Ok sorry, I thought much of the compost ingredients was coming from the larger community....my mistake!.gif ":)")
Ok sorry, I thought much of the compost ingredients was coming from the larger community....my mistake!
It says right on the video that he made 500 yards of compost on site.
If I remember correctly, his is pulling out a million pounds of food per year on 3 acres.
This is the fourth time I've watched the video. At no point do they say "we're not bringing in materials from off site". If there is a link or something that mentions the stuff not being brought in from off site, that would be really cool to see. Otherwise, the whole thing sorta strikes me a type of CAFO.
It's all good.Originally Posted by Ludi
Ok sorry, I thought much of the compost ingredients was coming from the larger community....my mistake!
If you still have a job, get everything in order, and quit. Do it as soon as you can, because we’ve never had a more important work to do. -Kyle Chamberlin
"I awoke, only to see the rest of the World was still asleep" - Leonardo Da Vinci
It's just my 2 cents,
Paka no hida
That seems to be the perennial question on your forum, Paul. "How much land do I need?"
How long is a piece of string?
I've developed a theory that land area is the least relevant question. I could, for example, very easily raise eggs and meat chickens to feed a family with the space I've got right now. But in the city where I live now, it's illegal to own chickens. I could make 100% of my calories with chickens. Definitely not with vegetables. So there are legal issues, always. I posted in another thread about water catchment, which is also illegal here. Water is a factor in food production.
Also there's a bit of difference between somewhere with a 365-day growing season, and one with a 100 day season. The colder climates not only leave a time crunch, but require a higher calorie intake per body weight.
So I'm with Grahame. It's a good question, but maybe not the one we should be asking.
Considering external input or not... where do you draw the line? Should your gardening tools and housing materials come from the site too? Couldn't seeds from the catalogs be considered an external input? That's ad absurdum of course, and less is better, but I wonder if some folks try to take this a bit far. Human societies tend toward specialization. We might in some ways think of that as entropy, but there is a large upside.
Last edited by TheDirtSurgeon; 07-02-2012 at 07:12 AM.
On that topic, for me, it matters more that if someone is relying heavily on external inputs- say, trucking in material year in and year out without a plan to stop- that they are honest enough to tell other folks that their fertility (or whatever) comes from somewhere else. I guess it just bothers me if someone says that they did all the work themselves and don't acknowledge the efforts put in by someone else, even if that person is a nameless nobody that they've never met who ran the chipper for the company that dumped the mulch off. "Self-reliant" is a bogus term.
Just my opinion (which doesn't count for much more than 2cents).
Pre-June 2012 A Victory Garden documents our typical American suburban lawn to a food forest based upon the permaculture principles.
Post-June 2012 60° N Permaculture follows my permaculture explorations and integration story in Finland.
Not surprised it was called a CAFO, it doesnt go against Permaculture, but goes against the bullshit others put up. The man worked his ass off to help his community, and it gets glibly called CAFO despite all the permaculture systems. Amazing.
If you still have a job, get everything in order, and quit. Do it as soon as you can, because we’ve never had a more important work to do. -Kyle Chamberlin
"I awoke, only to see the rest of the World was still asleep" - Leonardo Da Vinci
It's just my 2 cents,
Paka no hida
Seems to me as if it might be a symbiotic relationship - the garden provides food for the community, the community provides compost ingredients for the garden. It might not qualify as "without external inputs" which is the topic of this thread, but that doesn't mean it isn't beneficial, in my opinion.
This is a very important video. Thanks for posting it. Good to have some natural limits pointed out. Realism. I think it becomes obvious after hanging around on forums for a while that sometimes the ones who do the most talking and have all these theories sometimes do bugger all in reality. Arm chair permaculturists if you may.
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