purrmaculture

We just copied some pages with pictures out of some permaculture books for our unschooling friends. They live way out in the flatlands with their chickens. Even without doing a full-fledged permaculture design, some of the ideas are pretty simple to grasp, and really might make things easier and/or more productive. Zone placement, keyhole beds, suntrap designs. I also copied tables of edible weeds and plants for poultry forage. She was talking about how much they spend a month on feed for the chickens.

Reading recently in the Designer's Manual about how forests make rain and make streams flow. No forests, no water ... or sometimes you'll get a flood cause there was no forest to moderate all that water.

And then the Friends of Sangamon Valley newsletter says they're going to spray poison on garlic mustard in their newly acquired forest property. And start cutting down sugar maples because they're shading out the oak-hickory forest that, they say, belongs there instead. The sugar maples belong someplace other than where they've grown. Sigh. Shall we let a system demonstrate its own evolution?

And never mind that garlic mustard is edible and highly nutritious. They could at least harvest it for poor residents of Springfield's food desert. No, we must keep slathering new layers of plaster on the ancient empire.

We're looking to read Food Not Lawns but it's not available from Rolling Prairie Library System.

Time for bed. I might find myself tending the F 602 CB droid in the wee hours.