Video on How Composting Toilets are Combating Cholera in Haiti

It is interesting to see how bio-remediation can be such an easy solution to our problems.  As Bill Mollison said 'Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple'.

My Visit to the Healing Ponds Farm - Please Forgive The Formatting!

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Today I visited the Healing Ponds Farm.  Located in the coast range of Western Oregon, it is a 38 acre operation with several ponds and a multitude of animals.  It is run by a charismatic man named Mark who is an animal enthusiast in every sense of the word.  

The farm has a store located in Beaverton, OR where they sell their products.  Included are several invertebrates and their supplies.  Everything one needs for mason bees, nematodes, ladybugs, and red wigglers can be found.  Call ahead at 503-646-6859 for availability.  Share programs for raw milk products and pastured meat are available.  They also sell soap, seed, feed, equipment, eggs, ferment starters, live animals, and much more.

I was greeted at the front gate by a very intimidating, but friendly and enthusastic akbash guardian dog.  This beautiful dog is bred to guard livestock and roams the property freely.  Mark says that he has no predator problems and the dog is essential.

The central thrust of the operation is its fowl.  Turkey, Chicken, Geese, Duck, and Muscovy are found in mixed flocks.  There are several movable forage coops for meat birds on pasture.  The stocking rate for the meat birds was very low and I was pleased to see almost complete ground cover in their paddock.

The laying ducks and geese are furnished with a large half-acre plus pond which is spring fed.  Located around the banks of the pond are small laying houses where the eggs can be easily collected.  The dam of this pond was not provided enough free board and the sides were too steep.  The overall thickness of the dam is not substantial enough and there is a great deal of leakage, requiring a great deal of attention.  Mark is aware of this and is currently working with a specialist to resolve his leakage issue.

Inside this pen below the pond and dam, the turkey and their roost are located close to the house.  Chicken layers are located in octagonal, open aired chicken runs with attached laying houses.

Closer still are the beehives.  Located on top of a hugelkultur bed, they have a prominent position, which gives them access to our infrequent winter sunlight.  Even in late winter, they can be seen coming and going.   These Warre hives are more square than the far more recognizable Langstroth hive.  Their advantages are that they provide a simple top bar with a triangular attachment.  The bees are allowed to build their own comb at the size they choose.  This helps them combat many of the common ailments they have such as tracheal mites and varroa mites.  The comb is not reused, which further helps the bees to keep their hive clean, healthy, and free of toxin build up.

The farm also has goats, sheep, pigs, and cattle for both milking and meat.  I had the pleasure of seeing two small goat kids just hours old.  Grass cover in some of the paddocks was patchy and drainage poor in our clay soils.  No doubt the situation will be drastically improved as summer comes.  A classic pig aerator very similar to that described by Joel Salatin was one of the first things that I saw as I walked in.  This pig is feeding on pungeant, fermenting bred buried within the compost.  Mmmmm yummie!

In this classic scenario, the goats have been put in a pen full of blackberry bramble.  While the other blackberry patches in Oregon still have leaves, these ones have been savaged and are nothing more than sticks.  Mark says that they do the job thoroughly and completely.  Goats are an underused resource in the battle against this highly invasive and destructive species.  Goats are notorious for eating just about anything.  Even the bark and the lower branches of these pine trees did not escape! 

Two connected geodesic greenhouse domes had aquaponics systems, which were unfortunately idle.   But the system was well designed for heat retention and thermal mass.  It was quite warm inside despite being in the 40’s.   The house was also designed for thermal mass and low energy consumption.  It was very comfortable. 

Windows allow sunlight in which easily heats the house.  Vents in the roof and side windows of the sun room take advantage of prevailing winds and thermal convection to remove excess summer heat.  Its one of the better designed systems I have seen.  The fireplace provides the needed thermal mass despite no sign of a fire going. 

If you are in the Portland/Beaverton are I encourage you to make the trip to the Healing Ponds Farm and Garden store.   Its hard to capture the essence of the entire place but I was pleased to see paddock rotation at work.  Its difficult to see what this land is capable of when grass growth is so slow during the winter.  But no doubt accelerated grass growth will help to mitigate drainage and compaction problems in the clay soil.  I hope to see this farm again when the paddock system is its its full summer glory.  

Mark has plans on expanding one of his paddocks into a large garden and move into produce production.  Diversification is a key factor in both business and ecology.  This will no doubt be a wise move for the farm.  Please take the time to visit the Healing Ponds Farm and Gardern Store website to see everything that they have to offer. 

Gypsy Moth Problem Beginning To Resolve Itself

Try not to interfere and nature will find a way.  Gypsy moths are succumbing to their own natural pathogens, which have followed them from overseas.  A deadly fungus, which is spread via spores on the wind and a virus spread by physical contact, are helping to put this invasive species in check.  Additionally, parasitic flies, which target the caterpillars, are helping to spread the pathogens even faster.

How does this connect to your garden or food forest?  Allow biological pestilence to resolve itself whenever possible.  Don't freak out at the first sign of aphids or hoppers and start spraying and dusting everything.  Doing so often does more harm than good.  You will end up killing many of your natural controls.  If a particular pathogen or pest is affecting your plants, are you doing enough to diversify your stock or provide competition from other fungi or bacteria?

If you have healthy habitat and biodiversity, then predators and other population controls will balance things out.  You should never expect to rid yourself of every last grasshopper or flea beetle, but you can render them relatively harmless by having a diversity of plants, animals, insects, fungi, and bacteria to begin with.  For every pathogen, there exists a biological control.  In some cases, the control will be extinction of the host.  But with diversity, this will not matter that much in the long run.  

Why spend all your time fighting the inevitable?  Allow nature to do the work for you.  If a pest exists in an environment long enough, it will eventually be mitigated.  Whether it be by disease, birds, insects, or a multitude of other reasons, the result is eventually the same.  With aphids this can happen in the course of a couple weeks.  In some cases it may take a couple of years, but it will happen.  Since gypsy moths are invasive and from another continent it took a little longer.  However, even they are succumbing to the inevitable.

http://phys.org/news195325791.html
http://phys.org/news/2011-09-viral-gene-sick-gypsy-moth.html

Picture Citation:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aleiodes_indiscretus_wasp_parasitizing_gypsy_moth_caterpillar.jpg

Aquatic Earthworms Play A Role In Rice Cultivation

This is something I have not heard of before but it makes sense.  There is a place called Workman Creek in the Sierra Ancha mountains of Arizona that I used to visit every summer.  It is an extremely rich environment within an old growth forest.  The creek is virtually choked with woody debris.

The picture shown on the left is something I saw on at least four occasions that I can remember.  Are these aquatic earthworms?  I am not sure to be honest.  But seeing them repeatedly leads me to believe that this is normal.

Evidently similar aquatic eathworms play an importand role in rice cultivation.  It makes sense that their actions would help to cycle nutrients into a form usable by the rice and and prevent stagnation by oxygenating the muddy soil.  When combined with aquaculture, they surely provide food for fish, birds, crayfish, and a multitude of other creatures as well.  Everyone knows the benefits of worm castings in the garden.  There is no reason to believe they aren't just as magic in aquatic environments.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130206121322.htm

More on Beavers and Trophic Cascade - Wolves, Elk, Willow, Beavers, and Geese

Unfortunately, it appears that simply bringing wolves back into Yellowstone is not enough to repair the the beaver population:

http://phys.org/news/2013-02-yellowstone-ecosystem-wolves-willows-elk.html

 

Let me explain from the beginning.  Wolves had been completely extirpated from Yellowstone by 1926.  This had a two-fold effect on elk within the park.

First off, the elk population skyrocketed.  With no predators to cull the herd, the population grew unchecked. This was in fact the intention at the time, but is an ill founded concept.  It was shown by a famous account from Aldo Leopold that the mule deer population exploded after the removal of predators from the Grand Canyon in the early 1900's.  Over browsing destroyed the ecosystem and the population soon crashed.  To further exacerbate the issue, the land has now been so damaged that the overall carrying capacity for mule deer and other herbivores has been greatly diminished.

Aldo Leopold on Trophic Cascades:

http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1957/22138/RippleWilliam.FERM.LinkingWolvesPlants.pdf?sequence=1

A similar incident has taken place in Zion National Park.  Riparian cottonwood forests have been greatly diminished and the ability of the park to support grazing and browsing animals has been damaged.

Impact of a cougar decline on Zion Canyon, Zion National Park:

http://www.nature.nps.gov/parkscience/index.cfm?ArticleID=318&ArticleTypeID=28

Similar studies have taken place in Wisconsin.  So this is a well studied issue.

The second effect was that the eating habits of the elk changed.  Previously, they had avoided areas with thick cover where predators could hide, such as aspen and willow forests.  Sticking to open pastures and meadows allowed them more time to react to approaching wolves.  Without fear of predators, elk were free to move in and apply additional pressure to sapling regeneration.  As the trees aged and began to decline, they were not replaced by younger trees.

Of special importance in this instance is willow.  Willow are a species of tree which help to engineer their own environment.  Willow slows down streams and prevents erosion.  Their absence has caused streams to create deeper gullies and speed up as erosion increases.  Willows need slow moving water to establish themselves.  So this cycle is self reinforcing, without slow water, there is no willow and without willow, there is no slow water.

What does this mean?  This affects ground water and stream side plant communities.  Water quality is diminished by more silt and temperatures rise without tree cover.  This affects the ecology within the streams all the way to the microbial level.

But most of all it affects the ability of beavers to move back into the environment.  Beavers cannot function in fast moving streams and must have a certain set of circumstances present before they can do their job.  Without willow, the right conditions for beavers are not present.  Since they help engineer their own environment in the same way that willow does, their absence also negatively reinforces their ability to move back into the environment once gone.

It is not just a simple matter of reintroducing wolves and watching everything go back to the way it was.  Trophic Cascades are far more complicated than that.  In this case the lands ability to 'carry' beavers has been greatly diminished.  That is not to say that there has not been SOME recovery, but it just has not been what they hoped for.  Some areas may take longer and others may be permanently unable to provide beaver habitat.

Since beavers have such a monumental effect on riparian ecology and forest dynamics, this affects the entire system.  Populations of aquatic invertebrates and fish like trout may be affected.  Migrating birds and waterfowl like geese have less habitat:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130213132328.htm

Other terrestrial birds, rodents, and invertebrates may be affected by loss of nesting trees and food sources.  Vegetation regimes are greatly altered and the list goes on and on.

This is the essence of a Trophic Cascade.

See our previous entry on the importance of beavers in their ecosystem:

http://agroregeneration.blogspot.com/2013/01/beavers-are-engineers-of-structural.html

Picture Citation: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Longford_Stream_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1398014.jpg

One Species of Bacteria Plays a Major Role in the Carbon Cycle

New discoveries are being made about a certain species of bacteria which plays a major role in the carbon cycle.  Its so important that changes in population density can actually effect atmospheric composition and disrupt food chains in the ocean.

It turns out that there is a particular species of virus which keeps this bacteria in check.  This constant pressure from the virus keeps the bacterial population steady. Interesting how something this important could be missed for so long but its not at all suprising to those that have an understading of ecology.

Making new discoveries like this just goes to show how infinitely complex ecology and nutrient cycling can be.  Seems dangerous to assume that disrupting ecology is OK in light of continued discoveries such as this.  Every time we think we 'get it' it turns out we are missing major pieces of the puzzle.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130213132323.htm

Excellent Paper on Landscape Scale Polyculture

This is a really interesting paper I found on Polyculture.   It was dedicated to Bill Mollison.  Australia just seems to be light years ahead of everyone else when it comes to this stuff.  There is a bit of scientific jargon in there but its done in a way that is still easy to understand.  It could be a great reference resource for landscape-scale planning.  Its a PDF so enjoy!

Polyculture Production Principles - Benefits and Risks of Multiple Cropping Land Management Systems for Australia

Picture Citation: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Intercropping_coffee_tomatoes.jpg

Crop Residues May Produce Energy - But Is This Really The Path We Want To Take?

One of the last ways we can still naturally protect and create soil is through agricultural residue.  Existing soil is protected and nutrients are recharged by using this age old practice.  Even this meager resource is now at risk.  Don't get me wrong, its not that I can't appreciate the idea of utilizing all your resources and not being wasteful.  But in a system that is already so extractive to begin with, do we really want to take the last bit of organic matter out of the system?  I suppose that the land is probably so damaged at this point that it doesn't really matter.  Its nothing but a sponge for chemicals.  But it definitely highlights the fact that we are STILL moving in the wrong direction.

I would certainly rather they do this than to open new crop lands for ethanol.  But, bio fuel is a trojan horse plain and simple.  It is just not a viable solution to our energy issues.  There is no way that we can produce enough bio fuel to make a real difference without opening vast new tracks of farmland and/or increasing food prices dramatically.  It still emits CO2 and its simply a way to perpetuate the combustion economy while appearing to be 'green'.  The fact is that bio fuel can be MORE harmful than oil.  It takes more energy to make than it produces and would further stretch our dwindling resources.  Even if they don't open new farmland to this process, the crop residue they are using will just need to be replaced with MORE PETROLEUM AND NATURAL GAS BYPRODUCTS!

So how is this helping anything?  We need to stop thinking in an extractive way and start thinking in a more regenerative way.  We need to think about extending the energy we do have and using less of it.  That is the technology that is going to make a difference.  We need to invest in sources of energy that keep on giving.  We must change the way we use energy by capturing the energy that is all around us.  We must reorganize our economy and distribution to use the least amount of energy possible.  Lastly, we must take responsibility for our OWN food and energy needs.  This is more than possible and it is the only way to get away from this mega-centralized, Soviet-style energy and agriculture system we are addicted to.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130131121022.htm

Picture citation: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2004_0609_Italian_ryegrass_cover_crop

Aquaponics Paludarium running 6 years now...

This my demonstration paludarium.  Its been running for about 6 years now.  It incorporates terrestrial, marginal, vertical, and aquatic elements.  Its made from 40 gallon tall glass tank which was drilled for an overflow and return.  Originally the pump was in a compartment underneath the terrestrial area but getting to it for any maintenance proved too difficult.  The solution was to build a sump tank (seen below).  There is a drip filter with bio balls, a sponge filter, and the rest of the substrate is hydroton clay balls.  There are guppies and a goldfish in the aquatic area and canyon tree frogs in the terrestrial area.  The plants are cilantro, philodendron, and bamboo. 

The canyon tree frogs are native to Arizona.  This one is 4 years old and still kicking.

Here is a side view.  There were agave in the cracks of the cork which is attached to the back wall.  These became too large and had to be removed.  I once had mint but it became too aggressive.  I also had a yucca which oddly enough did very well in the marginal area where its feet were always wet.  This eventually became too large as well.  The aquatic plants are anubias, red dragon, and bunching crypts.  I rarely ever change the water.  I feed insects to the fish and frogs.  Their manure fertilizes the plants.  When I clear out plants I am effectively 'cleaning' out excess nutrients.  I then feed the plants to my insect cultures and the cycle starts over.  The insects also process my food scraps.

For a picture of my roach culture see here: http://agroregeneration.blogspot.com/2012/07/blaptica-dubia-feeder-roach.html