Jump to content
Join the Unexplained Mysteries community today! It's free and setting up an account only takes a moment.
- Sign In or Create Account -

How we "love" nature


bmk1245

I "love" nature  

14 members have voted

  1. 1. Would you leave everything behind to save nature

    • Yes. I would leave everything (every minute thing that makes my life easier), behind me just to save nature
    • Maybe. I would leave some things behind, but not every.
    • No. I understand my impact/fault on nature, but I'm trying to minimize adverse effects (not just hot air on the forums).


Recommended Posts

Good.

But you forgot that maintaining all infrastructure and making your daily things takes lots of energy (building your loft, pavement you walk, your clothes, spoon, etc, etc, etc, etc). In comparison with some African family who live primitive life (without electricity, tap water, etc), your carbon footprint is huge.

BTW, what about shower? And you do use washing machine, don't you? Forgot that?

.

so, by your rationale, we all should go back to eating raw meat & sleeping in trees then?

didn't realise this thread was in the 'joke' section.

my mistake.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Ok, you convinced me.

Do you flush erhmmm... poop... right into the water? I'm not very familiar with living (not just tripping) on the boat, so, can you enlighten me?

Haha, absolute no way. Anyone who does that should be arrested and would be reported by the other boaters. All waste goes to a pump out which goes to the sewers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You're right about the land amounts, herbivore humans need less land because cattle takes more land. I'm pretty sure we didn't have carrot and potato before Columbus, dont know about tomato's history but... Lanttu, turnip in english I think, and cabbage. Turnip is a root so you can preserve it over-winter in vinegar. Cellery... a lot of ones I dont know of, probably. Those are the domesticated plants. Spinach, if it survives in our climate, I think it does. A lot of things dont survive in lapland, but that sweet yellow berry does, and they've always had ten times the reindeers than they have people there so that part of our country has been pretty self-sufficient as far as I know.

[...]

Sadly, we aren't herbivores, so we need more land to survive (without farming).

[...]

I'm sorry vandals did in your greenhouse. Heating your house and having fruit trees isn't probably so challenging in your climate, you could probably have mulberries without greenhouses, we can too in our southernmost latitutes if you choose a cold-resistant strain, supposedly. But those trees dont grow here in nature as far as I know, dont know if plums do either though we have those in outdoor gardens at least, without greenhouses and all. Also apples. I dont know if we had apples 500 years ago, dont think we had plums back then at least, maybe some rich folks had a tree or few.

[...]

While yeah, growing apples, cherries, and some other fruits isn't that challenging, but there are more demanding plants. We have temperatures in winter down to -30C and below, and sometimes we have frosts as early as September, and even in May/June.

[...]

But if I get it right what you try to say between the lines, is that today we're better off in terms of needing less agricultural land per person. Maybe so, but that in no ways makes permaculture a worse option. Because permaculture wasn't used by a lot of people, especially not europeans as far as I know, not in major scale at the very very least. Most had fields, and I've read of europeans who went into these indigenous people's lands in other continents like Africa and Asia and said "what the duck man, why you fools farm like in a jungle? Put an organized neat crop like we white men do!" and thrashed their natural-farming gardens and put there instead their plowed fields, "educating" them on "real farming"...

[...]

But, for example, India became self sufficient only after "green revolution" (with all negative impacts).

[...]

The thing with permaculture is, you can get it wrong, and probably will, and probably more than once. You need to have a lot of things right, but just the basics still. Because you have something wrong there, crops dont grow so well. If your plants dont get fertilized enough = lack of nitrogen at least, more legumes and comfrey and mulch it. But you also need healthy soil = enough worms and insects there that break the leaves and poop and convert it to forms more suitable for plants to get them with their roots. If you kill the insects and worms with pesticides, then you should also use fertilizer, because the plants dont get so much nutrients thanks to pesticides.

Different plants require different macro/micronutrients soil can be lacking of. So, while yes, nitrogen deficiency can be solved as you said, other "stuff" can be brought only with synthetic fertilizers.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

.

so, by your rationale, we all should go back to eating raw meat & sleeping in trees then?

didn't realise this thread was in the 'joke' section.

my mistake.

That was response to your "my carbon footprint is virtually non-existant".

Haha, absolute no way. Anyone who does that should be arrested and would be reported by the other boaters. All waste goes to a pump out which goes to the sewers.

Ok, thanks for clarification.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

That was response to your "my carbon footprint is virtually non-existant".

.

well, try & keep your responses grounded in reality eh, bmk?

compared to most people, ie.- people who don't live in the sudan, or who eat raw meat & sleep in trees, my carbon footprint IS virtually non-existant, or are you suggesting I take my clothes down to the river and beat them on rocks to wash them? or stand naked in the rain perform my ablutions?

next you'll be wanting me to wipe my ass on leaves to help combat global warming I suppose?

pretty rich coming from a guy who licks his plates clean because he won't give up his computer.....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

.

well, try & keep your responses grounded in reality eh, bmk?

compared to most people, ie.- people who don't live in the sudan, or who eat raw meat & sleep in trees, my carbon footprint IS virtually non-existant, or are you suggesting I take my clothes down to the river and beat them on rocks to wash them? or stand naked in the rain perform my ablutions?

next you'll be wanting me to wipe my ass on leaves to help combat global warming I suppose?

[...]

Why not? Would be a good start... :rolleyes:

[...]

pretty rich coming from a guy who licks his plates clean because he won't give up his computer.....

Try to run simulation software on your phone, when it takes more than week just single run on OC'ed i7-3930K (up to 4.3GHz) and consumes almost all of 64GB RAM installed...
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The amount of land needed for surviving isn't only dependant on past statistics nor only on past farming techniques, but also on how we develop them in the future and now. That's my response to saying that we need this and this amount of land to sustain people, omnivore people not herbivore. Because the more green you're able to grow, the more feed you got for the animals. There's a farm in England of which's name I dont remember but they handled the grass pretty well there, 20 different species of grass. Allowed cows to graze longer on them before going to shelter for the winter, and the grass didn't break so easily under cow hooves and there was plenty of it compared to the amount of land they used for cow grazing. It was in the document "A Farm for the Future".

However, not letting animals go out and walk and exercise will result in them having less and less muscle tissue because they dont need that tissue anymore. And it's that muscle tissue of theirs that we need. So in order to maintain the amount of meat in animals, we let them go out and do their things. It's a long-term thing, you dont see it in a generation or two, but we evolve the way we live. If you're from a family of drinkers, you'll be more likely to drink too. If you're from a family of sportspeople, you'll be more likely to do sports too. The generational thing is because of habits and because a part of it goes into our genes as a mutation which occurs due to our continuous attempt to adapt.

But, for example, India became self sufficient only after "green revolution" (with all negative impacts).

Different plants require different macro/micronutrients soil can be lacking of. So, while yes, nitrogen deficiency can be solved as you said, other "stuff" can be brought only with synthetic fertilizers.

Yeah, India is a land of drought, I'm not fully aware of all it's conditions but drought and excess heat seem to be the main problems, along with unforgiving wind in flat areas if there's flat area problems. Green revolution there.. yeah, european-style farming of neat tidy fields. The problem with plowing-farming is that you need more nutrients because you exhaust the soil faster, and there's no automated replenishment system for nutrients in plow-farming, because you kill it with plowing and toxins. Forests and non-human grown plants keep growing because they have that naturally nutrient-replenishing system. The problem with toxins and plowing is, you become addicted to them and can't stop unless you want to have no crops. If there was no other way, then okay, nothing we could do, but there is another way. I think that the main disadvantage with the other way, multiculture and free animals, is that the animals are free unlike in industrial farming, and take more space. That's a disadvantage in terms of space usage. But an advantage in ethical farming, in farming that oppresses the animals less.

It's like a rehab from drugs when you stop using pesticides, you have side-effects, symptoms of withdrawal. The pests come in at first and wreak havoc on your crops. The first wave of anti-pest predators comes in and wipes out the pests. The corpses of pests as well as the poop of everything that's there from insects to birds to other things that weren't formerly so supported by the plowing-system, come there and contribute. You need to support that. Rats may come and eat your carrots and turnips and whatnot, not onions though probably nor anything in trees, as I've not seen rats climb high yet though wouldn't be surprised. That's what squirrels do. And when rats and other bigger pests have wreaked havoc on your crops for some time, carnivore birds like hawks and owls come, as well as foxes or any animals that eat rats. Eventually they notice this place where there's an abundance of rats and come get some. And if you let a good part of the rats survive those carnivores will keep watch over your garden for you. Maybe you even get a nearby bear to visit your garden at times and maybe that bear can scare off some vandals in the best case. Or you... but that's the basic idea. It isn't done in a day, not in a year, and definetely not when you keep using toxins. The soil is exhausted if it cannot replenish, and when you take away the natural way of replenishing soil by applying toxins and by plowing, you need to fertilize much more or else it's no or small crops for you. Plowing is done to keep the soil airy for one, but if there's a lot of worms and even mices and rats and rodents, the soil will definitely keep airy when they dig around.

I can't see why it's not the thing of the future if it works and if it's a less laborous and just as productive a system. And nothing you say has convinced me it wouldn't work, not even close.

Synthetic fertilizers are derived from nature and what's in there, from stones and living organisms and what they leave behind. And plants have grown before human was here with them, so you do get them from other sources than just synthetic fertilizers no matter what you'd like to believe. It's just a matter of how and where you get them from. It's so logical there's nothing you can counter this with. Rainforests, anything, do they grow on synthetic fertilizers? All the plants we farm today have natural origins. Did they grow on synthetic fertilizer before we started to farm them? No.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And long story short, I manage to keep a strong belief to it working because of this guy in England who "got the grass right" in his farm before he died, the guy in the document farm for the future, with those 20 grass species. It took him a lifetime of work to just get the grass right, but once you get it right it's there and no one's gonna take it from you (hopefully). Use that logic to all the other plants and we may still be ways off from perfecting the system, but that's what needs to be done if you want to have a better system and not poison the nature.

Also, any argument that this natural toxinless low-to-none fertilizing multiculture (permaculture) would take more space than the kind of farming we have today, seems pretty invalid to me when you look at the big picture. Big picture of the current farming, you can see it in the document I mentioned, but I'll say it. We process a lot of food, and those processings happen in factories. Factories take space. Trucks that deliver food to supermarkets take space. Supermarkets take space. Cars we need to go to supermarkets need space. Automobile factories that are required to just keep the car industry needed to support the food industry alone, need space. Those who repair those cars, need space. Those who get the fuel for those cars and refine the fuel, need space. Those who manufacture the plastic containers, need space. Those who manufacture the toxins, need a whole lot of space, both for the factories and for the places you get the raw material from. And they too need cars and need to feed their employers. Yeah... not very independent food industry we have today.

The steps of development it has taken are good by themselves, but it seems pretty misguided when it's organized like that. As inefficiently as possible, yet painted a picture of efficiency to it. What if we'd just grow the food locally and store it locally? Can happen in cold countries too with winter-greenhouses (and keep the vandals off with death penalty, no mercy if you puck with my food).

It's not about what who couldn't do, but that there's even one shed of light (this guy who got the grass right for example) to have a better way to all this. Whenever you buy minced meat from shop, do you ever stop to think how much work it took to get it there from scratch? I dont, even after watching the document, but it gave me something to think.

Edited by Mikko-kun
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why not? Would be a good start... :rolleyes:

:-)

Try to run simulation software on your phone, when it takes more than week just single run on OC'ed i7-3930K (up to 4.3GHz) and consumes almost all of 64GB RAM installed...

???!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The amount of land needed for surviving isn't only dependant on past statistics nor only on past farming techniques, but also on how we develop them in the future and now. That's my response to saying that we need this and this amount of land to sustain people, omnivore people not herbivore. Because the more green you're able to grow, the more feed you got for the animals. There's a farm in England of which's name I dont remember but they handled the grass pretty well there, 20 different species of grass. Allowed cows to graze longer on them before going to shelter for the winter, and the grass didn't break so easily under cow hooves and there was plenty of it compared to the amount of land they used for cow grazing. It was in the document "A Farm for the Future".

[...]

Question is: how many cows were grazing that land (or "persons" per acre)?

[...]

However, not letting animals go out and walk and exercise will result in them having less and less muscle tissue because they dont need that tissue anymore. And it's that muscle tissue of theirs that we need. So in order to maintain the amount of meat in animals, we let them go out and do their things. It's a long-term thing, you dont see it in a generation or two, but we evolve the way we live. If you're from a family of drinkers, you'll be more likely to drink too. If you're from a family of sportspeople, you'll be more likely to do sports too. The generational thing is because of habits and because a part of it goes into our genes as a mutation which occurs due to our continuous attempt to adapt.

[...]

Yeah, but you still have to have backup plan. Drought, and you cattle will starve to death on the field, quite naturally.

[...]

Yeah, India is a land of drought, I'm not fully aware of all it's conditions but drought and excess heat seem to be the main problems, along with unforgiving wind in flat areas if there's flat area problems. Green revolution there.. yeah, european-style farming of neat tidy fields. The problem with plowing-farming is that you need more nutrients because you exhaust the soil faster, and there's no automated replenishment system for nutrients in plow-farming, because you kill it with plowing and toxins. Forests and non-human grown plants keep growing because they have that naturally nutrient-replenishing system. [...]

You can make an experiment: find decent forest, and live on one acre of forest for, say, 3 months. I can guarantee, that after the first week you'll "I wanna go home..."

[...] The problem with toxins and plowing is, you become addicted to them and can't stop unless you want to have no crops. If there was no other way, then okay, nothing we could do, but there is another way. I think that the main disadvantage with the other way, multiculture and free animals, is that the animals are free unlike in industrial farming, and take more space. That's a disadvantage in terms of space usage. But an advantage in ethical farming, in farming that oppresses the animals less.

[...]

"become addicted"?! Everything what was developed for agriculture is for better yields, and less laborious work.

[...]

It's like a rehab from drugs when you stop using pesticides, you have side-effects, symptoms of withdrawal. The pests come in at first and wreak havoc on your crops. The first wave of anti-pest predators comes in and wipes out the pests. The corpses of pests as well as the poop of everything that's there from insects to birds to other things that weren't formerly so supported by the plowing-system, come there and contribute. You need to support that. Rats may come and eat your carrots and turnips and whatnot, not onions though probably nor anything in trees, as I've not seen rats climb high yet though wouldn't be surprised. That's what squirrels do. And when rats and other bigger pests have wreaked havoc on your crops for some time, carnivore birds like hawks and owls come, as well as foxes or any animals that eat rats. Eventually they notice this place where there's an abundance of rats and come get some. And if you let a good part of the rats survive those carnivores will keep watch over your garden for you. Maybe you even get a nearby bear to visit your garden at times and maybe that bear can scare off some vandals in the best case. Or you... but that's the basic idea. It isn't done in a day, not in a year, and definetely not when you keep using toxins. The soil is exhausted if it cannot replenish, and when you take away the natural way of replenishing soil by applying toxins and by plowing, you need to fertilize much more or else it's no or small crops for you. Plowing is done to keep the soil airy for one, but if there's a lot of worms and even mices and rats and rodents, the soil will definitely keep airy when they dig around.

[...]

And after that havoc you don't care what happens next, cause you dead by starving (yeah, pests can destroy your field entirely, i.e. 100% loss). And, I bet, all those "organic" farmers are benefiting from use of pesticides on surrounding non-"organic" areas - pests simply have no way to spread over the larger areas.

[...]

I can't see why it's not the thing of the future if it works and if it's a less laborous and just as productive a system. And nothing you say has convinced me it wouldn't work, not even close.

[...]

"less laborous"? I beg to differ. Consuming less energy? Yes. Less laborious? :no:

[...]

Synthetic fertilizers are derived from nature and what's in there, from stones and living organisms and what they leave behind. And plants have grown before human was here with them, so you do get them from other sources than just synthetic fertilizers no matter what you'd like to believe. It's just a matter of how and where you get them from. It's so logical there's nothing you can counter this with. Rainforests, anything, do they grow on synthetic fertilizers? All the plants we farm today have natural origins. Did they grow on synthetic fertilizer before we started to farm them? No.

Try to grow plants which require different soil content (for example, try to grow bananas in your garden/greenhouse, in Suomiland), and you'll see your "success".
Link to comment
Share on other sites

And long story short, I manage to keep a strong belief to it working because of this guy in England who "got the grass right" in his farm before he died, the guy in the document farm for the future, with those 20 grass species. It took him a lifetime of work to just get the grass right, but once you get it right it's there and no one's gonna take it from you (hopefully). Use that logic to all the other plants and we may still be ways off from perfecting the system, but that's what needs to be done if you want to have a better system and not poison the nature.

[...]

I prefer knowledge, not belief. There are all sorts of claims, aka "1 acre of permaculture can feed 100 people". How much BS behind this?

[...]

Also, any argument that this natural toxinless low-to-none fertilizing multiculture (permaculture) would take more space than the kind of farming we have today, seems pretty invalid to me when you look at the big picture. [...]

Naturally, plants have N+ "bad stuff". How do you think plants fight against natural enemies?

[...]Big picture of the current farming, you can see it in the document I mentioned, but I'll say it. We process a lot of food, and those processings happen in factories. Factories take space. Trucks that deliver food to supermarkets take space. Supermarkets take space. Cars we need to go to supermarkets need space. Automobile factories that are required to just keep the car industry needed to support the food industry alone, need space. Those who repair those cars, need space. Those who get the fuel for those cars and refine the fuel, need space. Those who manufacture the plastic containers, need space. Those who manufacture the toxins, need a whole lot of space, both for the factories and for the places you get the raw material from. And they too need cars and need to feed their employers. Yeah... not very independent food industry we have today.

[...]

Yeah, but try permaculture on few/several hectares only by yourself... You'll need bunch of seasonal wetbacks, who will drive to your fields on the cars (with all consequences you mentioned) unless you keep them in nearby barn; you'll need to give those workers tools (and tools don't grow on the trees); without "bad chemicals", which preserve fruits/vegetables/meat, you'd have more storage losses; folks, from larger cities, would need to travel miles to your local storage...

[...]

It's not about what who couldn't do, but that there's even one shed of light (this guy who got the grass right for example) to have a better way to all this. Whenever you buy minced meat from shop, do you ever stop to think how much work it took to get it there from scratch? I dont, even after watching the document, but it gave me something to think.

Actually, I do, a bit. Neighbor was growing pigs (and chickens), I know how much work he was putting in, I know how old fashioned butchering (long knife to the heart) looks like, I know how he processed meat/fat/internals; and I know a bit about atrocities in slaughterhouses (words from a man who worked there), when hoofs are chopped-off while calf still alive, and forcing him to stand...

???!

You're welcome.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dont see how anything you say negates what I said just now... if you eat meat, you need to kill the animal unless you eat carcass and we all eat meat from killed animals, not ones who experience natural death. So it's just a matter of who kills them and how. Bmk, you dont seem to be able to look past before the time you lived, or to other cultures, assuming that what you know is the only right way and everything else is just bs before people bring you figures. If everyone thought like that we'd have no progress, because it's a very pessimistic way to think. This "I prefer knowledge, not belief". Well you dont have knowledge about everything as you've demonstrated, neither do I, so what you do with the things you dont know about? Call them bs or ignore them if you can't bother finding out about them?

Yeah, but try permaculture on few/several hectares only by yourself... You'll need bunch of seasonal wetbacks, who will drive to your fields on the cars (with all consequences you mentioned) unless you keep them in nearby barn; you'll need to give those workers tools (and tools don't grow on the trees); without "bad chemicals", which preserve fruits/vegetables/meat, you'd have more storage losses; folks, from larger cities, would need to travel miles to your local storage...

A matter of arranging things. If people insist on having large cities, they can then just adapt the agriculture to suit that need. As in reserving more land around and even within the cities to as efficient food production use as possible. Probably more from more suburban areas because the larger houses tend to block the sun too much, hurts yields.

Maybe you assume that you'd pay from being in the electric grid and from sevage and running water, and sell from your garden in order to cover those costs and thus need more yields. Why would I bother selling my products to anyone? Except maybe the precious meat from which you can actually get a good price and yes I know the standards for butchering shops here, stainless steel rooms and all. If you can afford to hire workers with what you make with gardening, then you're pretty well-off, or would be if you'd think things through. The point is not so much to make money as much as it is to eliminate the costs for the farmer, and what costs you have if most of the farming is harvesting the crops? Heating your house? Winter greenhouses take care of that, stick one right next to your house and it'll heat your house in winter if you got it right. If you can't lower your costs in farming, it's no wonder you struggle financially. And keep the vandals away with one-time investment of security systems, they should learn after you catch them once from the act and show them the barrel.

My granddad was a local butcher, he went from house to house to kill the animals that were supposed to be eaten. He didn't at least talk about any animal abuse there, and he wasn't somebody who'd do that as far as I know him. Some people get more used to it, some dont. If you dont get used to it, let someone else do it. It's not like only one out of a thousand can do that regularly, there's more people... here you have kids doing it at age 6, girls. It's a moot point, unless you really want to handle things some other way. I see no point in too centralized butchershops because you need to pack the meat to preserving boxes which take plastic and the gas they use to preserve it.. that instead of just locally cutting the meat where you eat it or nearby, and giving it a marinade if you ain't gonna use it in a day or two.

Preserving meat, drying is one way to do it. Ain't the easiest way to preserve and you do lose a fair amount of it in process I hear, not just weight but the nutritional values, but it's still good stuff. And does something prevent you from butchering an animal at winter if it's for your own use? If you use cold basement for storage then it's colder in winter so it's only better. And vinegar is one age-old way to preserve veggies.. there's other ways too. It's a matter of bothering to find out instead of taking the "no this can't work" -attitute.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Naturally, plants have N+ "bad stuff". How do you think plants fight against natural enemies?

Does your own logic not say anything about how this should be handled. I answer this after you try to say something to this... instead of giving you everything on a silver platter.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can you define what you mean to "save nature"?

Negative impact -> zero, or, at least, minimum (like Siberian family).
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just one question: are you some kind of writer? Cause your posts are quite... lengthy... Just poking.

Dont see how anything you say negates what I said just now... if you eat meat, you need to kill the animal unless you eat carcass and we all eat meat from killed animals, not ones who experience natural death. So it's just a matter of who kills them and how. Bmk, you dont seem to be able to look past before the time you lived, or to other cultures, assuming that what you know is the only right way and everything else is just bs before people bring you figures. If everyone thought like that we'd have no progress, because it's a very pessimistic way to think.

[...]

Bring just one example of the cultures (of the past) with greater yields than with nowaday's agriculture.

[...] This "I prefer knowledge, not belief". Well you dont have knowledge about everything as you've demonstrated, neither do I, so what you do with the things you dont know about? Call them bs or ignore them if you can't bother finding out about them?

[...]

Right on spot, I don't have knowledge of everything... Well.. 42...

On the serious note, there is so much BS flying around, so I'm eager to sort fantasy from reality. I'd say, put permaculturist-claimant "I can feed 100 people from 1 acre" behind "the fence" on 1/100th of acre, and see what will happen after the year (by "fence" I mean cut all external supplies).

[...]

A matter of arranging things. If people insist on having large cities, they can then just adapt the agriculture to suit that need. As in reserving more land around and even within the cities to as efficient food production use as possible. Probably more from more suburban areas because the larger houses tend to block the sun too much, hurts yields.[...]

Just imagine all those 3.5 billion (half of the population live in cities) scattered across the land with their own houses, fancy lawns, infrastructure, etc...

[...]

Maybe you assume that you'd pay from being in the electric grid and from sevage and running water, and sell from your garden in order to cover those costs and thus need more yields. Why would I bother selling my products to anyone? [...]

Wait... What?! How else you'd get your daily things? Barter? Yeah, you'd probably "sell" apple for starving guy, who makes iPad (or whatever brand you are using)...

[...] The point is not so much to make money as much as it is to eliminate the costs for the farmer, and what costs you have if most of the farming is harvesting the crops? [...]

Sorry to disappoint you, farmers do want computer, mobile phones, etc, etc, etc, etc... and many more etc's.

[...] Winter greenhouses take care of that, stick one right next to your house and it'll heat your house in winter if you got it right. [...]

Wait a sec, did you just invented perpetuum mobile? Greenhouse that will heat house in winter?! With temperatures well below 0C, and weeks without sun?! Unless you have huge pile of decomposing biomatter, and very efficient heat resistive cover, you'd be toasted... Well, frosted, more appropriate term.

[...] And keep the vandals away with one-time investment of security systems, they should learn after you catch them once from the act and show them the barrel.

[...]

How far you can throw a rock? And male accomplice? That would be your "safety zone". And cameras? Good idea, but only when police work efficiently (lately, due to austerity, we have... well... police work not good...)

[...]

My granddad was a local butcher, he went from house to house to kill the animals that were supposed to be eaten. He didn't at least talk about any animal abuse there, and he wasn't somebody who'd do that as far as I know him. Some people get more used to it, some dont. If you dont get used to it, let someone else do it. It's not like only one out of a thousand can do that regularly, there's more people... here you have kids doing it at age 6, girls. It's a moot point, unless you really want to handle things some other way. I see no point in too centralized butchershops because you need to pack the meat to preserving boxes which take plastic and the gas they use to preserve it.. that instead of just locally cutting the meat where you eat it or nearby, and giving it a marinade if you ain't gonna use it in a day or two.

Preserving meat, drying is one way to do it. Ain't the easiest way to preserve and you do lose a fair amount of it in process I hear, not just weight but the nutritional values, but it's still good stuff. And does something prevent you from butchering an animal at winter if it's for your own use? If you use cold basement for storage then it's colder in winter so it's only better. And vinegar is one age-old way to preserve veggies.. there's other ways too. It's a matter of bothering to find out instead of taking the "no this can't work" -attitute.

There are ways for preserving meat/fruits/veggies. You are wholeheartedly right, meat can be preserved with smoking/drying/salting (and with all consequences to health), you can marinate/salt veggies/fruits (every one of them), you can dry some of them, you can make jams, you can combine veggies with fruits that way (some sort of sallad). But all that takes energy ('ol good energy): you have to have proper wood for smoking (transportation + putting down trees), you have to have salt (transportation +... where does salt comes from?), glass/wooden barrels (don't grow on the trees), metal covers (to vacuumize glass pots, don't grow on the trees), plus energy for boiling out microbes... Been there, seen that, walls of the kitchen were dripping from the steam... Lots and lots of energy...
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Where does this and that come from you ask. Did I say at any point I'd start making solar panels with my bloody bare hands instead of buying them with the money I've earned so far? I dont know how other people would do this but I plan on being smart and realistic and taking the obvious way unless there's something better. It's of course good if you can make all that from scratch, but it really doesn't cost so much, just need to save from your salary when you have a city-job. If you're stuck being a farmer in the first place and not getting out of there and not getting money, well I dont have an answer to that. I'm not a bloody genie who solves every single question for you instead of you doing it. Try think on your own as I said. That's the whole point of permaculture. This whole deal with the money... if you have too little of it, move to a city, get a job that pays and rent a cheap apartment or half, you'll have money in no time if you dont waste it, at least here you will. If you can find a job.

I'm no security expert so you're just better off asking someone who is about that. I'm sure your problem can be handled if you have the will, the time and inspiration or such to handle it. They do pretty good work with the security here, thought that's hardly only because of the police's efforts, not saying this to undermine them but because there's a lot of other stuff involved, like everyone growing their children not to be some much of an a**holes who do things like that "just because". That among some other things...

The winter greenhouse thing, if you're really really interested about it, for other reasons than just debating, I'll bother to give every link I find, I've seen a few nice ones, people already doing it and having their greenhouses as warm as over +20C when it's -20C outside, in Canada. Here too I've heard of one. But they're very real, and the key to insulation is to insulate so well that the outside air doesn't get inside, because air conducts temperature well. Leave a vacuum of air like you do with the rubber air-bed you use when going to beach. Isolated vacuum of air. Also black or black-painted water containers of I think around 20-60 liters, to gather the dayheat and release it during the night, as dark absorbs and white reflects. You can also use reflective material on the sunless side of the wall, to the wall that doesn't block the sun, to increase the effect, but I think that in the canadian case I mentioned they already got so high temperatures even without that kinda setup that they just didn't need it.

About the permaculture needing this and that amount of land, I already pointed you one source, pretty well-recogniced among the community as far as I know. If you google "permaculture yields" and do your research on the first links you'll get a lot of similiar talk to what I've said here, maybe in a more friendlier tone than mine though. Here's one place to discuss permaculture in particular, I think there's people who can answer your questions about it far better than I can. Debating with a layman is pretty pointless, no matter what you debate about, and I'm a layman. So here, just one, why dont you go ask them:

http://charleseisens...th-of-scarcity/

Also just one testimony:

http://www.permaculture.com/node/141

I would like to inject some real world experience into this otherwise abstract discussion of food and permaculture.

In addition to being an ecological biologist, a permaculture production food farmer for 9 years, and an expert on biomass fuels, I have also been teaching permaculture since 1997 and have worked in many countries on food/energy production design issues. I have certified more than 400 people in permaculture design since 1997. For more info on this see my site at www.permaculture.com

...

As far as I know I was one of the only farmers fully utilizing permaculture to produce surplus food for sale in the US as a full time occupation. On approximately two acres— half of which was on a terraced 35 degree slope—I produced enough food to feed more than 300 people (with a peak of 450 people at one point), 49 weeks a year in my fully organic CSA on the edge of Silicon Valley . If I could do it there you can do it anywhere.

Oh yeah, regarding the reasons why permaculture is said to work, you might want to read carefully the lower link.

Edited by Mikko-kun
Link to comment
Share on other sites

[...]

Also just one testimony:

http://www.permaculture.com/node/141

Oh yeah, regarding the reasons why permaculture is said to work, you might want to read carefully the lower link.

Ok, you just can show us how you'll feed yourself whole year on ~10m2 (as in your link guy claims up to 450 per acre). Not that big greenhouse you'd need. So, just do it.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just go check them yourself if you're so interested in evidence, stay there for a year or two and see if they bs you or not. See it with your own eyes, do your own research... that's the only way you can be sure unless someone is kind enough to give you every piece of evidence on a silver platter. That wont be me because I'm done with giving you any proof on this, it's so easy to google these things and read them so just do that and do your research if that's what drives you.

I've probably mentioned this but it has been my intent to set up a farm like this, with winter greenhouse and all, and a firm intent to not hire any wetbacks, not a single one, apart from the first year because initial groundwork can take the most resources. Money is the biggest issue right now because houses and lots cost, and I intend to get at least a square kilometer because I'm a meat-eater, Land's much cheaper here than a house so...

Edited by Mikko-kun
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just go check them yourself if you're so interested in evidence, stay there for a year or two and see if they bs you or not. See it with your own eyes, do your own research... that's the only way you can be sure unless someone is kind enough to give you every piece of evidence on a silver platter. That wont be me because I'm done with giving you any proof on this, it's so easy to google these things and read them so just do that and do your research if that's what drives you.

[...]

There is the problem: internet is littered with all sorts of outrageous claims (just "free energy" will bring you gazillion worthless ideas, gadgets, etc). And I'm pretty sure, if I'd go to see with my own eyes, results would be orders by magnitude lower, and, as usual, some lame excuses why its not "I can feed 450 people from one acre"...

[...]

I've probably mentioned this but it has been my intent to set up a farm like this, with winter greenhouse and all, and a firm intent to not hire any wetbacks, not a single one, apart from the first year because initial groundwork can take the most resources. Money is the biggest issue right now because houses and lots cost, and I intend to get at least a square kilometer because I'm a meat-eater, Land's much cheaper here than a house so...

Good luck, sincerely. And I expect you'll share your experience/results with us (can take some time).
Link to comment
Share on other sites

You know, you're not the first one who has a sceptic take on permaculture, trust me. I've encountered quite a few people. Just none of them, including you, has yet managed to find anything that'd really take the foundations off from it. You'd think that at least one of them would had tried to see if there's anything contradicting about permaculture and done a little googling and so on to find anything, but so far, nothing except your experiences. You know the field so you must realise that there's many different ways to do things and a lot of people dont get it perfected, not even parts of it. Many have tried, but it's always the same thing: people who believe nothing before you show it to them in life, if they've made up their mind. That's in the end the only thing that keeps you sceptic. Permaculture's theory is simply on too strong foundations for anyone to make it fall on a theorethical level, and at practical level you can write off single failures or less crops made by some people with lack of this and that, you can always find little faults. It will keep rising because you cannot make it fall on a theorethical level, and the only thing that'd make it fall might be some sort of consensus to not do farming that way, but people ain't agreeing to make such a consensus. So it'll keep developing and you'll see it more and more over time, not less I bet.

I dont have to take your point about gardening life not being all roses all the time, I know, because I've tended to our family garden in my childhood home since I was 6 or something, even a child can do that work. Not as much as the adults yes, but there. You can come to visit anytime when it's all ready, if you're still kicking. You aint that far from here anyhow. I wont extend the invitation before getting that winter greenhouse working well enough to heat the house. If I ever get it done and if you still want me to share the results, you gonna have to come down here if we get them. My bet is still 7-9 years off before seeing it in a mature state, so dont hold your breath yet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.