Mekong Sustainable Farming Forum - May Newsletter -

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Apr 30, 2015, 6:12:07 PM4/30/15

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Mekong Sustainable Farming Forum

- May Newsletter -

Chris's blog
IPCUK Scholarship
New Zealand Ram Pump
150 herbs and their uses

After a flurry of correspondence related to computer communication, there has been no further input.
Any and all articles and questions welcome.

Send to dgw...@gmail.com or post directly on this forum https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mekongfarm

Chris's Blog

Hi All

The month of April has now come and gone, and the rains have started to break the oppressive heat. We have been making good progress, with our animals and crops. Our two 8 month old sows have now had a visit from the local bore, and seem to be a bit less noisy. We have also purchased a 2 month old bore, so that we don’t have to pay for services in the future.

However a few problems have started to arise, which I thought I would share with you. We have about twenty ducks around 2 months old. A few days ago I noticed most of them had the area around their tail feathers that were red raw. Despite having sufficient space to give any agoraphobic duck a panic attack, it turned out that some of them had been pecking the others. The medication that fixed the problem is normally used for humans with diarrhea. All we did was open the capsule and sprinkle the powder on the raw area, which seems to have fixed the problem.

The other problem has been a black mite that has started to cover some of our runner beans. We first sprayed with garlic, which seems to have stopped the spread. Tomorrow we are going to use wood vinegar on it, to see if that wipes it out. I will keep you posted on this one.

We have just said good bye to 3 volunteers, who had been with us for nearly 3 weeks. It is always a help to have enthusiastic people around to help catch up with some of our labour intensive projects. This month we were planting one Rai of sugar cane, and putting the ½ meter of sawdust and soil on the floor of the new pig pen. The volunteers and I went for a day trip to a small farm outside Vientiane, who were looking for some help with their project. It was great to see what others are doing and to be able to give a few tips on how things could be done a little better.

The bananas that we planted 3 months ago are now looking much healthier. In the first month it looked like about half of them had died. But new sprouts came out by the dead looking stumps, so all is well with them. Apart from liking free bananas, the main reason for the 100 plants is as feed for our small herd of pigs. The book that I get much of my useful information from (Natural farming by Arnot Tancho) believes that the bulk of the diet of pigs should be fermented plant material.

I also spent half a day on the computer looking for alternate advice on what is best to feed our pigs. The results were not great, as sadly most of the papers are written by academics rather than farmers. They were clearly aimed at people who were running large sheds that were focused on the dollar. So we have decided to start our own research regarding the use of animal feed that can be found locally. We will start with the crops that we grow or can be found nearby at prices affordable by just about anyone. One of the ingredients will likely be cassava, as it is grown by many and is usually sold to the processers for around 4c a kilo. One thing I did learn from the internet is that the leaves of the cassava plant has up to 20% protean, where as the root has only around 3%. As the subjects that we will be using for our research are just a twinkle in the eye of the local bore, the results are likely to take about a year.

Well that’s it for this month.

Next month I will be looking at the issue of how you can make some income from Permaculture/natural farming without running courses.

IPCUK scholarship
The International Permaculture Convergence in UK

http://permaculturenews.org/2015/04/17/we-have-an-opportunity-to-step-up-and-meet-global-challenges-togetherwe-have-an-opportunity-to-step-up-and-meet-global-challenges-together/

International Permaculture Convergence, London 2015

IPCUK will bring together leading experts and practitioners from around the world.

We have everything we need to create a sustainable world and future. Together we will create a vision of a near future society that is caring, sustainable and fair, and explore how we can collectively design strategies and pathways to make it happen.

Conference, 8-9 September 2015, The Light, Euston Road, London.
Designing the World We Want - two days packed with presentations, workshops, academic papers, exhibitions, music, and art.

Convergence, 10-16 September 2015, Gilwell Park, Essex.
Designing the network we want - for people from around the world using permaculture in their everyday lives and communities.

Edge events, throughout the UK and Europe.
From tours and courses, to talks and more.

Book your place now for a 25% discount.

New Zealand Ram Pump

Ram pumps are fascinating because they achieve the seemingly impossible task of pumping water to a higher height than the water supplying the pump, and they do it with no added energy input.

This is often misunderstood as needing no energy, but a casual lesson in the laws of thermodynamics tells us this is impossible....

Read more »

-- http://permaculturenews.org/2015/04/28/new-zealand-ram-pump/http://permaculturenews.org/2015/04/28/new-zealand-ram-pump/

List Of 150+ Herbs With Uses And Benefits

http://www.herbs-info.com/list-of-herbs.html

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Mekong Sustainable Farming Forum - May Newsletter -

Mekong Sustainable Farming Forum

Mekong Sustainable Farming Forum

- May Newsletter -

International Permaculture Convergence, London 2015

The Herbs:

The Herbs:

The Herbs: