Subject: Re: Permaculture market garden [PC class file under nutrient cycles, cr economic

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 25 Jan 1997 10:27:48 -0500 (EST)

In a message dated 1/24/97 5:47:14 PM, [email-masked] (Rhys
Howitt) wrote:

>Does anyone have any comments on this approach?

Yes, this works if you have the space.  Depending on climate, soils, the
value of eggs vs vegetables in your profit margins, etc., you can have
several plots and rotate them.  The trick then is to get your companion
planting to work while you plant gardens that will be harvested all about the
same time, despite the fact that they are mixed crops.  More divisions also
allow for more space to veggies, which can be important to people on smaller
plots.

It is easy to protect the mulch around trees, on terrace banks, etc., by
overlaying brush and tree top pieces, prunings (from unrelated species) etc.
down so that the chickens whack their legs when they scratch.  They'll
scratch elsewhere.  

In places where I have had mulched isles and intensively planted unmulched
beds, I've noticed errant chickens stick to scratching in the paths and lean
over into the beds to nab the odd insect (or bit of cabbage leaf!).  I shoo
them out anyway.

We are in a wet area, high water table, the flood line being 56 feet (3
feet=approx a meter) above sea level.  We are putting in chinamaps, gradually
because they are laborious and we have no necessity to hasten, to utilize
this space.  The chinampas will include dug canals wide enough and deep
enough to handle the smallest of the row boats that came with the place, and
with smooth bottoms so we can net aquaculture productes.  In the already deep
water where we will not bother to smooth bottoms, we'll harvest crawfish.  We
are also shopping around for a few asian water buffalo to help keep the water
open (they even dive for the deep stems and corms) and serve as draft and
meat animals.  We have a lot of regular pasture too, though about a third of
it will eventually be fenced for chinampas.  We feel that despite the
original labor, this will give us very good returns.  I'm looking to crops
like crawfish, which are high cash value with no requirement to gut them like
fish, and cullinary ginger, well adapted, low maintenance, and high cash
value, to provide the economic engines.  I don't mind a little more labor
intensive crops for personal use, with enlough planted for bad years that we
can sell in good years.  But I'm not going to pick blackberries or gut
catfish for market, thank you.  There's where animals, especially poultry and
ruminants, come in as they harvest and convert surplusses and drops and
convert them to low input, high value products, such as meat and eggs.  I
don't expect to sell dressed chickens either, of course, though I'll sell a
stewing hen live to a friend now and again.  

One trick I learned with poultry is to catch the older hens when they are
broody.  I put a broody hen and a dozen fertile eggs in a crate and took them
to farmers market where parents and school teachers bought them to show the
miracle of hatching (not exactly birth, but close).  These were enormously
popular, got rave reviews, and sold for 5 to 10 times the price of a stewing
hen and a dozen eggs.  
Everyone felt like they made out, which is the essence of good transactions.

Also, lets not for get the basic permaculture principle:  empowerment.  If we
produce seeds or propagate plants of varieties and species that do well in
our area, our experience increases the value of the plant or seeds.  A piece
of paper saying why you like this one, where you grow it, how you grow it and
how you use it can really boost sales.  People like to feel confident that
they will know what to do.  Then we are moving people toward self-reliance,
spreading awareness of permaculture, and also making more money than the same
labor in just growing food.  Again, everyone makes out.

Bill and others stress value added steps for good reason.  However the profit
on grazing animals on good land per unit labor is quite nice if you have the
land.  We are buying calfs now, when feed is scarce in the US and prices are
very low (I can buy four calfs for the price of the Designers manual if I
shop around).  We have lots of grass and space that won't be implemented in
chinampas for a few years at least, even if we get good interns.  By the time
they are market size, beef will be in short supply, being almost two years
after herds were cut.  We can expect the price to be good and we can afford
to play around for a few months to get the right price.  Moreover, we will
offer the animals first to people where Cynthia works (hospital and health
department, she's a midwife) on an arrangment similar to CSA's which will net
a premium for organic beef (they don't care at auction).  

Even on a much smaller scale, animal integration can make the difference
 between a comfortable living and just scraping by.  Just scraping by isn't
permaculture.  Permaculature stands for the good life.

For Mother Earth, Dan Hemenway, Yankee Permaculture Publications (since
1982), Elfin Permaculture workshops, lectures, Permaculture Design Courses,
consulting and permaculture designs (since 1981), and now correspondence
permaculture training by email. Copyright, 1996, Dan & Cynthia Hemenway, P.O.
Box 2052, Ocala FL 34478 USA  [email-masked]  

We don't have time to rush.

---

From: Greg Jarrett <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 25 Jan 1997 22:27:37 -0600 (CST)

>allow for more space to veggies, which can be important to people on smaller

Dan, could you elaborate on this a little more?  Why am I harvesting
everything at the same time?  Is there more to planting than simple
broadcasting?  What do you mean by "more divisions"?

This method is completely new to me, so any details are helpful.  Thank you!

******************************************
  Greg Jarrett     [email-masked]
   P.O. Box 93
    Fox, Arkansas  72051
     USA
      501/363-4532  fax 363-4578
******************************************

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 26 Jan 1997 10:14:19 -0500 (EST)

>This method is completely new to me, so any details are helpful.  Thank you!

Well, I was trying not to replicate my online permaculture course in this
mailing list, but I made myself fair game with that answer so here goes.

You harvest everything at about the same time so you can move chickens onto
the patch.  It won't do to harvest everything but the late cabbage.  Chickens
eat cabbage.  This takes some experience with your prefered varieties under
local conditions.

There can be more to planting than simple broadcasting.  You can start
seedlings in a separate bed.  I always have a very small bed just for
seedlings during the growing season so if I lose a late cabbage, I can pop
something else into that spot to use the space.  The seedling bed is not
fertilized much and the seedlings are planted a bit thickly (close together)
to keep them from growing fast.  When you move them to that empty spot with
all that room they show their gratitude.  It is a lot of work and major
disturbance to the Earth to keep an area in intensive cultivation and you'd
best make full use of the space.  I'm not going to get more into the answer
than that.  Get the John Jeavons book on gardening and the soils issue of our
journal and you have all you need on that part of gardening and more.

Well, more divisions means more divisions.  You can divide an acre into 2
half acre plots, 4 quarter acre plots, or 16 plots or, if you are a nut, a
million plots.
A million is divide more than 2.  Obviously there is a limit to the number of
divisions, probably one bed four feet wide and fifty feet long.  (People tend
to try to cross beds longer than 50 feet and invariably step on them or fall
on them trying to jump.  Give them a path.  Give yourself a path.)  If you
have little space, you want much of it in production for vegetables, etc.,
rather than as forage.  So you make more divisions.  Plant carefully and
cleverly so the beds follow one anouther in a more or less regular HARVEST
 succession, and move your chickens regularly.  If you fence every division
"permanently", this is more capital intensive. If you move fences every time
you move chickens, it is more labor intensive.  If you squeeze more
production out of land, you have to put in more of something.  It is just the
way the world works.  A good designer finds the optimum where the amount that
needs to be put in gets the most useful amount of gain.  (This is a nonlinear
response.)  A bad designer uses a formula or recipe and does not adapt the
number of divisions, schedule and other factors to specific circumstances
efficiently.  That's not permaculture its just bad design. 

This version of the chicken tractor is like anything else, you can do it well
and prosper or badly and end up with less than if you just kept the chickens
separate and did everything yourself.

I'm going to have to end my input on this theme here or there is no incentive
to read our journals and take our course.

---

From: April Sampson-Kelly <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 17:48:26 +-1100

permaculture and market garden are a bit of an oxymoron
- the role of permaculture is by pass market gardening,
if we want to do sustainable market gardening we 
have a number of costs to address 
which was covered earlier by many of us
basicly
sustainble farming imports less than it exports [ref Andrew Erb]
local production is best as it involves less packaging and transport
use locally available materials
other costs involve more picking time as the plants are mixed up not
sitting in rows
sacrifices may be made in order to get a large enough harvest
you may have to treat all the plants with same setup (micro climate, light, water)
in a good permaculture system the fruits DON"T all ripen at the same time.
April

BTW there is often a conflict of approaches between biodynamics and permaculture
and in my opinion poorly managed hens may compact soil if left in the area too long.
- you have to manage the hens 
or they will manage you alright.
One Biodynamics technique of baring the soil 
seems inappropriate for Ausralian conditions.
April
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~askpv/index.html

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From: 	[email-masked][SMTP:[email-masked]]
Sent: 	Saturday, 25 January 1997 21:27
To: 	[email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked]
Cc: 	[email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked]
Subject: 	Re: Permaculture market garden [PC class file under nutrient cycles, cr economic

---

From: Loren Davidson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 10:15:48 -0800

At 10:14 AM 1/26/97 -0500, [email-masked] wrote:
(worthwhile stuff on permaculture gardening methods deleted)

>to read our journals and take our course.

Silly me.  And here I thought this list was for distributing information on
Permaculture methods, not just so that you can give us "incentives"
(translation: advertising) to pay you money for the stuff.

With an attitude like that, I have absolutely *no* incentive to receive
instruction directly from you, as I've had enough instruction via role model
of condescending, egotistical, "One Right True And Only Way" behavior to
last me this lifetime.

Are you here to share your surplus, or are you just here to harvest?

(Apologies to the rest of the list...but this has really been bugging me
lately.  Does anyone else have thoughts on what type of example a
Permaculture designer/instructor should set by the way s/he lives their life?)

Loren
--
Loren Davidson      
[email-masked]         http://www.batnet.com/beauty/
"Songs of love and songs of death, and songs to set men free"
                  -- "Land Ho", The Doors

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From: Mark Ludwig <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 21:11:47 -0600

>Permaculture designer/instructor should set by the way s/he lives their life?)

Mark Sez.
1. People need to get paid for what they do, if they're PC designers, then
they shoud get paid for that.
2. I think places like this are great for dialoge and I wish it wasn't so
prickley.  I too am tired of the one size fits all mentality, ie I design on
a larger scale and don't give a rip if people feel it's impossibe to have a
sustainabe farm.  I am living in the real world, frankly care more about
getting licenced to teach high school than permaculture, and will damn well
use all the design concepts of PC I want to.  If people don't want to give
away all their best tricks, that's fine.  I am willing to think together and
share what I know and people should participate to the degree comfortable to
them.
3. I'm sick of people being nasty.  We can all be polite.
Mark.

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 09:57:47 -0500 (EST)

In a message dated 1/27/97 2:55:10 PM, [email-masked] (Loren Davidson)

>Permaculture designer/instructor should set by the way s/he lives their
life?)
Not silly you, arrogant you.  I have only so much time and I have put a lot
of it and money too into carefully worded articles in print.  I give away a
great deal of time and effort but you and better get it straight quick that I
don't owe you anything.  When you have paid your due to be a permaculture
instructor, then you set your own example.  If you give away 10 percent of
what I do, I wager it will be a hundred times more than you do now.  Back
off.

I don't want students who think that everything should be shared while they
have produced nothing to share.  There is a balance between giving and
receiving, as I recently posted.  You offer nothing but chastise someone who
has given a lot and then says, well in this case I'd rather you get it this
way.  I should be able to make a living at permaculture, but as it happens, I
take no salary, put everything back into the work, and then Cynthia, my wife
puts in some of what she earns to make up the difference.  And that sure in
hell isn't surplus--we have other good and pressing uses for that money.
 That's our choice, of course, and no one owes us anything.  And I don't owe
anyone my efforts when I should be stringing more fence for grazing so my
animals have a proper rotation and enough food and the answers to questions
are in other places that I have created to serve than need.

What I am sick of on the net is people who think that the Earth is their
private welfare state and that everyone with anything owes it to them. I will
decide what and when and where to give and it won't be to you if I can help
it.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 09:16:05 -0500

If you are in the USA, which is probable from your email address, you can go
to the county seat and look up the owner of the land in tax records, which
are public documents.  If you offer to lease the land for taxes, you may get
a taker.  Possibly you can secure a long-term lease so you feel comfortable
planting nut trees.

You can also bid on tax default land.  Apparently in Florida, where I live,
there are people who buy from the county the lien on tax delinquent land and
make a big profit when people try to clear the title to sell it.  I'm not
recommending this, I'm warning you about it.  In some states, particularly
New England, the towns levy property taxes and though the information is in
the county seat, you then have to go to the town to find out when they will
have tax auctions.  Most New England towns also are reluctant to sieze land
for back taxes and will give the owner every possible opportunity to keep the
land.  Of course, this is as it should be.  

Finally, in Massachusetts we were successful in getting unused public lands
into community gardens and fruition projects.  This was largely do to the
phenomenal efforts of Susan Redlich while she worked in the Divisioin of Land
Use of the the Food and Agriclture Department of the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts.  Through Susan's influence and efforts (writing legislation)
we also passed the country's first Purchase of Development Rights
legislation, which bought development rights from farmers located near
population centers.  The deal was that they got true value for the difference
in cash value between the selling price of the land restricted to
agricultural uses and the selling price of the land if it were to be
"developed" as housing, industrs (often done) or just salt away for
retirement in Florida.  (Haven't met any down here yet.)  This is
comparatively cheap land and very close to markets.

By the way, Susan was one of a kind.  Usually people end up being worn down
and absorbed by the system when they try to accomplish things from within.
 Usually, people get burned out at best, if they are really strong, or more
often erroded, corroded and coopted into the system they came to reform.
 This is a law of permaculture almost never taught in  the courses, though
always implied:  Energy follows the patterns that have been laid down.
 Hierachical systems burn egalatarians who join to reform for the heat.
 Really good people end up on the take, rubberstamping, or just committing
suicide.  Look at the history of the Green Movement.  

In Susan's case, besides her unnatural integrity, a few other things were in
her favor.  1)  A small support group within state government. I remember Ted
Live and Michaell Scully (in Rep. Mel King's office in the state house) and
also some women in Boston who were with county extension, all there to back
each other up. 2) Susan's boss, Fred Winthrop III, was a really good guy who,
though a believer in the capitalist model and commercial (chemical)
agriculture, would listen, cooperate, and compromise so long as we were all
working for a better food supply for the people of Massachusetts.  Freddy
only kept $1 of his salary and gave the rest back to the Commonwealth.
 There's something to be said for having rich people in public life--he was
there ONLY out of a sense of responsibility.  3)  Freddy eventually fired
Susan for insubordination.  (Long story--having heard both sides I think I'd
do the same thing if I were in either Susan's or Fred"s position).  More
recently, Massachusetts has had a former director of the New Alchemy
Institute as Commissioner of DFA (Freddy"s old job).  And the same state
hired the chief of the Wampaonag people as Director of Indian Affairs.  And
there is still far more wrong than right with the state government.  

I mention this because aside from maybe Maine and Vermont, I doubt that there
is any other place in the USA that we could make as much progress.  And I
think the window of opportunity may be closing in Vermont.

This IS practical permaculture design, by the way,  It isn't only on how you
grow your carrots.  Like the question said, you first have to have a place to
grow your carrots.

Oh, also put up notices at the health food stores and the food co-ops that
you want to garden land and will share produce with the owners.  You may get
a taker who, like my father, is too old to handle it himself.  He'd be glad
to have someone use his plot and maybe rake the yard for mulch two or three
times a year.  Extension service may know of community garden organizations
and similar groups that are plugged in to local resources, too.  And don't
neglect the state organic growers association.  

If none of these work, email me privately as we publish a directory that
includes names and addresses of specific resources.  However I wouldn't start
there in your position.  (Of course it is just where I'd start in my position
as it is already on my computer and I work with it daily anyway.)