David West
Hi All
My apologies for no pictures, but I am still struggling with the with a very slow IT connection, which I am hoping I will improve.
First some follow up on January. The water towers are now part of our integrated system and working well. They still leak a bit, but not enough to be a bother. They are now connected to about 500 meters of irrigation pipe that will make watering easy.
The chipper is working well with cassava, and I will check later on to see how well it handles other plants for mulch making. While I am on the subject of mulch, I found that rice straw is regularly burnt by farmers in this neck of the woods after harvest. So you should be able to get heaps around November and May, for little cost.
The pigs have arrived and they are now housed temporarily in the old pig pen. It has a concrete floor which although common, is not the best floor type for happy pigs. The new pen will have about a meter of saw dust on an earth floor. This is much better for a number of reasons. First, you no longer have to hose down the floor, to keep your pigs clean. The micro organisms break it all down, which prevents smells and flies. Second the pigs love to burrow, as it keeps their skin clean and cool. And finally after about 6 months you shovel it into your compost pile, where it will add to your plant food supply.
As we have flooding issues some years, we were thinking about, where to put the new pens high enough to avoid the problem. So my wife said” why don’t we dig a fish pond and use the earth to create some high ground”. So now, thanks to my wife’s flash of brilliance we have yet another part to our closed loop system. The fish pond water will be periodically pumped into the irrigation system, to feed nutrients to the animal feed as it grows.
We have a small goat herd which has increased by 3 maybe 4 depending on how the weakest one does. It is hanging on by a thread, so fingers crossed. For anyone thinking of running a goat herd, a few things I have learnt by trial and mostly error. I bought thirty goats about 4 years ago, with the idea that I would be making lots of money , as they will eat anything and produce 4 newborn’s each year for every adult female. Big mistake, first I bought them at the wrong time of year (the beginning of the rainy season). All but 4 died within 2 months, and they won’t eat anything you put in front of them. They are a bit like cows and browse on what they fancy, which is usually your kitchen garden goodies. We now have a stable herd of around 10, and we sell at holiday time, as that is when there is the greatest demand.
We have been planting corn, and morning glory, as they grow quickly and are a good part of our animals feed. We have also decided that the 2 hectare of cassava we planted last year is best feed to the animals as the processors well only pay 5 cents a kilo, at the factory gate.
So, on to the 2 subjects I said I would be covering this month. First, earth worms. For anyone wondering where to start understanding nature's system, then a worm bin in the corner of your kitchen is as good as it gets. It will teach you how nature turns a waste product into something beneficial. It might even get your kids interested enough to take their noses away from their overpriced gizmo and toward something that is real (scews my bias). There are many designs on the internet, so have look and see which one best suits your household.
The other subject is weeds. I was amazed to learn that weeds are not as many suspect , just the wrong plant in the wrong place. I have learnt from many well trained permaculturist’s that any weed that shows up in your garden needs to be there. By that I mean the specific weed is growing in your garden because of the condition of your soil. As an example, if you have very thorny woody weeds growing it is because the ground has become hard and needs breaking up. So the best way to deal with them is not to pull them out, but to chop them and drop them. Then cover with a thick layer of mulch, to lock in the benefits they bring, just like your grannies soup pot.
Well that’s it from me this month.
Chris
PS We have been running this news letter for a few months now and were hoping to get a few more contributions from our members. However as this has not happened we are considering joining with other Permaculture groups in the area to add more interest to the letter.
We will talk to the other groups , and would like to hear from you, your thoughts on the subject.
Chris