Grain raising and Windward's Sustainability research
The ecology of grain raising and Windward's "marginal land" In Overshoot, William Catton pretty accurately defines modern till agriculture as "the continual undoing of succession." In order to keep a field producing annual plants such as cereal grains, the soil needs to be continuously disturbed, weeds supressed, and reperations made to the damaged soil. This continual disturbance not only takes loads of energy, but it also prevents and reverses the natural accumulation of energy and life in the form of soil, humus, mulch, and the increasingly complex relationships that tend to stabilize a ecological system. Disrupting this flow also takes energy in the form of higher amounts of watering, and continually reperations made to keep the damaged soil ecology working. We live in a steep forested setting, and most of our precipitation falls as snow with a prolonged dry season throughout the summer. The soils are not super rich, nor particularly well drained, and the soil ecology is generally fragile. A flat open area in a warm climate that receives steady amounts of rainfall throughout the entire year would be a more suitable place for grain.
Part of our overarching goal of our research involves finding methods and practices for people living on "marginal land". Personally, I think it is kind of demeaning and insulting to call our land "marginal". The life here is incredibly well suited to the conditions, and is very productive in its own way. If you don't believe me, go ask a lichen growing on a rock, or the vetches that are going to seed in the middle of our highly compacted road surfaces, or the squirrels that are out planting oak trees as I write this. All things considered, we are "marginal" in terms of growing grain."Traditional" or green-revolution-era agriculture is severely destructive to even the best land, not to mention relying upon intensive hydrocarbon inputs. So, if we wish to simultaneously grow grain on our land AND have a sustainable relationship with it, then it behooves us to find some other way to go about doing it. With all of these things considered, I have begun to examine other ways that people have worked around some of the challenges we face. In the discussion to come, I will be borrowing piecemeal from the works of Masanobu Fukuoka, Larry Korn, Frances Moore Lappe, Wendell Berry, and Bill Mollison. All of these people are doing great work, and have a piece of the big puzzle. No-Till agriculture to "Transform the nature of Work" In The One Straw Revolution Fukuoka writes, "There is no time in modern agriculture for a farmer to write a poem or compose a song." That says a lot about some farmers relationship to their careers. They work and work and work, supposedly to make a better life for themselves. But are left with little time and mental space to compose even a simple haiku. In the words of John Humphrey Noyes, one of the four goals of the the Oneida community was to "transform the nature of work." A big goal but one that is worth examining. [If you want to learn more about the Oneida community, and how Windward has taken influence from them, return to the main Notes from Windward page, and run a search for Oneida.] In recognition of Fukuoka and Noyes' words, the main goal that we have with any living system here is to be able to do as little "work" as possible. The theory I am trying to put into practice here one of closely observing nature, its relationships and flow of energy, thereby utilizing nature's potential to do the "work" without my effort. I have no doubt that nature may inform us that we should not be growing grains as a source of carbohydrate energy on our land. I know that in regions of the world with similar geology, soils, precipitation regimes (such as the Andean people of Chile and Peru) do not grow much grain at all. Instead they grow tubers and roots. What I do not want to do is operate with a predilection toward believing that we need to find a way to grow grain. Or that we need to grow any certain food, or behave in a certain way, or whatever. This is not a sustainable nor healthy operating procedure in a community of people trying to get right with nature. What I feel we really need to do is let the land and the plants tell us what to do. August 30: continuing the experiment Given all that was stated above, I ask myself, how can we decrease the amount of management, and still get good results? How have others done it? My conclusion is simple, Where we can make up the difference, is in creating a polycultural context. We can lower the amount of energy inputs by trying to simulate nature and the balancing structures that hold ecosystems in dynamic equilibrium. In doing so we may ultimately sacrifice the productivity of any one species or individual plant but we wont need to manage it to intensely, and the system can then be providing many survaces. Because we can have a multi-function situation, there can still be a high degree of group productivity.Productive capacity of the system is diffused throughout the ecosystem, not focuesd on one indiviudal or species. By growing more than just one crop in an area, we can ultimately
The test plots are going to be set up like so.
I am intrigued by what happens on the north facing and east facing sloped on our property. These slopes get less or no direct sunlight, and are generally more sheltered from the wind. These areas are more moist and have more high water demand plants such as Douglas Fir, Oceanspray, Beaked Hazelnut, Serviceberry, Snowberry than slopes with other orientations. Also, many perennial grasses that are rarely seen. This lead me to think of this experiment in our Summer pasture. In the summer months (when grain is needing the sunlight), the pasture receives light throughout all three regions in the early morning through noon (appx. 6 hours of direct sunlight). Once the sun has past the mid-day mark, the forested area (region 3) is in full shade, and the pines shadows creep along the open area moving from northwest to southeast until casting the entire pasture in shadow for 2 or three hours before twilight.
As you move down the slope, there is a natural increase in the time availability of sunlight. This dynamic makes the pasture a great place to test the limits of growing grains in a limited light setting. With this experiment, coupled with the work being down around it in the pasture I hope to learn and experiment more with the dynamics between available water and sunlight. As well as put into practice principles of water retention, guild planting, and soil building that we can then be utilize in other areas of our forest. |
