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Update:
I’ve been quite busy this spring with the community garden. The plowman got frustrated with the spring wetness and gave up on it for a bit too long, but it’s finally turned under and there are a few crops still worth planting this year. I also had a horrible year for transplants, I think I took off my humidity domes too early, and most of what came up wilted. Third bad stroke was a volunteer that helpfully put a bunch of transplants on top of the rows of corn I had just put in. *sigh* But it’s all a learning process, it takes a few years to bring a new plot of land up to full fertility anyway. There’s a reason I didn’t ask the church for a budget, and I’m keeping expenses down as much as possible, if I’m not willing to gamble my own cash, it’s not worth the church’s scarce resources.

Since I’m not in a position to have any handy steers about, I’m looking at a BCS walking tractor to do some work where the big tractor is having trouble getting in. Somehow though hubby isn’t convinced I need my own tractor before I have my own land. Go figure. 🙂

(Long term plan when I have my own place is to have a couple handy steers for dragging pasture and freight hauling, but do tillage on my garden plot and mowing on the fields with the BCS. Not sure what I’ll do for haying, probably buy as baling equiptment isn’t worth it on my scale, and putting it up loose by hand will be a lot of work.)

On a personal note:
I’ve gotten a hold of one of the root causes of my health issues, and have been much more active since November. So far this year I’ve not once had to leave the garden due to fatigue, although my schedule has been tight enough to only allow 2 hour sessions anyway. I’m now having real hope that my farm dreams can be a reality, and I can work hard enough at it to be profitable and not just a housewife’s folly that depends on hubby’s income to work. Current long term budget says we can look for a place in spring of 2013, so I have time to build up more strength.

Question:
The plot is about a half acre, heavy clay that needs heavy ammendment. How many pickup truck loads of manure should I add and how often? And enough rotten hay to mulch over that? It looks like we’re getting a couple dozen bales of hay for mulch each year. They do up “harvest festival” big, (although it is really a halloween replacement and has little to do with harvests), and order bales for decoration that we can have afterwards. The archery ministry is also going to give us hay bales that have broken down too much for them to use for targets any more. I’ve also got a friend out in the country who’s family sold off their cattle on short notice and has rotting hay in the barn I can use. The manure supply is a vague promise involving a volunteer’s neighbor, but there are confined dairy places about here that I might be able to call and work with if that does not pan out.

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I’ve heard that fish line run at the right height is a good deterrent, as they can’t see what’s bothering them.

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I’ve heard of doing this with dogs pulling firewood. Horses are about as smart…

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I’m certainly going to encourage the participants to bring their dogs when they come to work at the place, but I think we’d have a public image problem if we tied a dog out there all summer.

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@Scott G 23203 wrote:

More awesome than that; the fact that the script was written for the narrator by Mr. Machias himself, the owner of the Machias Lumber Company . The fact that the “timber baron” had that much respect, admiration, and love for his guys is outstanding. Definitely not the norm back then & definitely not now, when workers are normally spoke of as human capital & human resource rather than family, friends, & co-workers.

Yeah, find an exec today running a big operation like that that knows every little guy’s job, and can go stand out on the logs with them. The other thing I found amazing was that he seemed to understand the historic significance at the time. He saw the operation shutting down soon and a need to record it.

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Yeah. I feel the same way about raw milk that I feel about raw fish. I have to really know where it came from and know it’s really fresh. I can’t see buying raw milk from a big producer that mixes together the milk of multiple cows, but if I was on a small family farm and they handed me a glass of Bessie’s milk, I would not have a problem with drinking it.

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I found this interesting article I thought you guys would like. It discusses how we pasteurize because we homoginize, and we homoginize to hide how little cream is in the milk as compared to older sources of milk.

http://www.ftcldf.org/cheese-is-serious-bemis.htm

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@jac 22472 wrote:

I believe that the modern dairy with Holstiens push the cows so hard that they are burned out after two and a half lactations:eek:… If a cow was taken from this environment would she go on to be a suitable house cow ?? a bit like the battery hen put into a free range system.. or is there more to it than that ?…
John

I think that would certainly depend on how much personal handling the cow has had. How will the cow raised in a large herd and only milked by machine adjust to being handled solo by halter and hand milked?

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I forgot to share my good news, we got the community garden relocated. The new area has thick grassy thatch with a few weeds. A volunteer with a tractor is supposed to bushwack it this fall and plow it in the spring. There is also a pond nearby where we can scoop water for hand watering gardens. Deer are our biggest challenge now, we’re next to a forest (but have good light from the east and west. The forest is to the south which may delay spring thaw until the sun is a bit higher in the morning/evening.)

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@near horse 22072 wrote:

Matt – I think you missed part of the discussion in which the “volatiles” are utilized to power whatever (like a motor) so what we’re talking about is not even as wasteful as flaring off natural gas, let alone negligent.

Actually, that was a different thread.

I agree that these things need to be examined more carefully. Just because a practice is ancient and has one positive benefit doesn’t mean we should all jump on the bandwagon. As I said before, biochar is just a more efficient method of slash and burn.

My policy is to try not to do anything for only one reason. If I needed to clear forest, and enrich the soil, and the wood from the clearing was not good enough for other purposes, I could see using this practice. I would not grow trees for this purpose, I would not waste good wood on this practice. If my soil didn’t need it, I’d try to sell the larger charcoal chunks in paper bags as locally sourced BBQ fuel.

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Just a little update, we’re still a long ways off but dreams are turning into plans, and the plans are starting to come together. My work situation is changing for the better, making our Spring 2012 goal look pretty realistic at this point.

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Do you do them all in a batch or do each one start to finish to reduce the time it sits out? How long does it take to process a hog?

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@near horse 22015 wrote:

Sorry but from what I’ve read biochar and slash and burn are not the same thing at all.

Slash and burn is way less efficient, but even open fires do produce some charcoal. The larger the fire, the less oxygen there is in the center of the fire. I would consider the one a primitive form of the other.

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@Tim Harrigan 22009 wrote:

Any connection with the ‘slash and burn’ techniques used in tropical areas over the ages? 😮

Definitely. Slash and burn didn’t just clear forests, it was a fertilization technique. Trees pull up nutrients from deep in the soil, and sequester carbon from the air. Burning them is the shortcut to get all that back out into surface growing crops.

If you were clearing a forest to put in farmland, it might be worth charcoaling the junk trees for the soil, but most of that timber is much more valuable as wood.

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Depends on what you’re looking for. If you want to make secure eye splices, or otherwise are dependent on good knotting, and spend a lot of time in the sun, stick with sisal. If you want a rope that’s thinner for the same test and won’t break down when wet, go for the synthetic rope.

Here’s a comparison chart.

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