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Today we’re answering questions from the audience!

Thoughts on Sustainability

I’m going to get right into the show topic today, recently I’ve had some discussions about what sustainability is. There seems to be some differences of opinion, and just outright ignorance on a lot of issues in sustainable agriculture, regenerative ag, permaculture, etc… Someone recently defined sustainability as destroying your land in a lifetime instead of a generation. I find that to be preposterous. That’s like calling a house, a barn. You don’t do that, because you understand the definition of the word.

So I thought it might be helpful to talk about what these things are and why we should really care.

I think a lot of confusion happens when we don’t start with the right language or the right definitions for words. So right off the bat, I want to use the Merriam-Webster definition for the word sustainable.
The Merriam-Webster definition of    (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sustainable)

Sustainable

Adjective  (sus·tain·able)  \sə-ˈstā-nə-bəl\

1:  capable of being sustained

2a : of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged

2b :  of or relating to a lifestyle involving the use of sustainable methods

So there you have it, sustainable means that you don’t use up the resource, deplete it, or permanently damage it.
I’ve heard people say we can’t just be sustainble, we have to be regenerative, or restorative. I agree that we can’t break even, that we need to build resilience and strength into our landscapes. But that is exactly what sustainability means.

Let’s think of it from the perspective of an income, and a bank account. If I take all my income and spend it the moment I obtain it, then I am not being wise with my income, I am not being sustainable. Something unforseen will happen, I’ll loose my job, get injured, have an unexpected expense pop up. Something bad is bound to happen, so what is wise, to save some money. Set that money aside for the inevitable problems that will arise.

I look at my soils and living systems on my homestead the same way. I need to build redundancy and resiliency into everything that I do. I need to make sure that I am protecting my investment. That I am being a good steward of what I have. I want to build soil, to build fertility and health!

I know that wasn’t really a question, but I really wanted to get that discussed and hopefully defined better for a lot of people.

Chris wants to know how can he rebuild soil on a rocky spot in the back yard? Over the last several months water has been dumped in the same spot, and there’s a decent slope to the ground, and it’s eroding the soil.

This one’s easy, since it sounds like you are going to be dealing with this a lot, and since you need to stabilize the soil, I’d just get some wood chips to mulch the area. This will help in the short term to stabilize the ground and give you a chance to get some grass to re-grow. In the meantime, find a different spot to dump the water and give the eroded place some time to grow back up!

Nate wants to know how to explain permaculture to someone who has never heard the term.

Well Nate, I am personally trying to get away from even using the term permaculture because it throws so many people off, and I think there is a lot of junk and political garbage associated with the term.

With that said, I would explain it as an elegant sustainable design science, but specifically a system of design that works with nature to bring about a more harmonious interaction between people, animals, and nature. But really the best way to explain it, is to show what you mean. Or explain that we take chickens, and position the chickens above the garden space, with a place to make compost uphill of the garden between both the garden and chickens. We can then put our compost materials where the chickens can scratch our compost pile down, saving us half the time needed to make compost. Then it can easily be moved downhill to the garden. Ya’ know, give examples of good design. It clicks when you do that.

Linda asks how to use chickens and ducks to help control pests in a garden and not have them destroy our gardens.

Good question! Well we need to think about what the animal does, what are it’s intrinsic characteristics? Once we know that, we can assess and analyze how we can make those behaviors beneficial and mitigate the problems that they might cause.

So let’s look at chickens first, they like to scratch, they eat insects, worms, seeds, plants, and they will eat all your vegetables if they can reach them.

Ducks have wide flat feet that do a great job at smoothing and compressing soil, so if it gets wet, and they waddle all over the place, you will end up with somewhat anaerobic soils, not good for the garden. They will eat slugs and snails, and they will happily forage during very bad weather when chickens are cooped up inside.

So now we know that if left to themselves with no regulation on their behavior, the chickens will scratch our raised beds all flat, expose all our carefully covered mulch beds, and eat our squash and tomatoes. The ducks will trample small plants, and will compact any exposed soil, they will also dig holes with their beaks and make mud wherever they can.

So what can we do about it? We can let the ducks in for brief times, supervised while we are there, then herd them back out of the garden space. You can even time it to whenever the slugs and snails are most active on your property. You can do the same thing with chickens, if they are let in an area, they don’t immediately start scratching. In my experience, they will scramble around looking for bugs they can snatch up before any other birds in their flock get a chance to. Then after a little bit, they will settle down and start scratching. Just watch them and kick them all out before they start to do any damage.

Alternatively you can make what amount to short narrow chicken runs that look like small hoop houses around the perimeter of the garden which some claim will cut down on insects migrating into the garden space, and you can make sections of that hoop structure with chicken wire that you carry over to your garden beds which you can then place onto your paths. Size the hoop structures to the size of your path or slightly wider, then you can slide them into place, and open up doors for the chickens to move from the perimeter run, into the runs along your paths. They will help keep insect populations down, the big drawback is that you have to remove the hoop structures to get in to tend your garden.

This brings me to my favorite methods of incorporating chickens into my garden space. Build chicken tractors the size of your paths. Mine are 4 foot wide and fit perfectly between my garden mounds. Some people call them hugel beds, I started calling them garden mounds. They’re about 4 foot tall and 5 feet wide, with a 4 foot path between them, just big enough for the chicken tractor to fit. I can run chickens in the tractors between the beds, they eat bugs, weeds, and keep my paths eaten down to lawn height. Works great!

Another way I like to use chickens in the garden, is to let them in for end of season cleanup. They scratch all the beds up, I add compost and manure, other soil addititions, and they incorporate it for me. Then I come back through and rake the materials back up onto the beds, and cover with mulch or tarp it.

Fred asks for tips and tricks on dealing with those pesky tent caterpillars.

Well Fred, the short quick answer is to get yourself a torch and burn the webbing. Once their tents are destroyed, they will be a lot more susceptible to the elements and predators. As a preventative, use tanglefoot or the shortcut tanglefoot sticky tree bands on your young trees. If they can’t climb up the trunk to get into the young tree, they can’t do any damage.

You can also use BT spray to kill the caterpillars before they have a chance to grow into adults. Whenever you see them in the larger trees near your fruit trees, just spray the leaves of the large trees with a BT spray. You can use a hose end sprayer that can reach up into the tops of most medium to large trees. This is a bacteria that only kills insects that eat the plant leaves. Yeah it’s not the best thing to use, but it’s way better than indiscriminate pesticides. BT is a naturally occurring soil bacterium. It won’t harm most predatory insects, and shouldn’t harm your honeybees.

To recap, use tanglefoot on your young trees, and even on your older fruit trees to help prevent the caterpillars from climbing up into them when they are migrating in the spring. If you see groups making webs in any of your fruit trees, you can use a BT spray in the tree, as well as torching their homes and knocking them out of the tree with a blast of water. If you can get them out of the tree and prevent them from climbing back up with tanglefoot, then you could do it completely non-toxically.

Thanks for all the great questions guys, send me your questions for more shows like this, and if you like the show, please consider leaving a review on iTunes, it will really help with ranking and help people to find the show!

These shows are a lot of fun! I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have, if you have questions or show suggestions, please email them to me

nick@homegrownliberty.com

And get involved on the Facebook group, we have a great community there always asking questions, helping people solve problems, and sharing great ideas.

I hope you have a wonderful day, and as always “Go Do Good Things”