8/ And just as fashion repeats on a ~20 year cycle, back-to-the-land movements do too. Young adults remix what they were exposed to as kids and put their own generational stamp on it.
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19/ What part is nonsense? Two aspects: * theory by people who aren't on farms. They learn that pigs dig up land as they search for food, and they conclude "tractors are bad - use pigs instead. ALL NATURAL!" * people optimizing 1 variable, not all N that actually exist.
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20/ The theory people will tell you that you can use pigs to turn over earth. They don't focus on the fact that (a) pigs will run off, (b) it takes strong fences to keep them in, (c) it's a royal pain in the !@# to get a pig back home again. You've got 4 acres you want plowed?
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21/ ...and you're going to use pigs to do that? OK, you have to either (a) fence in those 4 acres [ I can give you a cost for this, and it's not cheap ], or ... well, there is no b. Also, pigs do not work on your schedule. Might take 4 years to get that field "plowed".
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22/ So let's look at the other half of the "why it's hippie nonensense" equation: optimizing one variable. [ I had a post on this back at http://tjic.com before my bantz got to spicy for the MA puritans! ]
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23/ Pick up any farming mag (Grit for trads, Modern Pioneer for red staters, Modern Farmer for blue staters, etc.) and they will have a ton of articles on One Simple Way To Cut Your Bills. All you have to do is 90 HOURS OF WORK and have massive piles of crap in yard to save $6.
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24/ These articles focus on cutting costs to the expense of everything else. Other articles focus on 100% complete recycling of, I dunno, wood ash, or downed trees, or whatever. And they assume that other constraints (time, energy, space, aesthetics) don't exist.
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25/ OK, that's it w the hippie nonsense angle. Next angle (#2 of 3): good ideas. Yes, Permaculture has MANY good ideas!
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26/ I'm firmly in the Joel Salatin Christian farmer camp, and in the Backwoods Home red tribe / gray tribe techie camp. I want to treat my animals humanely, I want my land to respect God's glory...and I want to Science The !@#$ Out Of Stuff, because that's massive fun.
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27/ Also, I'm in the Robert Heinlein camp (already covered in red tribe / gray tribe comment) and want to learn to do everything myself: tractor maintenance, butchering, wood working, welding, making maple syrup, brewing beer, harvesting hay, remediating soil, etc.)
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28/ So from this perspective, permaculture has many great ideas. If you're already putting down straw in the barn, then you've got waste...and you can compost that and put it on your gardens, and kill two birds with one stone (waste & fertilizer).
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29/ Permaculture also has tons of ideas that DO work on multiple criteria at once. Growing your own pumpkins to feed to your own pigs on top of the hay bales that are too musty for the sheep to eat: * fun * aesthetic AF * harvest = nice outdoor labor in fall * saves money
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30/ And if farming is your hobby, then there are endless fascinating recursive aspects to it. You can start breeding your own local varieties of animals or plants to deal with your microconditions (Hayekian local knowledge!) or write code about dirthttps://github.com/TJamesCorcoran/fertangular …
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31/ and finally, the third aspect of it: permaculture is stuff that people are already doing. It's fun to be the young firebrand who says "the old timers JUST DON'T GET IT MAN". ...but you know what? The old timers often DO get it. A lot of what permaculture fans criticize >
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32/ Is an extreme or parody or outdated view of farming. Farmers aren't dumb. Farmers aren't immoral (any more than the rest of humanity). Farmers are not ignorant of cutting edge tech. A lot of "permaculture innovations" are not.
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33/ You think it's genius to compost animal waste from your barn and fertilize your fields with it? The market provides tools for this, everything from low tech manure spreader carts to deep ground liquified manure injection.
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34/ A lot of permaculture fans, because they learn their stuff either in an academic (i.e. largely theoretical ) environment, or online, don't even KNOW about the world of professional farming.
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35/ Anyway: permaculture has some good stuff, some bad stuff, and some stuff that everyone already knew. 1) get out there and farm...if you want to. If not, don't. 2) consider buying a copy of my novel to subsidize my farming lulz https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005JPPMS6 /exeunt
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36/ First, there WAS MORE FARMING THAN IN MOST SF slight spoiler. Book 3 & 4 will have a minor farming thread For two reasons: 1) tribute to Heinlein's Farmer in the Sky 2) the acronym FFA (Future Farmers of Aristillus) is just too perfect to ignorehttps://twitter.com/ItsRobbAllen/status/967106733041770496 …
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37/ For anyone still reading, some pix of my farm... Icelandic sheep, some shorn, some notpic.twitter.com/WQsstDKu40
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40/ me, in front of firewood that I've cut, split, and stackedpic.twitter.com/QO45TN4sQD
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