Currently living in the post apocalypse?

[steev]

So much of commercial ag is on the third-world model of growing what can be sold away, rather than used locally; planting fruit/nut trees fell off precipitously when people got into "move ~every five years mode"; here in the foodie SF Bay Area, trends are hopeful, with those into gardening and poultry making every effort to involve their kids from toddler-hood, as I was infected with these beneficial viruses. There's no substitute for a diverse and healthy "biome", whether in one's gut or head.

[prairiegardens]

If you want to get anywhere then horses will get you there a whole lot faster than oxen will. Around here they are also a whole lot cheaper to acquire. I am seriously considering changing to horse drawn vehicle to replace the car which is getting to be too expensive, no claims but insurance tripled last year with no suggestion it will not climb even more in the near future, and now they are charging taxes on registrations and insurance and licenses, as though they aren't really only taxes in the first place.

If I knew how to teach a horse to kneel so I could get on, like the vaqueros of Mexico, it would be a no brainer, I can ride but the getting on and off is a problem with no working knees, so I'll be stuck with some sort of wagon. I'm trying hard to avoid any government excuses to suck up more and more money for less and less. Off grid now for nearly a month, it's taking a little getting used to, but surprisingly peaceful. just have to limit internet access a bit now, which is absolutely a good thing.

Anyway , I read a study done way back when tractors were starting to replace horses, it was in an ag textbook. Their conclusions were that all things considered, as long as fuel was below 50 cents a gallon tractors were a better bang for the buck. Of course everything has gone up but another thing to consider is that most of us no longer have access to horse drawn implements. Or oxen for that matter, plus it could be a challenge even finding yokes for oxen these days, horse harness is still readily available. Yokes LOOK simple to make and put on, appearances are deceptive. I knew a guy 30 years ago who trained a pair of steers to pull but it was rare even then. Cattle are generally not as easy to train, from what I could see. Still, they certainly can be useful.

[steev]

I think the whole gasoline/diesel, horse, ox, whatever power is coming to a head, ag-power-wise; big-ag is certainly not going low-tech; small-ag is increasingly finding low-tech solutions; given the dependence of big-ag on high-input, high-tech and globalization, I'm betting on small-ag, with its lower external energy inputs. Shipping stuff world-wide is not sustainable.

While it is certainly true that there are concerns about sustainable energy-fueled ag, these things often ignore the need for manual labor, as opposed to machine; do we have a surplus of machines, or do we face a surplus of humans? Is it better to harvest our crops mechanically and resent giving sustenance to the "undeserving poor", or should we give actual work and sustenance to more people? I'll not go into my opinions about those opposed to birth control nor movement of population.

prairiegardens: if you'd really want to bother with a horse, think step-stool or a ramp; a horse could be a PITA, not to mention the knees; gotta care for it (the horse).

One of my 2nd great-grandmothers tried to kill herself when she could no longer hitch up her buggy (whole 'nother story).

[walt]

Oct 20, 2017 19:38:32 GMT -5 prairiegardens said:

If you want to get anywhere then horses will get you there a whole lot faster than oxen will. Around here they are also a whole lot cheaper to acquire. .......even finding yokes for oxen these days, horse harness is still readily available. Yokes LOOK simple to make and put on, appearances are deceptive. I knew a guy 30 years ago who trained a pair of steers to pull but it was rare even then. Cattle are generally not as easy to train, from what I could see. Still, they certainly can be useful.

Having grown up on a dairy, I'm much more comfortable with cattle.  Having seen oxen in daily use in Niger for 3 years, I've noted how they make yokes.  But I don't think I have enough ground to need horse, oxen, nor tractor.
I do want a roto tiller.  And I've concidered replacing the gassolene engine on a free rototiller (guess why it's free) with an electric motor and an extension cord.

I'll be keeping a car for Sunday trips (40 miles each way) to see my son, who has Aspergers and rheumatoid arthritus.  And about 2 times a year, I take him to KU med school to see a specialist, and to visit my daughter who lives near the med school.  So I'm stuck with a car.  

I lived off the electric grid for 10 years.  I regret going back on.  I'm trying to save enough to get solar again.  
I did ok with a 100 watt system.  I did without a refridgerater, That is something I'd like next time.  I think that would boost my needs to 300 watts.

[steev]

Interesting; having ten acres to service another ten acres, the notion of horse-powered implements is entertaining. I admit to a fantasy of charging across a field on a draft horse, but I'm not a horse person, so I'll prolly stick with self-propelled machinery.

I think the response to the needs of small farmers is encouraging; while I may be wrong (despite the occurrance of that in the past, ever so infrequently), I think this is a need that must be addressed. I'm glad someone is doing it; not everyone has 100 acres or more, but these small plots can be very productive (in fact, more productive than agri-biz).

[reed]

Here in Indiana I guess roughly it takes twice as much pasture to feed a horse as it did fifty years ago, probably way more. My neighbor has over a hundred acres with maybe a dozen horses and they buy feed year round. In the old days for horses and cows both they could mostly live off pasture in the summer and you bailed hay to feed in winter. Now you have to feed all year cause the hotter dryer climate leaves the pastures brown and dusty by July in most years. The hay you might have bailed years ago either doesn't grow or has to be pastured.

Don't know about other places but the time of self sustainable farming, with horses, like my Grand Dad did is over here, no matter how many implements you have. I do think it might be worth trying to keep a couple horses around for transportation, just don't get too attached to them as they might have to end up on the dinner plate.

We don't have 20 - 30 yeas before climate change gets critical, it already is. I suspect we have 2 or 3 years till nobody denies it anymore, even though they may still argue about the cause.

[walt]

The Kansas Amish, around Yoder, KS, don't farm with horses, nor oxen.  They use big diesel-powered equipment.  They say "It's not sin if it grows better wheat."  I think "better" means "more" in this context.
The problem here is that it takes a lot of horsepower to work enough land to make wheat farming, or most farming, economical here.  
They still use horse and buggy to get around.  I think they use horses some on the farms too.

Some years ago there was an earthquake down south, I forget which country.  A local TV station sent a photographer and reporter to do a documentery on the Amish response to the earthquake.
They drove their horses and carriages to a central location where they got on a chartered bus.  Someone was in charge of getting the horses and buggies home.  The bus took them to the Wichita airport, where the flew to the earthquake area.  There they used heavy power equipment to clean up.  Then they flew back to Wichita, rode a chartered bus back to Yoder, where their horses and buggies were waiting to take them home.
I respect then.  No interest in being one.

[prairiegardens]

Oct 27, 2017 7:39:22 GMT -5 reed said:

Here in Indiana I guess roughly it takes twice as much pasture to feed a horse as it did fifty years ago, probably way more. My neighbor has over a hundred acres with maybe a dozen horses and they buy feed year round. In the old days for horses and cows both they could mostly live off pasture in the summer and you bailed hay to feed in winter. Now you have to feed all year cause the hotter dryer climate leaves the pastures brown and dusty by July in most years. The hay you might have bailed years ago either doesn't grow or has to be pastured.

Don't know about other places but the time of self sustainable farming, with horses, like my Grand Dad did is over here, no matter how many implements you have. I do think it might be worth trying to keep a couple horses around for transportation, just don't get too attached to them as they might have to end up on the dinner plate.

We don't have 20 - 30 yeas before climate change gets critical, it already is. I suspect we have 2 or 3 years till nobody denies it anymore, even though they may still argue about the cause.

There's a guy by the name of Greg Judy in Iowa iirc who is doing very interesting stuff with cattle based on the work of Allan Savory. He carries a lot of cattle per acre and doesn't put up hay, other than perhaps a few bales in the event of exceptionally deep snow that the cattle can't get to the grass. His cattle apparently are coming through the winter in excellent condition. It's all originally based on a system developed by Savory and seems to work exceedingly well. The original impetus was to reverse desertification and restore ecologies, and that's been proven to be a successful endeavour from South Africa to Australia and Canada to South America. 

Allan Savory has a fairly compelling Ted talk about how he arrived at his conclusions, followed by examples of some successes. There are a few ranchers in this province trying, so far they are very enthusiastic about their results, although I think most are still busy putting up hay as per usual.

[prairiegardens]

There's another interesting Ted talk from a few years back about a guy who started an orangutan refuge in Indonesia , Hans Rosling I think was the name. . It got fairly complex so best to watch the talk, but it was very closely monitored via satellites and they could track the increase in rainfall over the lands they restored. The same sort of results have been seen in the work that Sepp Holtzer has done, and Geoff Lawton, and there's a very interesting video of the restoration of the Loesss Plateau in China.

The problem is that most governments neither know nor really care about what works in the long term, they only really care about the short term as it affects their (the politicians) terms in office. Or so it seems to me anyway.

[steev]

Yes; CYA is the important part. Will these policies destroy the ecosystem in the future? Who cares? I'll be gone by then (having had a nice retirement, thanks to my government "service").

While it's not a rapid fix, the Italian stone pines I've been planting on the farm (the only trees I've found yet that have a good shot at surviving without irrigation, although with heavy mulch to stretch the wet-season water) will eventually start to shade currently sun-struck acres, thereby reducing insolation, as well as buffering drying wind. It's a pretty low-input, low-tech practice, but I think it has legs. It will eventually even produce pine-nuts, not that I'll likely live to see it; well, one must pay it forward, if one isn't a totally self-involved dick. Say; how's the Pres-in-twit doing?

[prairiegardens]

Biochar is of use only in tropical soils, doesn't manifest any benefit to temperate soils, or so the research results from a Swedish study years ago (and my own experimentation) suggest. Also too many people make it wrong, I was appalled to see someone running a class on making biochar and his process was belching masses of black smoke, including gasses like methane, much more harmful than carbon dioxide. If it's made right there's no visible smoke, all the gasses are burned in a secondary flame. In a temperate climate it can be useful to make use of things like worn out tennis shoes, if it's made right it won't hurt anything and helps keep stuff out of landfill, but personally I'd avoid plastics if possible.

[steev]

There being little official input, the whole notion of biochar is largely counter-cultural, so of no real interest. There are many agricultural practices that don't translate to Big-Ag, so never get real attention; Big-Ag being where the money is, study hones in on the interests of Big-Ag; duh!

[steev]

Well put.

I will, however, bitch about a particular gripe of mine: ecology is the study of the ecosystem; it is not the ecosystem ("ology" could be a clue, though perhaps only to those "classically" trained); I realize that the growing usage of "ecology" for ecosystem is common, but I think it symptomatic of debasement of linguistic rigor. Yes; I am an aging nerd and lover of the English language, which is capable of fine distinction, indispensable to exact communication. Don't even get me started on "try and" rather than "try to". I admit to regretting the decline of "diagramming sentences", a useful tool for clarifying grammar and syntax (one of my few competitive skills; told you I'm a nerd, din't I?).

Being in the choir to which you preached, I say "amen".

My farm is land that was stripped of the native chaparral in the forties, briefly farmed unsuccessfully to alfalfa and wheat, then left to extractive ranching: all take-out, no input; the soil is utterly mineralized, no organic matter at all, hence my efforts to import OM, which are bearing fruit; the worm population is notably improved (from zero to many). Anything I plant prolly counts as afforestation, since there was literally nothing more than annual weeds; I've found that Italian stone pines tend to like it there, growing without irrigation, but with heavy mulching and elk defense; I also transplant in the native manzanita, and am trying to establish various oaks; there are Arizona cedars locally that I'd like to bring in, because they're pretty and local, like the manzanitas.

I would note that Cali used to have regional nurseries to raise seedlings specifically for replanting burned-off areas with locally native trees (Cali burns in the Fall, right? This isn't news; it's how it's always been; only thing new is efforts to prevent it that have led to worse fires, having promoted the buildup of more fuel and the spread of people into more fire-prone areas); those were dumped under Governor Terminator, as an economic move. I guess it looked good to the ignoranti, to whose asses politicians always give lip service. Note the precise use of English there, every word is meant exactly as it reads.

[steev]

You might have the best chance against the vermin if you could have your seedlings in pots a couple years before planting out.

[prairiegardens]

Part of the problem at least in Western Canada is the "reforestation" consisting entirely of commercially attractive species, resulting in a monocrcop of pines or spruce in millions of acres. This in turn leads to such things as the infestation of the pine bark beetle which romped through untold acres a few years ago, causing death to the trees and a degree of despair to the logging industries in those areas. If it's trees then it must not matter WHAT trees, appears to be the mantra, and apparently it's still considered as or more useful to spray and cross fingers than to change management a little to provide some diversity.

I was wondering what if any impact such practices had on the huge wildfires this summer. Although, driving through central BC. this week I was astounded to see more than a dozen apparently unattended slash pile fires on the edges of clear cuts. There was no snow cover and it still seemed pretty dry to be burning so close to the standing trees, but then I learned the hard way once how fast and unexpectedly a fire can get out of control.