Back in action with mycology in a permacultured community

If one can follow in detail some very careful steps in starting up mushroom growing especially on a farm and even more so on a farm with permaculture as part of its design, you can feed a whole bunch of people using what you may otherwise throw away.  While growing mushrooms the left overs from the production become some of the best compost and soil producer on earth.  It may be a science to know too much but you may regulate how much and what you need to know.

We encountered a great set of videos that are the best introduction to general mushroom knowledge based on a community/collective farm in New Hampshire called D-Acres dacres.org which is among the best community projects we have encountered in this English speaking universe.  We hope you find the videos informative and get you started on something

https://youtu.be/y8sm1uDPWj8 

Mushrooms, how much we don't know

If the study of mushrooms is a science in itself it may be the youngest science yet.  There is such a vast amount to study around mushrooms that indeed we (humans) may be just barely scratching the surface of this science.  As there is very little knowledge around the subject in-house we thought it would be a good excuse to utilize this opportunity to share this learning experience with others who may find an interest.  The process of learning something collectively without the assistance of experts is slightly different and it may be even more objective when a wide spectrum of information as a library is available.  When information does not exist the process becomes science in its true basis.

As we generally avoid encyclopedic interest in learning (learning for leisure or to satisfy personal curiosity) as such may only be expressed by an individual not a community or other group, learning about mushrooms, how to choose them, how to grow them, cook/eat them, use them for other purposes, making paper for example, or medical/health reasons, seemed as worthwhile.  In the most introductory reading we have found yet it would be hard to imagine a community that wouldn't need to learn about mushrooms.

A good thing to grow on sunny dry warmer climates

The Grand Amaranth Experiment

Of all the grain crops, amaranth has to be the easiest to turn into something that you can eat.  If you have ever wondered how to add a cereal crop to your garden, consider amaranth.  This versatile, beautiful, and easy to grow plant can add another dimension to gardening.  Unlike wheat or oats, where you need to cut the stalks, thresh the grain and then grind it into flour, amaranth literally falls from the seed heads ready to eat.

I started this experiment last year with a small test crop just to get an idea of what to expect.  Andrew Still of the Seed Ambassadors spoke highly of amaranth and gave me a few seeds of Copperhead, an ornamental yet grain producing variety.  There are two or three species of grain amaranth, Amaranthus caudatus, and Amaranthus cruentus (Copperhead is this species) being the most important, each of which encompasses many varieties.  Most of the amaranth varieties have purple or red hues in the plant stalks and leaves as well as brilliantly colored flowers.  Copperhead is an exception with rust and copper tones in the stems and flowers.  The common commercial variety called Plainsman is a hybrid of two other species,  Amaranthus hypochondriacus, from Mexico and Amaranthus hybridus, from Pakistan.

Land capacity and Oil yields

In a previous article on how much land is needed to grow so much food a list of oils was included but olive oil was not on the list.  So we inquired on similar information and found this other article of useful information but the units are not similar.  As we have some knowledge of physics this is not a problem.  A Kg is equal to 1000g and a hectare is 10000sq.m. so you can divide by 100 to get your figure in Kg.100sq.m of the previous article.

We thank the editor of journeytoforever.com but as we do not believe in ownership but in sharing we will not bother with copyrights or do we consider reproduction of good information as theft, except if it was used for profit from it.  This is definitely nowhere close to any of our intents or goals, quite the opposite, to help create a world as far away as possible from profit, ownership, theft, social control, and exploitation.

Enjoy the information while it lasts free and accessible.  Create hardcopies and manuals of what you believe may be of use for you and your community, use responsibly.  This is our tool to autonomy and freedom. 

We are simply republishing this article and we are in search of similar.  We have to eventually cross some of this information with other sources for validity.

Living off the land: How much land?

Posted on Saturday, May 5, 2012 by Thoreau | 3 Comments

Suppose that you can no longer rely on any consistent source of food, other than what you can grow on your own land. Your stored food supplies have been exhausted. Some disaster has wreaked havoc with the commercial food supply. How much land would you need to grow ALL of your own food? For this particular article, I’m setting aside the question of raising your own chickens, fish, goats, cattle, pigs, etc. For the sake of simplicity, let’s consider how much land it would take to grow a complete vegetarian diet, per person. Now I’m not a vegetarian, but I eat a fairly healthy diet, and if the necessity arises, I’d adapt.
Certain assumptions are necessary to this type of calculation. For example, we have to estimate the total calories per day per person, and the percent of calories attributed to protein, fat, and carbohydrates. [Technically, what we call 'calories' are kilocalories (kcal).] The USDA nutrition labels assume 1800 kcal per day for an adult woman and 2200 kcal per day for an adult man. So the average is that ubiquitous 2000 kcal diet figure found on so many product labels. I suggest that this figure is ridiculously low for anyone who is growing all of his or her own food, largely by manual labor. My target for kcal per day is 2740, which is one million kcal per year per person — a nice round figure, and plenty of calories for a non-sedentary lifestyle. If you think that my numbers are off by, say, 10 or 20%, you can easily increase or decrease the final tally by 10 or 20% to get a result that you prefer.