Many give out advise on permaculture, hugelkultur, berms and swells etc. Do They use any of it themselves? I have to use hugelkultur I’m always cutting down trees that spout up in my orchard. I never get them all cut down. Naturally I have to have something to do with all that wood I constantly have. Same thing with permaculture it makes sense just grow what doesn’t need sprayed constantly. Think it over and ask yourself if you have 100 mulberry trees what you do with all the wood, berries, and you never spray. Congratulations your on your way to becoming the owner of permaculture.
Clay Soil is packed with nutrients! Clay isn’t bad it’s misunderstood
Before you use this remember we use fresh unpasteurized whole milk in my household. Sure it costs me $8 a gallon but it’s worth every penny. I like supporting my local community. Don’t buy your milk anywhere get it from someone you trust. I will try to take the time to show you more about that later. Do i.need to spend $8 ? No I can just milk my own cow , butcher my own male calves, use the manure on my garden with these other combined techniques. I run out of energy bit not things to do.
I know most people would ask to see my berm and swales and here you go likely the only ones you will see because it’s a lot of work
Can’t get any raw milk locally. If I drive 25 min away to next state, I found a Mennonite lady that sells shares in her herd. I think half a gallon share per week is $10. So, a gallon is $20 + gas. I’d like to be more self-sufficient. But it is hard with 2/3 acre, semi urban. And it is lots of work. Everyone can’t be like you. I keep buying lotto tickets, bub. Money is stored energy. If you are old and health is poor, you can buy energy.
I was visiting a young MD and his family near Danville, PA a while ago. I had just bought some raw milk at a farm and was very happy to have found some. I told his wife, maybe mid 30’s, that I’d like to get some raw milk direct from the tap…meaning sucking on the cow tit. She about blew up.
I’m old and don’t date. Guess if I was young and dating, I’d casually bring up getting raw milk directly from the tap to see what the gal thought. Better to find out a bad disposition early on than waste time.
Commercial milk producers have to pasteurize the milk because it is just about impossible to produce milk on the scale we do and keep it clean enough for no problems. You can do raw milk on a small scale, but not on a gigantic scale as we sell in the markets.
Here is the deal…
Dairy producers go from farm to farm and pick up local farm’s milk in big stainless steel tanker trucks. It is brought back to the processing facility to pasteurize and bottle. The milk just gets handled too much to keep it safe in its raw state. Even if 99% of the farms have perfect sanitation for raw milk, the 1% that doesn’t have perfect milk contaminates the entire tanker truck load of milk.
Here is a sidenote on milk if things ever get bad and you can’t get milk. If you have refrigeration, buy ultra-pasteurized milk, which is usually organic. It last for months in the fridge unopened. Well, it is better than powdered milk anyway.
About the closest I get to permaculture is to give the plants some pee once in a while!
Here is permaculture in the works. I’m using the slash method to remove undesirable trees and plant no spray grapes and other desirable trees. I’m even chopping male mulberries rather than graft them. Take notice of the clovers.
I have way too much calcium in my blood getting deposits in arteries is not cool. I have a calcified cyst in my lungs. I gave up milk decades ago. I still use cream from time to time. Giving up milk appears the more healthy option for me.
Currently I have bone growing over the titanium rods and screws in my back. It’s amazing how that happens. In six weeks all of the metal is coated in bone and is part of my skeleton now.
My doctor said my bone growth was phenomenal yet I have not touched milk in decades. I’m not really sure why? Nobody explained that. Also numerous bone spurs had to be removed from my spine. It’s been a rough go tell you that! But hopefully it’s over.
I’m very glad your on the mend old friend. Maybe it’s all that fresh fruit and fish. I just finished a mulberry breakfast and I feel amazing afterwards.
An old timer once taught me a lesson I never forgot. The old timer was a German as so many Kansas farm families are. They are honest , hard working , salt of the earth type of people. They are not a thing like the people I come from that are more hunter and gatherers. My people are more guarded and suspicious by our nature. These Germans take a 20x20 garden and grow more in there than we harvested off half an acre. They use every inch of ground. I had a half acre garden and he did not like that one bit. He showed up with a mounding load of cow manure and staked off a 20x20. He said you won’t ever need more for you if you take care of that. Save the half acre for your 2 pigs. A smile came to my face as it does when an old man is trying to teach a young man something I was very sure I already knew. Germans drink beer frequently throughout the day which my family would have considered scandalous at 9 am. That old man smiled at me when I said what you are growing in that foot of manure is the biggest weed patch you ever seen. I was confident, I grew up on a farm and know you use manure sparingly. That old guy yanked up all the weeds around that garden and buried that garden in manure with a thick layer of weeds on top. He then pulled back weeds and planted vegetables the next week. We picked buckets of cucumbers, tomatoes, melons, squash etc. . That old guy was right and he taught me the Germans method of intense agriculture. I hope that inspires anyone that thought like me that I never had enough land. I ate one of the pigs and he ate the other and I raised a couple acres of reids yellow dent to feed them. Life is good but like the Bible says “my people die for lack of knowledge” . Thankfully I grew up around good, honest , hard working people like that old German . They eat lots of sauerkraut and drink lots of beer. I didn’t and don’t understand them, but changed my opinion on lots of things that summer. One thing I learned is to listen even if I’m sure I know better. Sometimes the person speaking knows exactly what they are talking about. I don’t have to understand people to like them. That old guy drank 3 or 4 beers early every day , and was in bed by 7 pm He lived to be a pretty old man. He thought highly of me and often studied things I did I didn’t even when i did not realize what I was doing. He nodded and with those intelligent eyes sparkling began to smile. Another German once said we have a gentleman’s agreement we don’t hunt here and I replied good that will give me more to hunt. He said no you don’t understand we don’t allow that. I smiled and said no you don’t understand I am doing what I want on my land. My mother and that old German asked when I hunted last which was when I was a kid. I told my mom I was not letting that German tell me what to do but I could care less about hunting as I have plenty. The other German grew to understood me and liked me very much in time. I learn from everyone but don’t let them run me.
It’s my understanding that ultra pasteurized milk doesn’t require refrigeration until it’s opened and can last a lot longer than months if it’s not opened
I’m very glad you’re on the mend old friend. Maybe it’s all that fresh fruit and fish
Ha ! I hope so. Wow you are just full of info. Thanks for educating us all. On a much smaller scale I try to manage my backyard. Lee Reich who is a member here, noted author, is a huge fan of composting. He even throws his old clothes in the pile. Composts even diseased items. I do too except for cane borers I tend to remove infected canes from the yard. Everything is getting so expensive. I can afford it, I just don’t want to throw good money after bad. Thanks for the info. Really useful to see how this works for you. Interesting too.
When the ground is planted with the right plants the diseases are minimal. I have 90 acres of land now but I never forgot the importance of a 20x20 chunk of ground. It is how I got where I am. A mulberry is a garden you harvest you don’t plant next year. I’m not lazy but that is smart. Jujube, pawpaw, nut trees, grapes, pears, autumn berry , persimmons, goumi and much more are all part of developing a spray free orchard. A guy once said to me chemicals are not that dangerous to which I said maybe not but they cost a fortune and kill your soil. They give plenty of people cancer also. I use chemicals sparingly, always trying to use less. I proably use a couple gallons a year on all my land all together.
Throwing around some Buckwheat and reharvesting and drying enough for next year may be the most permaculture thing I do besides keeping native plants growing. Green manuring the rest or leaving some to keep pollinators going.
Funny as I’m working on land defined by us in all ways. We tend to want to control everything. Suburgatory is a strange place. Everything is fake. I’m not sure anything I do is helpful. It’s already way messed up.
a lot of times permaculture online seems to mean plant invasive plants with no regard for the native world because of “yield” and low input growing while pretending to be more environmentally friendly than traditional farming
ITs peculiar. I do follow some permaculture principles but i am also very native focused.
oh yeah i agree, but there are plenty of people planting mullien, wineberry, what have you. autumn olive in places its invasive. Not seen it so much on this forum but i see it elsewhere
