Ecological Synergy goes further, incorporating good ideas espoused by
Bill Mollison's Premaculture(tm), and Rodale's organic recommendations. These
too have been proven methods of long-term sustainability. Adding more,
Ecological Synergy adds the balanced livestock of BioDynamics to the system
for a more complete cycling of inputs and outputs. Adding vermiculture and
mycellium culture, plus aquaculture, the total rotations of nearby surpluses
to nearby consumers means low-work, low-stress, nil-till agriculture with 12
months-per-year harvests. Harvests come weekly around the calendar, buffering
against any spells of adverse weather.
Harvests are locally tailored to local climates and customers, from meat,
hides, furs, flowers, herbs, eggs, fish, aquaria and ornamental pond fish,
christmas trees and wreaths, fresh and dried flowers, nursery stock, sprouts,
seedlings, seeds, and prepared foods, like pickles, jams, jellies, chutneys
and vinegars.
Equipment is designed to be synergistic as are the community of
lifeforms. Synergy is poorly understood, but it is real, it exists, it works,
and it increases productivity while decreasing work. Worms dig the soil, not
by the couple or dozen per cubic foot but by raising up to 25,000 per cubic
foot at harvest time. The worm castings are valued at $9.27 per cubic foot in
a plastic sack sold retail price, and the worms themselves feed the fish,
chickens, ducks. Crop failures feed the worms, as well as every garden scrap
and table scrap. Inputs bought in down the driveway are reduced to waste
cardboard and alfalfa hay. Everything else, including top quality growing
soil is produced on site. Steam pasturization prepares the mushroom beds
which become in-situ worm beds which become in-situ grow beds, raised to
promote drainage, with zero viable weed seeds. No herbicide, no fertilizer,
no till, no tractor, no rototiller.
The Steward (not a farmer, not a grower only) spends two hours daily
routine maintenance. During the most productive season the work for a
farmstead increases to 35 or so hours per week. Most of it is healthy,
enjoyable work spent in beautiful surroundings nursing nature to flourish more
fully. Basic principles include giving a portion of increase to the wild
ecology. Preserving endangered species by making habitat space for them, by
using human space more wisely is the purpose of this system. That's part of
the reason it is called "ecological" synergy. Crop failures are measured by
how few butterflys or songbirds there were this year. Successful years are
measured in how loudly the treefrogs sing during mating season.
Ecological Synergy uses rain as the primary water supply, adjusting
production to accomodate how much water can be collected with rain-catchers
and impounded. The wild ecology is not robbed of its natural water, aquifers
are not depleted, poisoned polluted well water is not an issue. Effluents are
likewise contained and processed to safe neutrality on site.
Synergy is not understood, so an institute will be charged with holding
and publishing the principles and practices. Ecological Synergy works like
Tai-Chi to gracefully choreograph the local ecology into a community where the
members prosper because they do what it is in their nature to do, and the
steward uses intelligence, training and principles to tweak the ecology to do
more of it.
This is necessarily brief, but other information is available for the
asking.
Send your request to >> LionKuntz@aol.com <<
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