Eco-friendly lawn mowers in the DR orchard
Dancing Rabbit recently took 19 acres of our land out of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), a government program that pays us to maintain potential agricultural land as wildlife habitat. Though this program has helped us pay the mortgage on our land, most of the land we could potentially use for ag projects has been under CRP contract and has not been available for use by members without the payment of a significant penalty. The recent opening up of land has spurred interest in new agricultural projects and has begun a community process of forming new agricultural policies around how we use the land. We’d like to use our agricultural land to produce more of our own food and income for our members, but we also want to be sure we are practicing a kind of agriculture that will be sustainable over the long term. Most agriculture done in this country is based on the use of fossil fuel, and because of its destructive nature will not be sustainable for thousands of years like the agriculture of our ancestors. To help with forming our policies, members were asked to write up their visions for the future of agriculture at DR. I plan to compile some excerpts from what people wrote soon and post them here on the blog.
In the meantime, I offer an essay I recently wrote for my blog about the use of animals in sustainable agriculture. Although modern methods of animal agriculture are neither sustainable nor humane, including livestock in a sustainable agriculture system has great potential for reducing our dependence on fossil fuel, restoring fertility to farmland, and making food production more sustainable. This article is posted on my blog and linked here because it is my opinion and not necessarily one shared by everyone at DR. I do think many of the issues discussed in the essay are relevant to creating a model for sustainable agriculture here.
http://crossthought.blogspot.com/
I am wondering if DR will keep every one of its animals until they die of natural causes or must be euthanized?
Amanda, DR itself does not keep animals, but instead animals here are kept by individuals or co-ops. Some are keeping chickens for meat, some for eggs. Some laying hens may be kept until they die of natural causes. The sheep in the photo are being kept by a member who plans to eat them at the end of the season or sell the meat to others. They are being grazed in the DR orchard, but they are the project of an individual. Here at DR, because it is a village, everyone does their own thing or cooperates with others in a subgroup.
I really dont know what I want to say other than I feel a close connection to the earth and like what you are trying to accomplish. I would love to become a part of who you are and contribute the knowledge i have also. I am very much interested in finding out more if you have someone i can talk with.
Sincerely,
Ricky
I’ve learned that some pecan varieties will grow as far North as Southern Indiana. (Amling, Sumner, Kanza, Lakota, Pawnee) Plus, there is a cross between a pecan and a hickory called a hican (exceptionally cold-hardy). Pecans are going up in price nowadays. Maybe a good way to increase your own food supply, take Co2 out of the air, and make some money, also?
Get with me if ya wanna pick my brain, or maybe share in some of the trees I will soon have growing indoors until I can find them a home.
Logan
Logan, we do have some pecans growing here at DR. We also love to buy the pecans that are grown locally in the region and sold at our nearby Mennonite grocery Zimmerman’s. What a great food! I would be interested in getting some of those hicans and there are others here who would likely be interested as well. I love the hickories that grow around here. Beautiful trees to have.
I have been farming for years without the use of chemicals. I rotational graze, and do everything by the sign of the moon. If I was going to start over, I would want to eradicate fescue except for one patch of it for winter stockpiling forage. Fescue is excellent for that. I have no permanent fencing, just a hot wire. I unroll hay in a different spot every time I need to feed hay. Hay isn’t wasted that way, and you can control where you want manure to be concentrated to build fertility. Lime, aeration, and rest will do wonders for plant and soil health- not chemicals. Chemicals destroy the earthworms in your soil. If you apply chemical fertilizer one time, it takes 7 years to have the worm population back in your soil again. Chemical fertilizer turns your soil into a drug addict. If your going to have cattle, may I suggest dexters? They have a much lower impact on the land, and are much friendlier to handle. Plus they have practically no problem calving. Hogs are also excellent land renovators too, they clean up what’s there, till, and fertilize the soil all at one time. Old timers used to use hogs to clean up a field before replanting it to another crop. They tilled and fertilized at the same time. Talk about a time saver.
I would like to have some information how can I help my hispanic comunity to stop consuming non organic vegetables ,and how they can grow vegetables in their back yards
That’s a tall order Roxana, and a question I would love to know the answer to. How do you get people to eat organic vegetables or grow them themselves? It could be that they just don’t have the space or the time to grow vegetables. On top of this, vegetables and food in general are so undervalued and cheap to buy from the store, people see growing them as a waste of time. For the same reason, they might be less interested in buying organic veggies, since organic products tend to be more expensive. One thing I’d recommend is finding a way for them to try homegrown vegetables so they can taste the difference between them and storebought veggies. For most fruits and vegetables there is no comparison–the homegrown has more flavor, color, and nutrients, particularly since it is so much fresher. Also, if space is an issue, you could start a community garden, a piece of land dedicated to providing garden space for people who otherwise would not have access to it. Where I used to live, people of all different ethnicities loved to garden in the community gardens. It’s a great place to meet people, be inspired, and learn more about gardening. Many cities have community gardens, and if there isn’t one in your area, you may be able to contact the local community garden organization to establish one nearby.