Permaculture Principle No 3 - Obtain a Yield

I've just spent a day at our McKerrals Tree Farm trying to work out how to 'take a yield' from something I have to do to manage part of our forestry interests.

Until 2010 we leased part of the farm to another party who grew Eucalyptus Globulous (Tasmanian Blue Gum) to produce wood chips for export to Japan - where it is used to produce high quality paper.  During the summer of 2009/10 they harvested their crop and left me with stumps - from which it is possible to produce what is known as a 'coppice rotation'.

Over the 4 years since harvest each stump has sent up between 2 and 6 separate stems.  They are now from 3 to 8 metres tall.  The task now is to select one stem to grow on - and remove the rest.

This photo shows Soeren (a WWOOFer) starting into the process - using a fantastic little arborist chainsaw I got last week.  It's only 3 kg - and designed to be used with one hand or two.

Soeren is taking out the first stem here.  The next photo shows him about to take out the last waste stem leaving just one (hopefully the best and straightest) to grow on for another 8 or 9 years.


While the little chainsaw seemed to do a great job, I'm very interested to see what a group of contractors we have coming in a week or two use for the task.  Their quote is $638 per 1,000 treated stumps.

Many stumps are easier that the one shown in the photos - but others are worse.  Nearly all have small, dead twiggy bits that need to be brushed away before you can get at the base where the cuts need to be made.  And the tolerance for any damage to the retained stem is ... zero.

Having done a few trees now myself, 63.8 cents a tree seems like not a lot of money for the job.

In David Holmgren's book Permaculture - Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability the 3rd principe is Obtain a Yield.  In this spirit I looked at the coppicing process and wondered whether it might not be possible to 'obtain a yield' beyond the 2022 chip harvest.

In the normal course of plantation forestry the pruned stems are just 'cut to waste' - that is they are just allowed to slowly rot on the ground.  It occurred to me that perhaps the pruned stems might be used as firewood?  From the research I've done, Tassie Blue Gum is regarded as reasonably good firewood - and, if we're using something that would otherwise just decompose, it is definitely from an 'eco-friendly' source.

The issue is that, when cut, it is green and not suitable for burning.  It needs several months (at least) to cure.  So we need a way of allowing it to cure - before being able to cut and package it.

Step 1 is to trim the pruned stems to the point where the diameter gets too small to make acceptable firewood.

Step 2 - we drag it to the edge of the plantation.

Step 3 involves using a hand held machete to trim off the leafy branches and twiggy bits.

What we then have is a trimmed sapling up to 100 mm in diameter at one end and down to about 40 mm in diameter at the other end.  They are between 3 and 5 metres long.  They are ready for 'curing'.

I've had various ideas about what to do next, but the best so far involves building a simple frame from shorter bits that keeps the wood for curing well off the ground.  The next photo shows the first attempt.

I emphasise ... this was the first attempt.  The second was lower to the ground (half this height) and used heavier stems.

The stems are dug in about 3-400 mm - and I use the small chainsaw to 'shape' the top of the post into a U.  With this one I put a screw in to hold the cross piece.  With the heavier stems on the Mark II version - my screws were not long enough - so they just rest in the U.

Once I have sufficient stems to make a bundle which I think might weigh between 500 and 800 kgs, I used a polyester strapping system to hold it all together.  

The plan is to come back when the stems have cured and tighten the strapping up.  Then, with a tractor with a front end loader, I can lift the firewood bundle onto a truck or trailer and bring the firewood back to Moora Farm.

There I have another tractor with an FEL.  I will use it to put the bundle of cured firewood onto something I build late last year from scrap I had from dismantling cattle yards when we first came to Moora Farm.

I built it to help me cut up 'logs' of sawmill offcuts I get from Frosts Sawmill in Monegeetta.  These 'logs' are about 5 m long, 1 m in diameter and bound with steel strapping.  They are a great way to get firewood, but lying on the ground, it's hard to finish cutting it to length.

With this table, I just lift the 'log' onto the table - and cut it there at a comfortable height and with no risk of blunting my chainsaw chain by touching the ground.  I think it will work just as well with my eco-firewood bundles.

So - I'm taking firewood orders.  Maybe for this winter - we'll have to see.

Oh - and, once the coppice pruning is done and the firewood recovered, the plantation looks like this.

Thanks Soeren and Alessio (my helpers)!  Although we only did about 120 stumps we learned a bit about what might or might not work.  There are another 46,880 stumps to do over the next few months.


 

A wise, wise man

I've just listened to an edition of Scott Mann's The Permaculture Podcast where he interviews David Holmgren.

It reminds me that, only 100 km from Moora Farm, there lives a man of transcendent creativity and wisdom.  I have met the man, been to his property Melliodora, and have a number of his books.  His Permaculture: Principle and Pathways beyond Sustainability is as precious a book as I own.  You can buy it from his site.

During the podcast Holmgren talks about some important things - including his justification (?) for being a 'practitioner' as well as a theorist / teacher.  The further I go on life's journey, the more sure I am that what we do is so much more important than what we say.

He also talked about the limitations of reductionist science - in his quiet, wise way.  It seems to me that scientific triumphalism is one of the errors of our age - possibly exceeded in cost only by the practical chaos that results from treating economics as a science - rather than the dangerously narrow philosophical speculation that it is.

Anyway - enough pontificating for one morning!  I need to do something practical.  

Making a compost heap

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I had a great time yesterday!

We spent the weekend at Panaruban where a young American couple have had plans to start a compost project.  They have a new baby and their academic research priorities - so they had made a start ... and then stalled a bit.  They had obtained and cleared a site, but hadn't made much progress in actually building compost piles.

On Friday I went off to look for something to contain the compost.  I was hoping to make a version of my Australian system (see earlier compost blog post), but I couldn't find the reinforcing mesh that I thought I might use to create a containing circle.

What I did find was some lengths of galvanised fencing material.  They were 2.4 metres long and 1.2 metres high.  We cut them in half and set off for the site.

At the site we cleared the ground and made a square compost bin.  Because most Indonesians are somewhat shorter than me, I decided to cut down one side to make it a bit easier to load material in - and then place it within the heap.  Heap construction makes a big difference with composting - to the speed of the composting process - and also to whether it creates a nuisance.

Nuisance is easily avoided by putting anything that might smell or attract scavenging animals in the middle of the heap and covering it.  In Australia (or New Zealand) you encounter people who think that composting is dirty and, in some way, unhygenic.  In Indonesia the prejudice is even stronger.  The expectation seems to be that it will smell and attract rats.  Done properly this just does not happen!

Here the team of Eman, Wagiran and I are connecting up the first two pieces of the heap, before attaching them to the stake we have put at the corner.

Once the container structure was complete, we started to fill it.  There was not much material actually to hand - so I didn't expect to get very far.

However, we were being watched.  The elderly gentleman next door had been watching what we were doing - and after seeing that we were running out of material, he offered us some sweepings from his yard.  When these were enthusiastically received he went off into the surrounding areas and came back with baskets and baskets of fantastic compostable green material.  Here is one of our helpers (Nawang) emptying one of maybe 20 baskets of material that Pak Tatang gave us from heaps that were within 20 metres of our site.

We didn't take them from an existing compost heap.  Rather, it was just rough green material (not good enough to feed to cattle) that had been cut from somewhere it wasn't wanted and put in a quiet corner where it would eventually decay in place - but not be subsequently used (as compost) other than in just building the soil where it was dumped in a corner or a little gully.

In Indonesia you see these heaps of organic material laced through with plastic rubbish almost everywhere you look.  If they are inconvenient - they will often be burnt.
Smoky, smelly fires of green material (and plastic) are just everywhere.  It didn't take very long before we had a modest bin full - but with a 'hole' in the middle.  Into that hole we tipped a bag full of what can only be described as rocket fuel (in composting terms).

I asked our hosts for the weekend whether I could get some cow manure from their small dairy farm.  Pak Iskandar have me a whole bag of manure that had first been through his biogas system.  The material he gave me was almost compost like already - with very little smell.  Fantastic stuff!

When I think about the biogas process - it produces methane - which is CH4.  I think that means that all the nitrogen I need for the compost heap should still be there and still available to balance out the carbon content of the other material.

We also put in some kitchen scraps, but when I think about it, I don't think the compost heap is the right place for kitchen scraps in this environment.  Almost every house has chickens - and scraps are used to feed them.

In permaculture terms feeding scraps to chickens would have to be a better use than composting it - particularly seeing that the cow manure is available as a source of nitrogen (which cannot be fed to chickens).  The chicken manure would be an even better source - just the same scraps ... but after they have been through the chicken.

So here is Pak Tatang and I admiring our completed compost heap - after I put on a topping of grass and sawdust.  The finishing touch will be some sort of cover to stop the rainy season rain so soaking the pile that it won't compost properly.

I wouldn't mind betting that this heap will compost very well.  I look forward to getting reports on its progress.  Overall, the site looks pretty good - with one completed heap and another underway.

I am a bit ambivalent about the process however.  I find myself asking myself how I'm different from the Green Revolution gurus who came into Indonesia (and many other places) with 'new and better' technology that turned out to be 'new' but, in many cases, anything but better.

While I might think composting is better / purer than artificial, chemical fertilisers, what do I really know about how the farming systems of this area of Java really work?  My instinct tells me that, if I observed for a while, almost certainly I would learn things that would cause me to modify processes and better integrate them with pre-existing systems.

Of course the great guru of composting, Sir Albert Howard, did his learning in an environment not that dissimilar to a Javanese village.

Economic relevance - episode 4

[Turning an economically irrelevant gross farm income of $5,913 into $250,000 on a small farm just outside Melbourne]

Permaculture has several design principles that are aimed at multiple sources of output from the same piece of land.  It talks about polycultures, about stack

ing and layering, and permaculture guilds.  

There is certainly no way we can achieve our income objective without applying such techniques.  

Episode 4 is going to be about a type of livestock that I'm hoping is almost completely complementary to our cattle and sheep.  By complementary I mean that it will add output - without detracting from the capacity to produce other outputs.

My Granny always had chooks - and not the 20 or 30 that my Mum kept.  Granny had hundreds and she was very fond of them.  When I think about it, my Aunty Marg also had chooks - because I can remember collecting eggs and cleaning them for her while she was away on holiday.

However, the model we're going to work to at Moora comes from much further away - in the US.  Joel Salatin, who featured in The Omnivore's Dilemma, pastures poultry in a kind of symbiosis with his cattle.  

The cattle graze grass first - followed several days later by the laying hens - who appreciate the shorter grass and also demolish the cowpats to get at fly larvae that emerge after a few days.  Breaking up cowpats is a function that fussy farmers sometimes perform with a set of paddock harrows.  I've done it with a 4 wheel motorbike towing an old gate.  The result indeed looks tidy - but the grass also seems to 'take off' compared to the untreated paddock.

I've not actually seen maggots in cowpats, but I guess they have to be there.  Certainly we get more than enough flies in summer - and more near the cattle - and they have to come from somewhere.

So I'm thinking of building one (and then 2) mobile hen houses that will follow the cows around.  The chooks will be protected from foxes and dogs by an electric netting fence.  Salatin says that the grass they eat is more than compensated by their 'processing' of the cattle residue - and the addition of their own nitrogen rich manure.

While we were in the US at son David's graduation we stayed at a little B&B near Marietta, Ohio.  They had a Salatin type chicken tractor.  It's not what we'll build, but it's pretty - and reminds me of a good stay with Mike and Jackie.  When I think about it, Jackie was actually the first person to mention Salatin to me.  If you're ever in Little Hocking, Ohio and need a good place to stay .....

In the winter we will need to take them off the paddocks for a few months.  I'm thinking we'll winter them in a poly tunnel that we will use for growing hot house crops in the spring.

Let's say we work up to 2 flocks of 120 hens each.  Let's say they can produce 285 saleable eggs pa.  That is 5,700 dozen eggs.  At $5 / dozen that is $28,500.  

They only lay at that rate for a year - so we'll also have 240 birds a year to sell at next to nothing - or ... Joel Salatin suggests home killing and selling the cooked meat in some ready to eat form.  There is a bit of investigation to be done into this idea, but lets assume we can.  That might add another $1,500 - which is quite close to next to nothing ...

However, it adds up to another 5 squares to the cause.  

It's worth noting that this again assumes selling directly to consumers.  Selling into the industrial system would produce, I suspect, less than a third as much.  5,700 dozen is a somewhat intimidating number to have to move, but clearly necessary if we're to get to our goal.

Ideas - and where they come from

“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”

JM Keynes

Some of the people I've read and who have had an influence on me would probably object to being categorised as either economists or political philosophers.  No matter - I should acknowledge those who have influenced, and are influencing, me.

I grew up on a farm and spent time on other farms where the farmers did their best to farm according to what might be loosely described as 'best practice'.  Their conception of best practice was dominated more than anything by diligence and hard work - but the technologies and systems deployed were largely conventional / modern.  

My respect for where I came from and the way in which my parents and extended family worked and cared for their properties means that I certainly didn't start out with a negative attitude to 'modern' agriculture.

That said, I've always been curious about how economic systems work - and don't work.  Farming is no different.  I always knew that there has been a disconnect between the way our economy values agricultural endeavour and my own perception of what it properly should be valued at.  

Michael Pollan (in The Onivore's Dilemma) wasn't the first person I read who raised major questions about the sustainability of conventional / industrial agriculture, but he was the person who bought the argument together in such a way that I could really buy in.  His extended section on Joel Salatin and his Polyface Farm did it for me.  I got to the end of those chapters - and went right back to the start to read them all again.

I've since read various books by Salatin - and the more I read the better I like him and his whole approach to life.  http://www.polyfacefarms.com/books.aspx

Pollan and Salatin then take me back to things that I have followed for many years, but regarded more as one way of thinking about things rather than the way to think about things.  

I think particularly of Permaculture.  I bought Permaculture One in the 80s and various other books along the way, but found it difficult to apply to my own circumstances.  Just before Christmas I bought Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability .  Perhaps I'm now ready for it, perhaps Permaculture has evolved, but I found it flat out inspiring.  

Part way through it I gave my copy to my son John and his fiance Shelley.  I've now got to get another copy so I can continue using it as an inspiration for what we are doing and will do at Moora.

There are other books I've read that have had a substantial influence on me.  They include:

• Farmers of Forty Centuries by F H King
• A couple of books by Helena Norberg-Hodge - who I met in Bali last year - Bringing the Food Economy Home: Local Alternatives to Global Agribusiness and Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh
• A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction and A Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein
• Back from the Brink by Peter Andrews