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Tree Crops
TREE CROPS
For thousands of years, farmers have generally differentiated forestry and agriculture. Forests were either left alone or planted and maintained as a source of fuel and building material. In the best of cases, certain trees also offered forage for livestock and other farm animals. The farm fields were generally kept clear of any trees because farming was relegated to nothing more than the planting and harvesting of annual (mostly grain) crops.
The only trees acceptable to farming were fruit bearing trees, and these were usually planted on areas of the farm where the terrain was too steep or otherwise unfit for the tillage needed for annual grain crops. With the ever more obvious problems related to the annual tillage of the soil and annual agriculture in general, many people have begun to consider the possibility of growing trees as crops.
THE BEGINNINGS OF FOREST AGRICULTURE
The idea of growing trees as crops is not a new one. Indigenous cultures around the world have been growing and managing diversified, edible forest ecosystems (food forests, in permaculture jargon) for thousands of years. From the multi-story tropical food forests of Mesoamerica to growing evidence that large swaths of the Amazon Jungle were actually human-controlled environments, indigenous peoples around the world have long understood the benefits of tree crops and perennial agriculture systems.
From the western perspective, however, it was J. Russell Smith in the 1920´s who first began considering the idea of trees as crops. Smith´s seminal work was published under the title of “Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture” in 1929. In this book, he looked at several farming cultures around the world that, instead of relying on the annual tillage of the soil for grain crops, actually depended on carefully managed forest ecosystems that provided an abundance of edible foodstuffs.
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“Free” Fertilizer is Saving Rural Farmers
“FREE” FERTILIZER IS SAVING RURAL FARMERS
Revitalizing dead soil can be done in just one planting season, thanks to Shivansh farming. Rural farmers can use whatever materials are available to them to restore their livelihoods – lowering their costs and increasing their yields.
The majority of the world’s poorest farmers use a nitrogen fertilizer called urea. The chemical was initially produced to serve industrial agriculture, but many small-scale farmers were swayed by the fertilizer’s promise of increased productivity. However, the fertilizer begins to wreak havoc once absorbed into the soil, destroying the precarious balance of microorganisms the soil needs to provide plants with enough vitamins and minerals. The ecosystem is destroyed.
As a result, crops are left vulnerable to disease, produce lower yields, are less nutritious, and even require more water. This kicks off a chain reaction that leads to farmers using more fertilizer, herbicides, and pesticides in an attempt to remedy these issues. Producers begin investing more money in chemicals, and have to start purchasing seeds to replant their failing crops – resulting in farmers earning only a 2 percent profit, intensifying their food insecurity and ongoing poverty.
Shivansh fertilizer can allow farmers to break this cycle and reduce their dependence on the chemicals that are doing more harm than good. To create their own free fertilizer, farmers need only gather whatever they have lying around – fresh grass, dried plant materials, animal manure, or crop residues – and incorporate an easy layering technique to create a shoulder-high mound.
The rest is all up to nature. After 18 days, the pile has reduced down to a nutrient-rich fertilizer, full of the microorganisms that soil needs to grow healthy crops. This powerful fertilizer can bring damaged soil back to life within the very first planting season – meaning it has the capacity to completely revolutionize the farming industry for impoverished producers worldwide.
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The Best Perennial Vegetables
THE BEST PERENNIAL VEGETABLES
One of the tasks that I most dislike about the farming life is preparing the raised beds each time I want to plant out a crop of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, or onion. While I do enjoy eating a fresh tomato from my garden, the tedious, repetitive tasks of preparing the garden bed, weeding, and then planting out a winter cover crop does take up more time than I would like. Pasturing chickens over the beds in the fall time once the crops have stopped producing, does save some human labor, but with our orchards, pastures, and forests to take care of, I often find myself without adequate time to dedicate to beds of annual vegetables.
AN EXPERIMENT WITH ASPARAGUS
About three years ago, I purchased a bag of about 5,000 Mary Washington Asparagus Seeds. The seedlings germinated well in our cold, wet, mountain climate, and my family and I decided to dedicate about half of our on contour garden terraces (about ¼ of an acre) to the Asparagus crop. After a day or two of weeding and preparing the soil, we planted out the crop, mulched them heavily, and then eventually forgot about the Asparagus for several months as other farm jobs took over our attention.
About six months later, and two days of heavy weeding, we found the asparagus crop to be thriving despite our neglect. While we weren´t able to harvest the crop for the next two years, the Asparagus grew to cover the entire three terraces, essentially shading out most of the weeds. During the spring of the third year, we were gifted with bountiful amounts of asparagus that not only would be harvested this year, but for decades to come.
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Cold Frames, How and Why
COLD FRAMES, HOW AND WHY
Before moving to the temperate climate, I’d assumed that winter was pretty much a wash for growing a decent crop. I knew soils were good and summers abundant, all of which led to lots of food storage for getting through winter. I even looked forward to the squashes and pumpkins, and I couldn’t wait for the berries and hard fruits. That all seemed doable, even exciting in a way, but the thought of shutting the garden production down still felt scary.
I always assumed some winter crops were there to be had in a glasshouse. I imagined growing enough greens for salads, but I also knew that a giant glasshouse is a bit too costly for a low-income homesteading couple, even without trying to heat it. Emma and I, as with every hopeful designer, daydreamed of a small attached glasshouse to help with passively heating our house, but there is only so much that can grow in one of those.
Cold frames were something I knew about, and even before investigating them further, they seemed a decent solution to this problem. Now, I ‘m really keen. Not only are they a way of growing a full bevy of crops in the winter (there is a lot to be grown, even in freezing weather), but also they can pretty quickly be pieced together with scrap and salvaged materials. In other words, they are effective and inexpensive, as well as easy to sustainably source.
THE BASIC BUILD
Cold frames are so simple in design: Essentially, it’s four sides of a bottomless box with a window on top. They aren’t necessarily restricted by any size specifications, so they can more or less be designed to fit whatever windows or storm doors someone happens to find. The sides can be made from many different materials, including stones, bricks, cob, straw bales, logs, or scrap wood.
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The Problems With Our Industrial Water System Today
THE PROBLEMS WITH OUR INDUSTRIAL WATER SYSTEM TODAY
Imagine that you´re in your home on a rainy afternoon. It has been raining for two days straight now and your front yard is full of puddles. The water is rushing along the drain ways on the side of the road and the local news is talking about the stress on the local sewer system that this extra rain is causing. When you turn on the faucet in your kitchen sink to wash up the dishes from lunch, however, the water that you use may very well be coming from hundreds of miles away in an area that may very well be experiencing a drought.
Our conventional, industrial water supply has very little connection to local watersheds or local ecosystems. Rather, the focus has been on taking water from areas where water is apparently abundant and moving it to areas with high population densities or areas where water is scarce. To do this, we depend on huge, energy dependent pumping systems that most likely depend on the continued availability of cheap fossil fuels to fuel these pumps.
A CITY IN THE DESERT
Las Vegas, Nevada is the epitome of unsustainability (and lunacy) when it comes to water. Located in the middle of a desert where water is scarce, Las Vegas has depended on Lake Mead for its water. However, in recent years it has become apparent that the thirsty city of Las Vegas is pulling water out of Lake Mead faster than the natural inflows can replenish it. To solve this problem, the city of Las Vegas has begun purchasing rights to groundwater throughout the state hoping to assuage their water crisis by pumping water out of the ground and sending it hundreds of miles away to irrigate the many golf courses in Las Vegas and offer luxurious hot showers to the over 100,000 hotel rooms of the signature casinos of the city.
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Go Green Beans!
GO GREEN BEANS!
Green, string, snap, pole, or bush, whatever you call these beans, these edible little pods are great to grow in the garden. Green beans (Phaseolus vulgaris), as we think of them, typically grow in two forms. These two main growing forms are what we call bush and pole bean growing styles. Bush beans usually grow more compactly and won’t necessitate support. Pole beans are more viney and will need stakes or trellises to grow on for support. The other difference between bush and pole beans are that bush beans are relatively low maintenance and easier to grow, however pole beans are more widely known for producing higher yields and being more resistant to disease.
NOT SO GREEN IN YEARS
Green beans have been around for thousands of years, originating in Central and South America. They were introduced to the Mediterranean area the mid 1400’s and quickly spread to Turkey, Italy, and Greece by the 1600’s. Today over 100 varieties are grown in various parts the world.
GROW GREEN
If you want to try and grow green beans in your part of the world then begin sowing seeds 2 weeks after the last frost date in your area and when soil temperatures are above 50° F. Seeds should be planted 1-1.5”deep, spaced 2” apart for bush beans and 3” apart for pole beans, with trellises in place for support. To continuously harvest beans throughout summer, plant additional seeds every 2-3 weeks.
Once beans are planted, and as they continue to grow, water the beans consistently, but make sure your soil doesn’t become waterlogged. Typically green beans don’t need to be fertilized, as too much nitrogen gives you beautiful plush leaves, but drastically reduces your bean production. As with any garden, be sure to weed around your beans, but do so using shallow cultivation in order to leave the bean roots undisturbed.
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Going Off the Grid to Cost Others
GOING OFF THE GRID TO COST OTHERS
Victorian power company AusNet Services is sharing evidence of parliamentary pushing to update the industry that is ever-changing and incredibly innovative. AusNet is one of the five distributing companies of electricity in Victoria and covers the outer northern and eastern suburbs, as well as the eastern portion of the state. AusNet says that a Federal Parliamentary committee is attempting to modernize Australia’s electricity grid, which is causing havoc amongst some customers.
Many households are moving onto more environmentally friendly and long-term cost-effective strategies when it comes to consuming energy. Some of the popular alternatives are battery storage and solar power. The move from grid connection to unconnected electric distributions is being called grid defection. The issue at hand is that this grid defection is going to raise the cost for those that choose to, or need to, stay apart of the grid. The rise in cost will stem from recovering costs to operate the system from fewer customers. This will particularly affect those residents that don’t have the monetary means to switch from grid use to the up-front costly alternatives. The low-income households will suffer the most from this push to modernization.
Aside from those who cannot afford to break away from the grid, some residents won’t have the opportunity at all to move to alternative electricity distributors because of its lack of feasibility. The company denies that they are sending these messages to the public for their own good, but claim that they want to inform the public and allow them to make decisions based on the greater good of the community. Alister Parker of AusNet says that the company expects future advancements regarding solar power and electric cars to be adopted by consumers, but not in the way that is going to cost the less fortunate half of the community.
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The Basics of Growing Food in the Winter
THE BASICS OF GROWING FOOD IN THE WINTER
Having spent so much time in tropical environs, I fretted over having to think about seasons, in terms of temperature, when my wife Emma and I decided to give North Carolina a try. Suddenly, we are having to think about frosts much more than wet and dry season, and a bit more encouraging than expected, we are finding a new abundance that accompanies cooler places.
Going into our first autumn here, we are investigating the possibilities of four-season harvesting, and that means learning which plants can handle the chill and which ones are best left for next year. We are also becoming more knowledgeable about cold frames, hoop houses, and other methods for maintaining a little warmth without burning energy.
What has become apparent is that, without a doubt, growing fresh vegetables is possible year-round, even with winters that regularly dip into or stay below freezing temperatures. It doesn’t require a huge greenhouse or a lot of power, just some basic systems for keeping the frost off and a selection of the right kind of plants.
KEEPING THE FROST OFF
Keeping the frost off of certain cold-tolerant plants will help extend their growing season, and this, of course, means changing the garden a little bit. Like the wet/dry tropics, which almost requires different beds—raised and sunken—for the wet and dry season, temperate climate gardens benefit from designs with frost in mind. There are several simple ways to do this, and in certain cultures, the winter garden is just an understood thing.
Using the sunny south-facing understory of tree lines is a possibility for extending the season, but it requires quite a specific set of circumstances and challenges, such as dealing with natural leaf fall mulching over the crops. Additionally, while these will provide a bit more warmth, plants are still subject to nearly the full force of outside temperatures.
- YouTube! Video: How to Build a Cold Frame to Extend Your Growing Season
Cooperation Versus Competition: An Evolutionary Perspective
COOPERATION VERSUS COMPETITION: AN EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE
Charles Darwin is credited for forming the idea of evolution. During his explorations around the world and his intimate observation of how animal and plant life evolved over time, he came to believe that everything followed one basic maxim: “the survival of the fittest.”
This theory states that organisms will inherently struggle against one another in competition for limited resources that make life possible. Following from this logic, only the strongest, most robust and most adapted species are thus able to survive the evolutionary struggle. The emergence of life, then, is based on competition alone and individualistic competitive drive is one of the most important and a necessary trait if a species wants to survive. In essence, this theory of evolution has also given justification to everything from capitalist economic theory to pathological ideas of Social Darwinism that believed that the dominance of the Caucasian race obeyed unchangeable physical laws.
But is it true? Is life simply the outcome of cutthroat competition? Elizabeth Sahtouris is an American evolutionary biologist that is most well known questioning some of Darwin´s most basic assumptions about the evolution of life. Sahtouris says that “Darwin was right about species competing for resources but he never saw beyond it as just one stage in the maturation cycle. Evolution proceeded when crises created by species forced them to go beyond “survival of the fittest” and find cooperative strategies for survival.”
The survival of the fittest competition, then, is but one stage of a larger evolutionary cycle. Sahtouris mentions the example of how the very first bacteria that began life over 4 billion years ago spent billions of years in the competitive stage of their evolution. This competitive drive allowed them to colonize large areas of the earth and advance life itself, but had they continued with their purely selfish and competitive drive, they would have eventually died out.
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The Benefits of Using a Solar Heat Catch
THE BENEFITS OF USING A SOLAR HEAT CATCH
When the weather starts getting warmer we can all start preparing for heating bills to jump up over the next couple months. Whether your heating system runs on electricity or natural gas, you can still expect it to get pretty high. If you heat your home with wood stove, then you may be saving money but you will have to spend near endless hours cutting enough wood for the winter.
However, there is an easy to build, cheap device that you can install that will help offset some of your monthly heating bills. A solar heat catch installs right in any of your homes south facing windows and is made out of cheap and recycled parts.
A wooden housing unit is built which holds in place repurposed soda cans. These soda cans are what do the solar collecting and ultimately heat your house for you. At the top and bottom of each can is a small hole, the cans are then glued together at these holes. When they are all together and placed inside the housing unit they are painted black. This helps them absorb the heat from the sun, and as it rises through the cans it gets even hotter before entering your home. Finally, a piece of fiberglass or glass is placed over the hole structure to focus the sunlight and then placed in your window.
While you prob won’t be able to heat your entire house this way, it can help offset some of the costs.Or you can or heat a small area like a shed. Once installed you can start enjoying all the benefits that come with making a solar catch, such as:
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Check Dams and the Promise of Renewing Groundwater Springs
CHECK DAMS AND THE PROMISE OF RENEWING GROUNDWATER SPRINGS
When my family and I moved onto our farm a couple of years ago, the small creek that ran through the bottom part of our land had been essentially abandoned for several decades. While we could hear the creek, it was all but impossible to make our way down to where the water actually ran due to a mess of vines, thorns, and thick underbrush. An invasive vine (similar to kudzu) had choked out some of the cedar saplings that somehow had managed to take root in that mess of brush.
When the dry season finally came around, we were able to machete our way down to the creek and see firsthand the steady flow of water that we hoped to one day use for our domestic water supply. The dry season here in Central America, however, lasts at least half the year. In March (nearing the end of the dry season), our small creek had slowed to a trickle, and by April there was nothing but murky soil along the creek bed. Once the rains began again in May, the creek reappeared, but we realized that we would be left with several months of water shortage each year.
AN EXPERIMENT WITH CHECK DAMS
A couple weeks of intense machete hacking that dry season allowed us to plant several hundred cedar saplings along the creek´s edge. While our reforestation effort would hopefully contribute to protecting and maybe even strengthening the small creek, we knew it would take years to see any sort of progress towards a developing forest ecosystem.
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How Permaculture is the Perfect Match for Homesteading
HOW PERMACULTURE IS THE PERFECT MATCH FOR HOMESTEADING
“Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted & thoughtful observation rather than protracted & thoughtless labor; of looking at plants & animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single-product system.”
The term permaculture is a portmanteau of “Permanent” and “Agriculture”, and “culture”. It began with a focus on the production of a sustainable food system, but grew into so much more over time, encompassing economic and social systems as well. The movement is dynamic, all-encompassing and still growing to this day. It is a very simple idea that is spreading world wide. It is living holistically, in perfect harmony with nature. Any system that provides for its own energy needs, is inherently sustainable. This same concept can be extended beyond things like biodiesels and solar powers.
The permaculture movement calls for many different things, different ways of planting and growing your foods. For example, it suggests using only plants that are planted only once, perennial crops, rather than things that need constant tillage. Tilling the ground is terrible for the soil. Along with that, permaculture encompasses the mantra of “working with, rather than against nature”. This is carried out by simple things, such as planting mashua under locust trees. Locust trees add nitrogen to the soil, while mashua needs a support structure to grow on. You won’t need to build a trellis for the vines, and the locust trees provide shade and protection for the vines while also serving as a nectar source for much-needed bees.
THE ORIGINS OF THE MOVEMENT
Bill Mollison, an Australian ecologist and professor, created the permaculture movement in the 1970’s. He was disgusted by the destruction of nature he saw going on around him, as his interests in nature and wildlife drew him into observing how natural systems work.
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The Revolutionary Civilizational Paradigm Eco Villages
THE REVOLUTIONARY CIVILIZATIONAL PARADIGM ECO VILLAGES
The vast majority of people in the world no longer live in any sort of human settlement that could be considered a village. Rather, the increased urbanization of our species and the displacement of rural communities has led to a collection of isolated individuals who have very little relationship to the geographical place where they live and the people they share that place with. During the last two decades, however, thousands of people have begun to challenge this paradigm through the creation of Eco villages.
THE LOSS OF BOTH ECOLOGY AND VILLAGES IN MODERN SOCIETY
When you fly into any major city, one of the most common sights is the neat rows of houses in suburban neighborhoods. The cul-de-sacs and streets seem to be designed with an almost super human exactness and neatness. The similar homes all with their green lawns and neat driveways are in many ways the exemplification of the American Dream.
Behind this neat appearance, however, there are serious problems surrounding the suburban neighborhood. Their reliance on huge amounts of fossil fuel energy, the need to use a car to get to work and for pretty much any other need, the lack of any true sense of community or neighborliness, and their disconnection from the natural world all make suburban communities uniquely unsustainable.
One of the defining moments of the history of human civilization was when people came together to live in communities or villages. These spaces allowed for people to work together to provide for their livelihoods while also maintaining the surrounding landscape in ecological health.
Today´s suburban neighborhood has very little relationship to any sort of village. Rather, it is simply a connection of individual homes in a certain area. Most people never know their neighbors nor share any sort of connection with them.
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Organic Pesticides, Biological Controls, and Finding What Can Be Grown
ORGANIC PESTICIDES, BIOLOGICAL CONTROLS, AND FINDING WHAT CAN BE GROWN
Bugs are inevitably a part of growing things. While most of the bugs out there are good for the soil and good for your plants, there are plenty of pests that will drive you crazy while you try to salvage a tomato crop ravaged by white flies or a peach harvest destroyed by aphids. Conventional agriculture since the times of the Green Revolution has taken advantage of the distress that pests cause to farmers to market hundreds of different chemical pesticides that promise to help you win the battle against nature.
The problem, of course, is that this is a battle that simply cannot be won. As research has continually shown, the use of pesticides has essentially done nothing more than increase problems with pests as they´ve upset the natural balance where predator insects maintain a relatively decent control of problematic bugs. While the target “bad” bug might be killed off by the initial application of a certain chemical pesticide, so will several other species of insects, bacteria, fungi, and other essential parts of the soil and farm ecosystem. This loss of natural predatory controls and the disruption of the greater balance almost leads to increased pest problems in the future.
So what can be done when your tomatoes are filling up with worms and your peaches are covered in aphids? Below we look at three different strategies to deal with pest problems in an ecological way.
ORGANIC PESTICIDES
For thousands of years, indigenous populations around the world have known of different plant species that have certain properties to repel different bugs and pests. In Central America, the seeds and leaves of the Neem tree are fermented in buckets of water by small farmers who then apply this fermented Neem extract to their corn and bean crops affected by certain bugs.
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The Crises That Have Come With Urbanization
THE CRISES THAT HAVE COME WITH URBANIZATION
One of the defining aspects of our current civilization and one of the most worrying trends of modernity is our urbanization as a species. When we take the long view of human history, it becomes obvious that for 99% of our history, we have been a rural people, the majority of us making our living off the land and in small, agrarian communities.
Though history (especially the last 2,000 years or so) has been written by the pens of the powerful. Concentrated in urban centers, our collective dependence on rural areas and the people who lived and farmed there was a stalwart of our survival.
According to recent studies, we have recently crossed the threshold of becoming a majority urban-dwelling species. Over half of our more than 8 billion people live in urban centers around the world and that number is only expected to increase in years to come. What does this mean for our collective survival? Is our urban-ness sustainable and desirable? How can we forge a healthy, ecological civilizational paradigm that is built around billions of people living away from the land where the most basic necessities of our survival are found and cultivated?
To begin with, we want to recognize and affirm that it is imperative for us as humans to reverse the trend of increasing urbanization. According to UN Habitat, every WEEK, close to three million people migrate from rural areas into urban areas. If this trend continues, the crises that come with urbanization will only propagate and magnify.
While we can construct sustainable urban spaces with the amount of people currently living in cities, we simply cannot continue to depopulate rural areas where the natural resources for our survival are found.
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