Author Topic: Request re farming advice  (Read 4321 times)

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Offline TylerDurden

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Request re farming advice
« on: March 14, 2012, 04:00:19 am »
OK, I recently asked 2 RPF members to provide the RPF forum with advice about how to set up a farm, RPF-style. Since they both stated that they didn't have the time, I would like to ask other RPF members to contribute. Even  1 paragraph would suffice, though I would like a whole article, eventually.
« Last Edit: March 14, 2012, 10:36:12 am by TylerDurden »
"During the last campaign I knew what was happening. You know, they mocked me for my foreign policy and they laughed at my monetary policy. No more. No more.
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Offline jessica

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Re: Request re farming advice
« Reply #1 on: March 14, 2012, 04:27:08 am »
agriculture is post paleo!!!!!!!! this belongs in HOT TOPICS!

pretty sure this guy know what hes doing....

http://jobs.oriongrassroots.org/job/paid-long-term-farm-apprenticeship-s-butte-falls-or-meadow-farm-e2835869b0/?d=1

buy land........raise animals......sell enough to sustain feeding, watering, land purchase and quality...etc.....

CitrusHigh

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Re: Request re farming advice
« Reply #2 on: March 14, 2012, 05:28:55 am »
They told you they didn't have time? That's ridiculous, no one is too busy to take a few minutes to teach others to raise animals sustainably. If you can be more specific about what you're looking for I can help. And I'd be willing to bet Jessica will lend some advice, that girl is an encyclopedia of knowledge and experience.

EDIT: Lol, woops, guess  you beat me to it J! And great comment, this is definitely HOT TOPICS!!! ROFLMFAO!
« Last Edit: March 14, 2012, 05:50:17 am by Let'sCopOut »

Offline HIT_it_RAW

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Re: Request re farming advice
« Reply #3 on: March 14, 2012, 06:35:25 am »
buy land
than most importantly remineralise the soil! fertile top soil is the placenta off all live on the planet. intensive farming and agriculture has drained the soil. only healthy, living, balanced soil can produce healthy plants and only they can produce healthy livestock.

The ice ages gound rock and mountains to powder this left the basis for balanced fertile top soil after each of them. we are overdue for another ice age so the land already was mineral defecient when we started robbing it of what little was left. luckily we dont have to wait for giant gletchers to grind rocks to dust. rock powders can be bought. do a soil test, see which minerals you lack (google albrecht), and suplement with the apropiate minerals.

after that you can start thinking about plants and animals.
“A man should be able to build a house, butcher a hog, tan the hide,
preserve the meat, deliver a baby, nurture the sick and reassure the dying, fight a war … specialization is for insects.”

Offline PaleoPhil

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Re: Request re farming advice
« Reply #4 on: March 14, 2012, 07:45:13 am »
POLYFACE FARM - Joel Salatin

Farming With Nature - Permaculture with Sepp Holzer

Joel Salatin vs. Sepp Holzer
Dan Barber's foie gras parable
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barber_s_surprising_foie_gras_parable.html

Paul Wheaton's 'You should read' Booklist
Quote
Square Foot Gardening (Mel Bartholomew)

Beginning Gardening Book. Gives simple gardening information like when to plant. Tons of simple charts, calendars that guide the gardener on fundamental strategies.

Gaia’s Garden (Toby Hemingway) [the bestseller on the topic of permaculture]

Best for 5 acres or less. If you only buy one permaculture book, buy this book.

Permaculture Designers Manual (Bill Mollison)

Toby Hemingway’s massive manual on Permaculture. Contains explicit detail on each subject.

Humanaure Handbook (Joseph Jenkins)

Available for free online. Describes strategy for human waste compost. Paul disagrees with the authors apathy towards poo phobia.

Liquid Gold

Better explanation of human urine vs. human poop than in the Humanaure Handbook.

No Work Garden Book (Ruth Stout)

Explains mulching with hay and here strategy on planting between hay. Advocates less effort more production gardening. Stops composting and lays compost between garden.

Water Storage (Art Ludwig)

Paul wants to memorize. Thin book packed with important information. Paul enjoys author’s measuring methods (ie using a microscope).

Gray Water Book (Art Ludwig)

Paul proclaims as ‘the’ graywater book. Explains strategy on making plumbing for housing easier.

The Hand-Sculpted House (Ianto Evans)

How to make a small house seem larger. How to make a house a home. Paul believes these elements are often overlooked.

Rocket-Mass Heaters (Ianto Evans with ?)

Ernie and Erica are best for optimizing RMHs. Ianto’s book is useful but doesn’t touch on optimization. Ianto’s book may be dated.

Ortho (Branch of Chevron) Books on Lawns, Weeds, maybe more…

Surprising source but explains each common plant well. Ways to control organically. Finally talks about Ortho product used to control the weed.

Mortgage Free (Rob Roy)

Book says, “stop being a slave to the rat race”. The book lays a plan on how to live super cheap. Save money for a grub stake, then get a chunk of land. Pay for each step without loans until you have the house of your dreams

The Woodland Year, The Woodland Way, Brown Wood Timber Framing (Ben Law)

Woodland is a forest with a symbiotic relationship with a human being. Ben Law explains his accomplishments with woodlands. Explains how human improvement and improve the health of a woodland. Woodland Year is a photo book and focuses on individuals with expertise in different woodland techniques. Brown Wood Timber Framing goes into detail on each species of wood.

Encyclopedia for Country Living (Carla Emory)

All-in-one guide for homesteading. Immense. Rags to riches story. Now in tenth edition. Paul disagrees with some information in the book but uses as a guide, along with others, to explore new homesteading techniques. Gives many perspectives on any given technique.

Back to Basics (Readers Digest)

General book, well done. Gives many pictures about ‘life on the farm’.

Backwoods Homes Magazine: Canning and Homesteading (Jackie Clay)

How to build a life in a homestead out in the middle of nowhere. Talks about canning bacon! Bits Paul doesn’t agree with but overall very knowledgeable.

Salad Bar Beef, Pasture Poultry Profits, You can Farm, Everything I want to do is Illegal, The Sheer ecstasy of being a Lunatic Farmer, Holy cows in hog heaven. (Joel Salitin)

Paul did everything Salatin suggested when he first started his farm. Has borrowed from many of his techniques. Salad Bar Beef: paddock shift system for cattle. Pasture Poultry Profits: move chickens in a 10x20 pen and move twice a day. Raising profits and quality. Everything I want…Illegal: Long rant. He can’t butcher a hog on his land and sell bacon. Goes into details why the laws are meaningless and dated. Sheer ecastcy…lunatic farmer: Paul only read the first chapter but highly recommends. Poetic. Paul says ‘Joyous to read’ You can farm: General. Farm setup. Holy cows…heaven: This book explains his philosophies to his best customers.

The Rebel Farmer (Sepp Sepp Sepp! Sepp Holzer)

Autobiographical. Good stories. Low on substance high on government woes. Similar to ‘Everything I want to do is Illegal’.
 
Sepp Holzer’s Permaculture

Book is amazing. Lots of information nobody knew. Information is very fresh. Book covers earth shelters, mushroom cultivation, companion planting, grafting, and keeping animals profitably.
« Last Edit: March 14, 2012, 07:51:50 am by PaleoPhil »
>"When some one eats an Epi paleo Rx template and follows the rules of circadian biology they get plenty of starches when they are available three out of the four seasons." -Jack Kruse, MD
>"I recommend 20 percent of calories from carbs, depending on the size of the person" -Ron Rosedale, MD (in other words, NOT zero carbs) http://preview.tinyurl.com/6ogtan
>Finding a diet you can tolerate is not the same as fixing what's wrong. -Tim Steele
Beware of problems from chronic Very Low Carb

CitrusHigh

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Re: Request re farming advice
« Reply #5 on: March 14, 2012, 08:46:15 am »
All great advice and wonderful resources!

But Ty if you can give us some parameters that would be good, because like Jessica alluded to, you're probably going to object to certain animals or protocols or whatever it may be.

Basically, the most critical principle is working with nature, not against her. Gentle nudges are ok, but brute coercion is so inefficient as to be laughable. In other words, don't plant blueberries up on top of a bluff when they want to be down in a bog with acidic soil and lots of moisture all the time. Don't try to raise more cattle than your land will support, don't bring in extra 'feed' (stored forage in this case) just to handle a handful's more head.

Beyond that there are some general guidlines.

Don't produce waste, make sure it is a closed system to the best of your ability, this should be possible, that's what nature is, doesn't mean it will happen right away though.

Be fairly small and diversified.

Raise lots of different plants, not just what you're going to eat, but what your livestock and wildlife want to eat too.

Keep lots of different livestock, learn how their wild counterparts would relate to eachother and mimic those interactions. IE use chickens to disperse cow pies and keep fly populations down.

Have good sources of water. If you're going to have a river, stream running through, find out what is upstream. You don't want your animals drinking water that's flowing by a factory or whatever other vector of pollution. Well's are great, ponds are great. You should have some kind of pond on your land and this pond ideally should support a full system ie: fish, frogs, insect larva, crayfish, egrets, etc. You don't want it breeding too many mosquitoes and you don't want it growing over with algae, or stagnant.

Be efficient with your work. That goes for most endeavors, but doubly for farming. Farming is a lot of work, that is no joke, but if you're efficient with your actions, you can have huge impact with your efforts.  Likewise, being inefficient will make you feel like you're not getting anything done at all.

Ponder all the ways your livestock can find to kill themselves. Especially with smaller animals like baby chicks, doesn't take much for them to drown(though adult chickens will die this way too), or get their heads caught in something. Animals were not designed to live in human enclosures, it's not their fault they're always getting caught in and on things, and they mostly can't think so we have to do it for them.

Large animals have large mineral, food and water needs. Minerals are CRUCIAL to the health of large animals. Their mineral levels depend on the health and availability in your soil and forage. A good pasture should have dozens of kinds of grasses, legumes, wildflowers. These days a good pasture has ten+ varieties of forage, but wild prairies would have thousands of different species, each serving a function as food or medicine for these large ruminants at a given time. Get native seed for your pastures, it is becoming more and more common to find companies geared specifically toward your region, selling seed mixes.

Don't get stuck in a rut, always be considering ways you can increase your outputs, while reducing your inputs/efforts and maintaining quality. But NEVER lose sight of quality, farming can be a fairly smoothe endeavor if quality (read: health) is maintained, but just look at CAFO's for what happens when you sacrifice quality, that's when antibiotics come in.

Try to raise less bred animals. Animals that still have a reasonable share of their instincts intact. It's nice when fowl will hatch their own offspring. It's great when cows are sure footed and can make efficient use of less than optimal forage. Wilder animals are awesome too, deer, elk, buffalo, quail, pheasant, etc But they usually require different handling methods and protocols so figure that out before you attain them!

You're going to be in the middle of nowhere most likely so having critical equipment is a good idea.
Air compressors, saws, drills, battery charger for car batteries, tire patch kits. Basically whatever you need to maintain everything it takes to care for the farm. You can't have your animals going without food for too long because you couldn't move a giant round bale in winter because you had a flat tire or whatever stupid thing you can think of.

That is enough for now. Give us some more detail, like what animals are considered Paleo to you, because it doesn't make sense to type in a bunch of info only to have you say 'that's not paleo'

And anything else that's important to know.

Offline cherimoya_kid

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Re: Request re farming advice
« Reply #6 on: March 14, 2012, 09:01:17 am »
I suggest using seawater precipitate and worm castings to improve soil quality.  The precipitate is also a good mineral supplement for all animals and people.

http://www.c-gro.com/  is a good place to buy seawater precipitate.  You can also make your own, but it's time-consuming.

Offline TylerDurden

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Re: Request re farming advice
« Reply #7 on: March 14, 2012, 10:45:41 am »
Hmm, I had read that seawater actually damages/kills plants. For example, that tsunami in Japan killed off trees which survived the tsunami's crash, simply because of the excess salt.

As regards what I wanted in the article:- no idea, really, I'm no farmer, I was hoping people would go into intense detail about their own farms. Obviously, a focus on small-time farming is required. I was also hoping for accounts from people interested in more than just the grassfed/wild issue. For example, I once came across a guy who didn't just feed his animals on grass but on a wide variety of herbs, can't remember which ones they were.
"During the last campaign I knew what was happening. You know, they mocked me for my foreign policy and they laughed at my monetary policy. No more. No more.
" Ron Paul.

Offline PaleoPhil

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Re: Request re farming advice
« Reply #8 on: March 14, 2012, 11:03:08 am »
Natural pasture naturally contains herbs (like roundhead lespedeza) and legumes (like clover) as well as grasses.
« Last Edit: March 14, 2012, 11:09:57 am by PaleoPhil »
>"When some one eats an Epi paleo Rx template and follows the rules of circadian biology they get plenty of starches when they are available three out of the four seasons." -Jack Kruse, MD
>"I recommend 20 percent of calories from carbs, depending on the size of the person" -Ron Rosedale, MD (in other words, NOT zero carbs) http://preview.tinyurl.com/6ogtan
>Finding a diet you can tolerate is not the same as fixing what's wrong. -Tim Steele
Beware of problems from chronic Very Low Carb

Offline cherimoya_kid

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Re: Request re farming advice
« Reply #9 on: March 14, 2012, 11:19:00 am »
Hmm, I had read that seawater actually damages/kills plants. For example, that tsunami in Japan killed off trees which survived the tsunami's crash, simply because of the excess salt.



Some plants tolerate sodium waaay better than others. Coconuts and mangroves would be an extreme example of plants that tolerate sodium well.

However, yes, you're right, sodium isn't good for most plants in large amounts, and tends to block calcium.  I recommend rinsing most/all of the sodium out of the seawater precipitate prior to using it on most plants.  For humans/animals this isn't quite as important, but still helpful. Most ruminants, specifically, need salt, so unwashed, or lightly-washed precipitate is fine for them.
« Last Edit: March 14, 2012, 02:52:15 pm by TylerDurden »

Offline cherimoya_kid

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Re: Request re farming advice
« Reply #10 on: March 14, 2012, 11:21:14 am »
journeytoforever.org/farm_library.html has some good stuff on small farms.  They even have the only online copy (that I'm aware of) of Dr. Price's NAPD book.

Offline jessica

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Re: Request re farming advice
« Reply #11 on: March 14, 2012, 11:31:01 am »
its continual work too, especially on a closed system, but you become part of it and the day passes and pass right along with it, but you might work 4-11 some days, especially with wells and animals and cutting wood etc....but there is so much joy in it

how to grow more vegetables then you ever though possible-john jeavons
also look up holistic animal and range managment as well as subsistance style gardening.....
permaculture books are seriously great ideas but really start vrey practically...know the land you purchase, hopefully its large, has a lot of natural habitat, and even diverse habitat, grasses, forests, streams, good soil, existing trees, berries, etc...tools, water, seed, healthy animals, sturdy out buildings...........lots of work

 

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