Do Nothing Farming (and Other Stuff)
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- čas přidán 21. 08. 2024
- #122 We're continuing to try and build and improve and build soil on the farm, so we're going to try Masanobu Fukuoka's 'Do Nothing Farming' or 'Natural Farming' method. Basically, after harvesting grains, you sow the seeds for your next crop before cutting down the plants to serve as green manure/mulch. We hope it works to build more fertile soil in our field that has next to no topsoil. We're also planting sweet corn again after making a lot of soil amendments - the past two years we've had no corn - maybe the third try will be the charm! Isaac repairs the mower after hitting a horseshoe, and we have a lot of things growing in our permaculture orchard. Oh! And we caught a swarm in a trap! +AMDG
Music:
"Tucson" by Silent Partner (CZcams Audio Library)
The best way to improve the soil is to grow deciduous trees and shrubs. Legumes such as clover and common vetch will help too. There are also nitrogen fixing trees, such as black locust, mimosa, and gingko. I am trying to do natural farming. But I started from scratch with 2 acres of barren land. But barren, I mean barren. Two acres with almost nothing. 1 acre was planted with annual rye grass by a grass farmer. The other acre was almost destroyed by the previous owner of the property who used a lot of chemicals and dumped gravels and excavated soil. This is the fifth year I am here. But I only have hand tools. I don't even mow the grass to encourage grass to fill up some barren spots and to suppress dandelions. I have deer, gophers, moles, voles and other underground animals. It is very tough. Last year the drought disallowed the self-seeding of annual rye grass and one of the acres is now barren with only some dandelions. But I am still optimistic cause the other acre is in the process of healing. I am starting to have some success growing some trees and shrubs, even though more than 10 of my young trees were killing by voles last year. Life is tough, but there is still hope. :)
You do much work for Do Nothing Farming, I can only recommend to park the machinery, relax, and let the natural world prepare your soil! If you must work the land, add flora, multiply it.
In the permaculture designers manual, you have all the basic information to improve your soil :)
Looking great. It is always fun when something breaks down too. You have to love those moments. Thank you for sharing this update.
The blessing now is that Isaac is old enough and has the ability to fix a number of things when they break. It is a huge relief to have another set of capable hands in this regard. And thank YOU for continue to follow along with us.
From one family farm to yours, thank you for sharing this with us! We are amidst building our own hoophouse and we can’t thank you enough for going through the hard stuff before us. It’s been a real help watching out for some of the mistakes, like redigging to install the 6” pipe, and the tips like the dryer vent. Money can’t buy this insight.
God bless
Thank you very much for watching and taking the time to comment. We're so glad if anything we do (and upload) is of help to others. It's what we love about CZcams - we have learned so much from other channels! Best wishes and blessings on your farm adventures!
Sure appreciate your approach to farming and greenhouse stuff. Definitely a good example for folks to follow! God bless you guys, and hope this year is a fruitful one for you!
Thank you, blessings to you as well!
Love seeing the things you are trying. The time lapse was like a dance. Great to see a video from you guys
Thanks! Yes, good to be on summer break and back to projects on the farm. Hope you guys are having/had a great time at Disney World - don't think we've ever seen Grace not look happy, but she looks especially happy in the pics on IG. Enjoy and know of our prayers for safe travels home!
Beautiful land my friend!
Thank you very much - we think so!
How exciting that your tree has peaches! Two of my heirloom apples have their first fruit, on this their 3rd year and it’s only two apples on one tree and four apples on the other but I am just giddy with excitement. The Kieffer pear has one beautiful perfect little pear! You’d think we are getting bushels ha ha but hey, next year it should be different. We are in Wake Forest, and yes it took so long for Spring to come. You have a beautiful place there. God is good.
All the time! Yes, it's pretty exciting to have peaches and apples growing. Feel like we would have had a lot more peaches, but the flowers were on the trees long before pollinators were in the air. We'll have to look into the Kieffer pear. God bless!
Bonjour; I just dicovered your channel and i like the way you are going and hope that you will soon update what's going in your farm (please). Thank you
Ruth Stout was the first "no work gardening " I heard of or Masanobu Fukuoka.
Masanobu Fukuoka Do nothing Farming is not the same as no work gardening. He states clearing that farming entails work but he eliminates all unnecessary work.
Just my two cents: the way you use a heavy vehicle will compact the soil and prevent buckweed growing well.
Great stuff, Deacon.
Thank you, Charles!
Masanobu Fukuoka is really big in Japan & I can not pronounce his name. Check out these 2 site about no till. Patrick Dolan really use Masanobu method of sorts. Charles Dowding out of the UK is a hugh no tlll guy -- check his site out. Both have really productive garden because of no till.
I've been told that if you let buckwheat seed out, it will create a nuisance seed bank. Maybe cut it early, or graze it when it flowers.
Masanobu Fukuoka has another book out, a workbook for the One Straw Revolution, called:
The Natural Way Farming of FARMING - The theory and practice of Green Philosophy
by Masanobu Fukuoka
www.rivendellvillage.org/Natural-Way-Of-Farming-Masanobu-Fukuoka-Green-Philosophy.pdf
It seems to me that people who admire and try to understand Masanobu Fukuoka's work are on a very life and love affirming trail.
I'm a little worried, I notice that this is about where you stopped filming.
I hope that everything is great for you and your family and that it was just a good decision to focus on family rather than videoing.
Warmest regards - oh that was a hilarious time lapse!
Jennie
I will look forward to your videos about Mr."Masanobu Fukuoka's 'Do Nothing Farming' or 'Natural Farming' method" Blessings on this Solemnity of Most Sacred Heart of Jesus +JMJ+
Thank you! Blessing to you as well. Our very good friends are up in Maine right now on vacation and looking at land for retirement. I think they were looking in Washington County (edge of the world) yesterday. If you wouldn't mind, keep them in your prayers.
Yes, or course I will keep them in prayers....your friends must like solitude:) "The Crown of Maine" or "the county" can be isolating. Blessings~+JMJ+ Tina
Since you have some experience with the tubing now, why not dig out fifty-eighty feet long, six-eight foot deep near your house, and get some of that geothermal in there working? The system doesn't have to be underneath your home itself (in fact I think they're usually not cause that weakens the foundation). Save your firewood some work.
That does sound great. Honestly, I really don't know why we don't do something like that on more houses in this country when they're being built and design them into the home's climate systems.
They're doing it more and more, the biggest issue with it becoming more popular is that it only works for homes that have lands. Real dense city folk don't really have the option except in a few rare cases where it's built into the city infrastructure.
This channel has a lot of unique ideas for home building if you haven't seen it already: czcams.com/channels/DsElQQt_gCZ9LgnW-7v-cQ.html , I found you guys cause you were recommended off of their greenhouse one.
Makes sense. We're thinking of building a cabin on our property. Think we might do this for it.
I am also interested in Fukuoka's work.
cover cropping in hairy vetch hairy vetch is a nitrogen fixer sweet corn needs lots of nitrogen
We're going to do this in the fall!
Can you please give us a update on how the climate battery tubes are going in you greenhouse??????
I'll try to give an update, but you might need to ask a more specific question if I don't give the information you are hoping for. The system is working fine. I'm not sure why so many people were concerned about the tube filling up with condensation, if anything, we have issues with there being no moisture in the system at all and not working as efficiently. In fact, it has been so dry in there we've had to water plants several times a day - much more than in the garden. The difference between intake temps and return temps is consistently between 30-40 degrees fahrenheit. It is to small of a system to handle the intense heat of mid-day summer sun, so we added 40% shade cloth and fans which all together keeps the temps at just over 100 on the hottest days so far. Our sense is that it will work perfectly in the fall, winter, and early spring allowing us to grow cool season vegetables year round. Hope that helps answer the question. God bless and thanks for watching!
St. Isidore's Farm Might be able to fill a kiddie pool with water or something to encourage higher humidity
is there update?
Where do you farm?
Corn needs Nitrogen....use organic dry blood and more manure (chicken manure), and water.
less than half of applied nutrients are used by plants (much of it gets tied up in complex compounds or leeches off the land). Most of what plants comes from what's already in the soil (which comes from the air). Who fertilized the Maize in Oaxaca prior to the Spanish? Who fertilized all the fields people cultivated prior to Dupont, Bayer, Industrial feedlots/slaughter, and Dow (no, there weren't enough domesticated animals to make a significant increase in nutrients, especially considering the nutrients were largely being cycled from the land the manure was falling on)? All plants need nitrogen, but not nearly as much as people have allowed themselves to be told that they do. You also run into the issue of weeds, where adding excess nutrients tends to lead to an explosion of "weeds" to utilize those nutrients, and the more rapid consumption of soil organic matter due to the presence of excess proteins/nitrogen.
Living things are more than a chemistry equation that can be "solved" out of a bag purchased from a corporation.
The best way to improve soil is to plant trees. Grassland is NOT normal in nature. It is a result of human deforestation. Trees are much more efficient in producing organic matter. Grow some native fruit trees, such as Indian plums, black locust, blue elderberries, ... Many of them are nitrogen fixers with huge root masses and hence extremely drought tolerant after their 3rd year in the ground.
the American Great Plains, the Asian Steppe, some of South America, Parts of Australia, and much of sub-Saharan Africa would disagree with that claim (tens of thousands of square miles, each of them). Small patches of open areas are not abnormal, large swaths of land dominated by grasses and forbs are less common, but still natural. Trees die, there are fires, over/selective browsing causes changes the ecosystem that can lead to larger ecological shifts over time.
While the notion that "the whole world was one big forest until big, bad Homo Sapiens Sapiens came along" is a romantic one; it is quite far removed from the complex reality that has surrounded humans for over 100,000 years.
@@wildrangeringreen It will be stupid to assume that nature will turn land into deserts. Our planet was originally a giant desert. The only reason why you don't see many giant deserts today, except for the Sahara and the Gobi desert, any more is because of land plants. Particularly, trees have turned our planet from a giant desert into a livable habitat for all living things. Vegetation changes weather and humans change vegetation. Guess why there is a giant desert in North Africa? It was human deforestation and overgrazing, turning the giant rain forest of trees in North Africa BACK to a giant desert. ALL deserts that you see on this planet today are results of human deforestation, either by burning or by logging, and then overgrazing.
@@trumplostlol3007 weather patterns shift, not nessisarily simply due to humans. theres evidence of that in the geological record that predates humans.
grasslands naturally exist, deserts naturally exist, temperate and tropical rainforests naturally exist, meadows in otherwise wooded regions exist.
many people also thought the cutting and burning caused the downfall of the Maya through ecological collapse, but research done over the last 20 years has shown this was not likely the case, considering the Mayan people are still using the Milpa land management methodology with no ill effects.
when you also consider the loss of diversity that occurs in North America when the native peoples were removed from the land and no longer managed it... the "big, bad human" trope pushed by major religions and some in the climate/ecological spaces doesn't quite jive.
@@wildrangeringreen Trees serve to stabilize weather. Deforestation leads to unstable weather patterns aka climate chaos. Geologists know NOTHING about how vegetation affects weather patterns. They are stupid enough to assume climate patterns and fluctuation are always determined exogenously which is FALSE. Humans have been changing vegetation by burning, logging, and removing trees for creating agricultural land. Arizona, for instance, was a giant rainforest. Archaeologists found cave pictures depicting rain forest animals. Then they found massive cannel systems created by native Americans who destroyed the forest and created agricultural land changing the climate. Then native Americans needed to create the cannels for irrigating their crops. When the weather became so arid because of the removal of the giant forest, native Americans were forced to abandon the land which eventually turned into a giant desert.
Kannada. Tranasalet. Sir
you need to brign animals in if you real want to heal the soil as you cal it
I think they're coming. Baby steps for us. We need to get a few things taken care of before we bring more livestock onto the farm. Thanks though!
I hear birds so in saying that drawing in natural wildlife is the best
Dominique Caldwell Yes!
Yes, you really butchered his name.
😂 Sorry!
I don't know why you kept insisting on a word permaculture when everything you did went completely against the philosophy of it. Tilling earth to death is no good! You didn't leave any cut grass to cover your buckwheat, or at least it wasn't obvious in your clip, then comes the expanse of a golf field meticulously mowed. At this point I seriously started to expect seeing you with a sprayer killing the "weeds". It's such a beautiful property, fill it up with grasses, flowers, trees and shrubs and stop working so much!