This Sustainable House

Archive for the ‘General’ Category

One of the major tasks on my plate at the moment is to clear a section of scrubby land for use as paddocks for cattle, and perhaps free-range chickens. When I say I need to clear the land, I’m not talking about wholesale tree removal, rather I’m looking at clearing the area of debris to allow the natural grasses to establish.

A decision that had to be made in this instance was to burn or not to burn….

Traditionally a farmer would get all this scrappy stuff together and set it on fire. This would turn most of the wood to gas (releasing it to the atmosphere) and the remaining ash would be scattered over the paddock area. Doing this has the advantage of dealing with this debris rapidly, leaving a nice clear paddock.

However I feel it has two important disadvantages, the carbon that has been locked up by the plants is lost to the atmosphere (rather than being broken down for inclusion in the soil) and this material offers some very useful ‘stuff’ to form a mulch layer.

So at TSH the majority of this debris has been put to use as a mulch in the tree corridors between the paddocks.

The video below explains the concepts involved, and provides a sneak peek into how these paddocks will be managed. Enjoy!

Recently I have been reading a number of books around transgenic foods (also known as genetically modified foods), and the dangers/benefits they produce. Whilst this topic is highly decisive, it did highlight for me another area of concern… the twindling number of species grown in our agricultural systems.

For example, over the 20th century, the US Department of Agriculture’s seed storage bank reduced the varieties of fruits and vegetables held. For example 544 varieties of cabbage became just 28; 287 varieties of carrot was reduced to 21; and most staggeringly of all, 2,683 varieties of pear was reduced to approx 300.

Of course the practical upshot of these losses is the fact that the majority of our food crops, both in agriculture & the home garden, are genetically narrow.

What is the risk of sameness??

Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday 21st a new WWOOFer ( Willing Workers On Organic Farms) arrived to help me with a few tasks. So far she has been exceedingly helpful with providing feedback on a course of study (pregnancy testing in cattle), assisting with animal husbandry, fencing and a few odd jobs.

Whilst she is here, a little more than a month or so, we will also finish the chicken dome, acquire a couple of new cows (perhaps) and fence a couple of new paddocks.

For more information on the WWOOF scheme, please go to the links page.

Welcome to the ‘new’ This Sustainable House website. The aim of the new site is to provide an ongoing commentary of the happenings at TSH, and provide linkages to it’s new sister site Green Phoenix Permaculture (greenphoenix.asia).

This new ‘dual’ site layout will see most of the fact sheet type content being stored at Green Phoenix and general information about the TSH project here.

Please let me know what you think of the new layout by filling out the survey below.

Cheers
Shane