[dlskidmore]

@bivol 19768 wrote:

out civilization is the only one who created an illusion that mankind can go forever on upward course, to presumably some eternal bliss, but it simply isn’t true.

I took these classes in college that kept talking about sustainable growth, and I could never accept that. There is only so much land, only so many resources, growth will eventually reach a limit no matter what speed you move at. Reuse and renewal is sustainable, but not growth.

[dlskidmore]

If you planted more than one variety of potato, you could take it as an opportunity:

http://www.growseed.org/potato-breeding.html

This article uses a more traditional method, there’s a bean project in Mexico though that selected the first generation _for_ susceptible plants, and after that for least susceptible plants. They wanted to get rid of the single-gene protection, and breed for multiple partial protection genes.

[dlskidmore]

@near horse 19637 wrote:

The “buzz” now is all about “pounds of animal” stocked per area rather than animal number.

You could always go for a small breed if you wanted to increase headcount for behavioral reasons. I’ve heard tell that sheep and cows will herd together too. Will a mixed mob show the same behaviors?

[dlskidmore]

@Ixy 19559 wrote:

We do see quite clearly that the neighbours have fields like nibbled carpet, all year round

I see nibbled carpet as one of the possible products that comes out of keeping livestock. Any reason not to have different fields on different rotations? (Areas you want trimmed in short rotation, the back fields in longer rotations. ABACADAE…)

[dlskidmore]

@OldKat 19480 wrote:

The next winter someone told him that gamagrass responded well to fire, so that spring before it greened up we burned that place off.

How do you control that type of fire? The native Americans didn’t have to worry about the neighbors, the neighbors wanted their grass burnt too.

[dlskidmore]

@Ixy 19455 wrote:

Even with your weather conditions it would still be an improvement – your grazing season would extend, meaning you need less hay and making it by draft becomes more viable.

Yes of course. I didn’t mean to say the winter feed problem made rotational grazing less valuable, just that for those 3 months a year where grazing is difficult, it might not be enough on it’s own.

By efficiently, I should have said economically. The larger producer has bigger equipment and can churn out a few more hay bales at less additional cost to me having to buy all the equipment to churn out those few more hay bales myself. Even a sustainable farming operation has an initial investment in draft animals and equipment.

In an ideal world, the land we buy will have a neighbor with haying equipment, who will hay the overgrown fields for a percentage of the crop.

[dlskidmore]

@Stable-Man 19419 wrote:

Don’t know if you’ve seen this but it’s a Documentary for the BBC about oil reliance and permaculture …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xShCEKL-mQ8

Another interesting concept here is using trees for forage. Does anyone here do that? What species work for that? Does it affect productivity or meat quality?

[dlskidmore]

Is she afraid of the harness itself, or does she just throw a fit when you ask her to work in it? Can you ask her for work in the ring without the harness ok? In the ring with harness, but not out of the ring? Sometimes we humans oversimplify the situation when we change multiple factors at once on the animal. Break it all back down and isolate the problem and work on that one thing. If you just strap the harness on tighter, you may be missing valuable training opportunities, trust building, command reliability, and growing yourself as a trainer.

[dlskidmore]

@Ixy 19436 wrote:

The answer to keeping cattle out year-round is very, very simple – move them every day.

Rotational grazing makes a lot of sense, and has so many benefits in increased yield, decreased parasite issues, better fat profiles in the meat… But in my area, there’s enough snow on the ground in winter, I think I’ll still have to put up winter feed. The haying problem is the big stickler in my designs for a low-equipment usage farm. Buying hay from a larger producer that can do it more efficiently than I can looks tempting, but leaves me reliant on outside inputs, which I’d like to wean myself off of over time.

[dlskidmore]

@Stable-Man 19419 wrote:

Don’t know if you’ve seen this but it’s a Documentary for the BBC about oil reliance and permaculture …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xShCEKL-mQ8

Part 4 there gets into one of my favorite agricultural topics: hedgerows. Although the hedgerow spotlighted appears to be a wildlife row rather than a stockproof one. There will definitely be a hedgerow experiment on my farm, to see if any plants native to this area can build as good a system as the English and Scottish hedgerows. I already have a small row planted in my little city place, but I doubt they will be mature enough to produce haws before we move.

@Stable-Man 19424 wrote:

Another interesting point from that book is the transition from buggy to car; people took the issue seriously. Car=greater distance possible, and that, they believed, would dismantle little communities. Not sure whether that happened or not….

The Amish believe that. It is the primary motivation for their restrictions on technology. That’s also why they allow generators and batteries, but not power lines. Dependence on the city over family and neighbors is discouraged.

[dlskidmore]

@mitchmaine 19178 wrote:

got me to wondering if wooden trees and eveners offered any buffer over their steel counterparts

I would think that would depend on design more than anything else. A steel tube would have very little buffering capacity, while a piece of flat steel, placed so the stresses would bend it the thin way, would have more spring than the wood.

[dlskidmore]

Aren’t the freemartians essentially castrated when born? They no longer get hormones generated by their brother, only male blood cells and underdeveloped female parts are left as evidence? They shouldn’t be more masculine than a bull castrated at an early age?

[dlskidmore]

@near horse 18563 wrote:

First, IMO, If you own the land or are paying it off, you need to decide what you want from the agreement.

I’ve been thinking about this. The usage of the land is way more important than the rent to me. I need to make up my mind if I’m going for the organic licencing someday, and take that into account. With the three year look back on the land, it could matter a lot to me what practices a prior tenant used on it. A multi-year contract would encourage care of the land so it was still worth working at the end of the contract. Perhaps a 20-year farm plan with discounts on rent if they make improvements towards that? (Drainage, fencing, structures, biodiversity…)

The land EKG system sounds similar to a management practice in one of my books. There’s a whole chapter on it. I should figure some achievable benchmarks into the contract. You can measure out the forage density and growth rates, etc…

Although with all this farm planning going into the long term contract, I might have trouble getting that together promptly enough to lease the land the first year. I won’t have any baseline for the land’s productivity, what kind of drainage it needs, etc.. If it’s pasture or a grain field to begin with, I could just have a haying contract the first year?

[dlskidmore]

@Stable-Man 18910 wrote:

If conditions on the surface below a much cover were conducive to germination, would it happen?

Generally part of the purpose of mulch is to be thick enough that the freshly germinated seed spends all it’s stored energy before it can start harvesting light. Germination occurs under there all the time. In certain seasons you can pull back the mulch and see weed seedlings growing under there.

Germination can occur most anywhere. Some childhood project we did involved corn seed between two wet paper towels in a ziplock bag. You could watch the germination process this way. I repeated the experiment in college to test if the brand of popcorn we had around was still viable seed (it was.)

[dlskidmore]

The donkey was amazingly calm about the whole thing. Hopefully he’s not used to this. But it seemed more an issue of poor balance than too much total weight?

[Author]

Posts