Farm Scale Permaculture: Want to have input on our book?

3/10/2015

Farm Scale Permaculture: Want to have input on our book?

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As the season ends at Ridgedale and the Autumn shadows dance long across the field we're heading into a more restful period and time to plan for 2016. Aside from maintaining livestock, some foreign education & design gigs we'll be planning the scaling up of productions as well as remodeling how we run this beacon project. One project that is about to begin is our book writing project.

Having been encouraged by a few friends and respected writers to commence this project, an invitation from a publisher prompted the penning of the contents we envisage. Now we'd like your input! There's a lot of books and info out there, and a lot of things are not so well documented. Farm Scale PC for example. Facts & figures. Detailed installation guides, etc. We want to hear what folks find they'd like more insight into. We want to hear from folks following our work to get a sense of what you'd like to see emphasized/ detailed, etc in this work. We think this represents a pretty comprehensive overview, but are keen to hear what folks feel is missing in the literature so we can respond in the most beneficial manner.

Please comment below.....

7 Comments

Ingegerd Holmqvist

4/10/2015 12:20:50 pm

I want to read about how I, with a small garden, can live so I don´t have to buy so much, I want to grow vedgetables, fruit etc, maybe a few hens.

Richard Perkins

5/10/2015 09:20:32 am

Thanks Ingegerd,

I guess we're specifically addressing the gap in the literature on setting up farms in this manner. There's already so many books on garden scale Permaculture. A lot will, naturally, be scalable and useable on this level too though...

Daniel Hägerby

5/10/2015 06:10:27 am

I think the contents look pretty comprehensive, but I am especially looking forward to your views on how to adapt multi species rotational grazing to Nordic conditions. Most of what I have come across is from central to south US, nothing from our climatic regions. How many grazing days a year? How much hay per lactating cow during winter? How much supplemental annual grains? How do you handle the extreme differences in grass growth between june and october - how does this affect grazing rotation? How will this change when the fruiting trees come in to maturity? What limits do Swedish legislation put on the way you would like to do things? What can be planted in the "forest garden rows" between the field strips that can supplement the grass to lengthen the grazing season and to even out the differences between spring/summer and fall?

I have many more questions, but I guess it is obvious that I am hoping for a long chapter 9.

5/10/2015 09:21:03 am

Thanks Daniel, great input. We'll respond to this as best we can for sure...

Eija

13/12/2015 06:17:22 am

Hi! I heard your class yesterday in Naantali, Finland, and although my project is garden scale I can relate to the mind blowing views on farm scale production.

In chapter 2 Climatic Factors you probably discuss the ecology of pastures and biological interaction of grasses and herd reg. carbon cycles? That was a huge mind blower to me in many different ways. It could be very important for farmers that already struggle with their work and are constantly being blamed for the climate change. Realizing that it is not what you do but how you do it might help many and release resistance to change.

Are you going to discuss the psychology and steps on converting an existing farm to a regenerative one? Maybe by telling how your own thinking process has changed along the way?

The psychology part could be in the introduction. Or, if I get it correctly, there are two different types of contents in the chapter 2 Climate (ecology) and social climate (thinking processes, decision making, new learning, searching for information, educating customers, inspectors, journalists, organizing yourself with the amount of work etc.). Maybe the social and learning type of social climate contents could have a chapter on their own. One huge thing in my own project is that all the time you have to unlearn the old beliefs, previous education and ways of doing.

Thank you for what you do! Great inspiration!

kristoffer

28/12/2015 12:04:44 pm

Something I have been puzzled about (and still is) is how one goes about to plant crops (cashcrop or covercrop) into existing sod, farmscale.
Does this require some special type of see drill? Do I have to build a crimper-roller to trample down covercrop? How can I integrate these things with livestock?
There are no doubt bits and pieces of this available in alot of litterature, on the tip of my hat I can recall the rodale institute, gabe brown. Collins from down under also seem to have some interesting system going... But some more thorough information would be very usefull!

Far West Turf link

15/5/2019 04:13:21 am

Excellent point of view Here!

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Farm Scale Permaculture: Want to have input on our book?

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