that i think will be interesting.http://www.healthbanquet.com/raw-milk-raised.html

and there’s a personal testimony from my grandfather, who told me he would often wait as a kid on the barn treshold for his mom to milk the cows, and then drink the milk straight from the bucket.
he’s over 80 now, fit, nimble, and still has all of his teeth!

i’m all for raw, so good luck!

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thanks Erik! 😉 will check it out!

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@goodcompanion 21252 wrote:

Maybe there could be a service for ducks to puddle paddies by contract. Here’s how it would work. They show up, work in your paddy for a few days, then they go away. Afterwards, the send you the bill.

The bill. Get it?

bills! lots of em!:D
“sorry, sir, the bills are all there’s left… they were rowdy, we had to take care of em… but keep em coming!”

now seriously… i don’t think renting will work, because ducks are way to easy to get and even to adjust, and you still have to feed them till next year…
if you’d still do that, i think indian runners are probably the best, they lay a ton of eggs, so one gets extra benefits from eaten vermin. if you rent a movable coop, all the better!

but!
maybe selling conditioned ducklings to rice producers every year could work? ones that are already with rice so they won’t eat it?

i say, could work!
esp. if you lead by your example and show how practical it can be!

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even more reason to cross them to cattle if a working animal is needed. because of hybrid vigour, the dzo are the best animals for work, as long it isn’t scorching.

dzo are traditionaly used for heaviest jobs, like plowing or heavy packing, because they’re calmer and way bigger and stronger than either oxen or yaks.

they’re the mule of the bovine world, only that female dzo are fertile.

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@goodcompanion 21232 wrote:

Ah, well, that’s exactly what I’m going to try and do here. Maybe minus the fish, we’ll see. Takuro Furano, the author of the main English book in that integrated system, also uses grown ducks to agitate the soil for the “puddling” step in place of tractors or draft animals. That has potential too!

ducks puddling? will have to check in on that… i don’t know about that, i don’t see how a few pounds worth of duck could puddle a field (mix the soil by it’s weight) as a cow or ox…
IF puddling is what i think it is, mixing moist mud and soil in the paddy.

fish are probably out, since talpia are used, and they like warm climate…

so can you tell me the mane of the book? i’ve been looking up the author, but so far nothing.

and speaking of alternative japanese agriculture, have you red One-straw revolution? it’s very inspiring.

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to cut in: yes, i share the same oppinion about hyper-animal-rights activists. yes, animals abuse is horrible, but i’d like to ask them if animals live in groups, don’t they threaten eachother, or at least show off, to establish a pecking order that makes the group work? oh, yes they do!
if we work with animals, we have to be the “top dog”, simple as that. it’s not cruelty, it’show things work BETWEEN animals, we only copy that.

many of these animals wouldn’t be alive if they weren’t bred or kept for work..

but these kinds of people are pointless to talk to.
there is a saying:” you can’t wake up a person pretending to be asleap.”

soo… i heard a law is to be passed in hyper-regulated Europe, to ensure children welfare of children raised on vegan diet. most vegans are adult converts, and they had both diary and meat while growing, other than children growing on vegan diet.
research showed, from what i remember, that a teen or young adult vegans organism was severely damaged by the lack of animal-derived vitamins (Vit-B complex) while growing.

now, i had Biochemistry, so i can say with certainty that some vitamins are found ONLY IN ANIMAL PRODUCTS. meaning meat, eggs, and diary. without animal protein, human can’t develop properly.

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well, cattle are used extensively in the far east for plowing flooded fields. in fact, i think loosening the soil by flooding was one of the main reasons that a single animal could be used.

from little i know, i think that, going from the soil type, the field should either be plowed while being soaked (for lighter soils), or left to soak a while (week?), and then plow it (for clay).

in the picture the water buffalo makes short work of a clay field because it’s softer when soaked.

horses were used for harrowing some paddies, but they were ponies, and honestly i don’t know how their hooves would take being soaked all day. they are too expensive (and need a long time to heal) should something go wrong.

sometimes there are holes in the field, and if an ox stumbles, no big deal, but if a horse stumbles, it might get a trauma and will not want to plow anymore. that’s probably one reason why horses were led while pulling in paddies.

traditionally for the job of plowing paddy fields oxen and water buffalo were used.
oxen are very good for this job, esp. for puddling, since some research has shown that fields puddled by cattle retain more water or improve drainage. not sure here, but it was definitely mentioned in a positive way.

one ox is enough to plow paddies of flooded clay soil in china. but, here “enough” means for their smaller paddies. for larger ones you might well need two oxen, although i wouldn’t know for sure. water loosens up the clay and one stronger ox might well tear it up in no time.

now, for oxen: i’d recommend em medium sized with DARK hooves. lighter hooves will get way softer in water than dark ones.
cross-breds too, cause the cattle have to be nimble enough.
and if the fields are gonna be plowed while flooded, no need for huge oxen that eat too much, and that go fat fast. since you’re going to be using them for plowing and harrowing, it’s important that they don’t eat the budget and don’t put on fat too much, so maybe a diary, or diary cross.

jersey-cross maybe?…

some videos. many in the videos are buffaloes, but common oxen can do good as well. thousands of years of practice in plowing flooded fields in China, Japan, and Korea have proved it.

about speed: water buffalo on clay soil. clay is way easier to plow when soaked.

harrowing

on clay soil

also, there was a method, i think, called rice-duck-fish. it’s an integrated system where ducklings and small fish are introduced in paddies once the rice stalks are at a certain age.
if the ducks grow up along rice, they won’t try to eat it (at least from what i red). instead they concentrate on slugs, snails, and other vermin. they fertilize the field, and are ready for slaughter at the time the fields are dried.
fish (talpia i think) are also released in the field and eat agae and stuff, grow up till the fields are drained.
this system was used in china and japan.

heads up anyway…

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@dlskidmore 21095 wrote:

Yes. Mitchmaine’s data indicated that after 1858 Oxen declined in prominence and horses rose. By 1880 horses outnumbered oxen, but there were still 45,000 steers and oxen in the state of Maine. In the previous conversation we had the same speculation, that rough terrain and bad roads led to the choice of oxen over horses, and that horses rose in prominence as the roads became better.

aaah, so i see! the oxen were better with poor roads, but once the roads got better, the horse’s greater speed probably paid off in getting the goods on the marked more quickly!
the one who catches the marked first will win! one of my uncles always saw to be the first to sell anything, so he could get the price!
and not only that, plowing, harvesting, everything was done faster that with oxen, and so it was worth investing in extra food – as long as you had any means to get it!

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dlskidmore, do you mean conversion to horses?
i have fairly big holes in knowledge concerning this, but taking the terrain, climate and soil types of scotland in consideration, i’d say that conversion to horses on any significant scale would have been unlikelly, at least in highlands.

and also, scotland resembles maine a lot because maine also has stony soil, little farms,.. and oxen never really left maine, so…

about “primitive farming” in scotland… scotland was one of the countries whose authors were significant to the start of the second agr. revolution, from what i remember.
whatever the impact of these writings had in the lowlands i wonder how much they changed the agriculture in the highlands?

jac, i patch them up from everywhere, little bits of various stuff i happen to know, but as long as it serves the purpose i think it’s ok.

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