Ajamvari Farm » Anil’s entries

Compost Tea Ideas from Permaculture list message

anilb — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:41:41 +0000

Those who are interested in making compost tea, this might be useful

I’m following an established method of brewing that produces an
excellent diversity of soil microbes, so the goal is as you say
Marisha, to ”pump up the populations”. I’m also looking for precision
in this effort. I intend to verify the presence of the desired soil
life under the microscope, leaving little to chance.

I simply love the notion of compost tea. Creating the right conditions
during brewing for explosive population grow of the soil organisms we
need. The marriage of Yeomans keyline cultivation and Ingham’s
inoculant compost tea is a match made in fertility heaven!

Then add a Salatin inspired relocalised cow and chicken husbandry duet
to a Yeomans lock pipe gravity flood irrigation approach and there you
have it – a total retrofit of your typical grass farm. An about face!
Better soil, better nutrition, a renewed local economy. A reversal of
all degrading effects in a 180 degree about turn towards building
fertility year by year instead of seeing it drop steadily through ill
conceived methods. It’s the number of beneficial connections that
counts.

The more aware I become of the intricacies of soil life, the more
respect I develop for pasture soil (since this is my current area of
focus). I believe it should be treated with the same reverence
afforded the soil in an organic veggie patch. That’s why I’m thrilled
to get this system up and running. It is truly a means of ‘farming
like a gardener’. Of treating acres of land the way we might treat
meters of garden.

I’ll publish the brewing and trails over the next month or so. Then
people have a reference if they want to do this themselves.

And thanks Lawrence for your interesting suggestions. I hadn’t thought
of rock dust!

Ben

Bill Mollison at his best bytes!

anilb — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:38:27 +0000

How well said. I have been trying to come up with something like this. Here you go, Bill, as always, you are the pioneer and it really takes guts to leave the beaten tracks and pioneer the paths–while gently walking!

“…the greatest change we need to make is from consumption to
production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of
us do this, there is enough for everyone.

Hence the futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on
the very system they attack, and who produce words and bullets, not food
and shelter.” – Bill Mollison

Waste

anilb — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:50:58 +0000

Stuart Tristram’s Waste sounds like an important book that lays bare the level of food that goes waste throughout much of the super-market dominated world.

Vandana Shiva’s Rebuttal to Green Revolution Scientist

anilb — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:28:01 +0000

M S Swaminathan is India’s Normon Burlag, who introduced green revolution to India in the 1960s as a part of the strategy to deal with hunger. The result has not been any less hunger, but generally degraded food production system. He is now claiming that the route to food security lies in introducing genetically modified crops. Here is Vandana Shiva‘s powerful rebuttal to it.

ScribeFiring my sustainability blog

anilb — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 16:20:22 +0000

The AjamvariFarm blogging had slowed down a bit. Blame on me, but it was also my laziness to figure out the best way of posting. Now that I have discovered scribefire, it’s going to be regular, at least three in a week, but expect more.

My writings will focus on issues of sustainability, good life, farming, seed sharing, wilderness (of mind and the world); and many many more things.

I will get back to you regularly now and if you can please also subscribe to our feed!

Food and the world

anilb — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 21:41:01 +0000

I finished reading Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food today. Pollan effect is great, and it has made me ever more determined to go back home as soon as possible and re-sume (!!!!) what my mind/soul/body is craving–to do gardening/farming. It was heartening to receive an email from Cynthia Watts of Samata School in Jorpati telling me that she read part of my essay, “For Breathable Future”, to her students there. If it works out fine, someday I want to work with the kids in gardening and developing what Pramod calls food pedagogy.

Food connects us with the world in some of the most profound ways. Therefore, our choices regarding food, have deep ramifications. It determines whether we sit in the chair for hours or stretch our legs in the garden; whether we suck our eye-sockets in front of the TV or relish in the serenity of bird-chirps; whether we get obese, or stay trim; whether we are educated about our food or remain ignoramus and thereby good target of food industry; whether we know our neighbors or believe that the characters we see dancing in TV are somehow part of a mystical global village; I can go on.

My next essay for the Kathmandu Post is going to be on food crisis–which is looming all across the country and all over South Asia.