James Freyr

natalia prakhina,
I have merged your topic into this topic. I hope that helps.

I merged your stuff with the following thread. I hope that is okay by you.

Hey Kevin, welcome to Permies!

Landwatch.com, landsofamerica.com and landandfarm.com are pretty good online resources for active listings of raw land. Since you mentioned you're just starting out, I like to recommend reading to folks new to homesteading as it's a great way to learn from the couch and Permies has a fantastic book review page here: https://permies.com/w/book-reviews

Hope this helps get you started!

Dan, I love it. Thanks for posting your how to process. I learned earlier this spring I have yarrow growing at my farm, yellow blossom yarrow. I need to give this a try next spring when the yarrow blooms and easily reveals itself amongst all the other grasses and forbs. Thanks Dan!

I think one of the downsides to living in the information age is honesty/dishonesty, pro/con, for/against can be found for anything on the internet, on tv and in print. We even have 24 hour tv news stations that tailor what they report to a target audience, giving those people what they want to hear. My father had a subscription to The New York Times for decades, and one day I noticed the ever present daily issue of the paper wasn't by his chair in the den anymore. I asked him "did you stop reading The New York Times?" and he responded "they started saying things I didn't like so I quit reading it". I would swing by my dad's house for a bite on my lunch break when I was in my twenties and he would have foxnews on the tv, muted, and Rush (not Lee, Lifeson & Peart unfortunately) on the radio, sitting in his chair listening and reading the ticker scrolling across the bottom of the tv screen. He found what he wanted to hear/read. My father has long since passed, so I'm ok sharing this about him. It seems now that if something is too difficult to consider, grasp, or comprehend, or if someone thinks something is just plain nonsense, it's easier to ignore it and think "it's not true" and seek information from people who also think the same instead of weighing & considering both sides then forming an personal conclusion.

I'm not sure who first said it, but there's an old saying that the internet has really brought to reality. It goes: A lie will be half way around the world before the truth gets its boots on.

Hi Stephan. So I'm in America and I am unfamiliar with grasses native to your country, but we do have a few things in common. I live in Tennessee, and it's hot right now, averaging 95f or 35c. I have bermuda grass growing on my pastures too as it is a reliable warm season grass that grazing animals eat and can make good hay. What else is growing in your pastures besides bermuda right now? do you have any legumes, like alfalfa, lespedeza or sainfoin for example? Did you have clovers in the spring? Having nitrogen fixing legumes growing with grasses is very beneficial and will aid in grass growth and is also great forage. When you say "raygrass" do you mean ryegrass or is raygrass something unique to your region?

Stephan Schwab wrote: I understand grass goes to seed and dries off.

By dries off to you mean go dormant or did you mean dies off? Perennial grasses, such as cool season varieties, will be lush in the spring and then go brown in the heat of the summer. They're not dead, just dormant. That bermuda is perennial, but it goes dormant when the weather gets cool and greens back up the following summer. Annual grasses set seed and die, but the seed ensures the next generation for the following season.

One more thing, have you had a soil test done?

Thanks Artie. I've got two more dead pines right next to the one I cut up today. I know it's just a matter of time before they're on the ground too.

I think all bacteria have a role and a place in the interconnected web of everything living on this planet, even the bad ones. I think some are a part of natures clean up crew, and just like healthy plants in healthy soil that can defend against disease pressure, I think healthy people have an advantage and are able to withstand human disease pressure. For example, once in a while the news will report an e. coli outbreak in x brand of, let's say, pre-packaged mixed salad greens. 87 people are hospitalized, 3 die, and that’s terrible. How many other people had minor symptoms or even no symptoms at all, having consumed the tainted greens, but immune response and a healthy gut subdued the pathogen. The challenge is that those people go undocumented and there is no data on people exposed to pathogens that never fall ill.

This makes me think of Antoine Bechamp, Louis Pasteur's counterpart in France, both alive and doing research at the same time. Pasteur believed in germ theory, that microbial pathogens are out there and if we are exposed, we fall ill. Au contraire said Bechamp! He argued that it was all about what he called terrain, that there are beneficial microbes that keep the bad ones in check, and instead of lumping bacteria into one category and killing them all with heat (pasteurizing) that it is the good bacteria that need to be nurtured so bad bacteria don’t run amok.

Interestingly, pasteurizing took off, was adopted as the go to method for managing pathogens, and indeed it has been successful and saved many lives.

I like hygiene, and for example, I wash, actually rinsing is more like it, produce purchased at the store and the farmers market. I do not rinse food from my garden that I grew, with the exception of roots like carrots, potatoes, and I’ll also wash greens, as even with mulching somehow grit gets in-between lettuce and spinach leaves, because I don’t like sand and grit in my mouth. Otherwise, I’ll eat blueberries, strawberries and raspberries right off the plant. I’ll pick tomatoes and eat one like an apple. I am not concerned with whatever bacteria and fungi may be on them, and maybe I’m even consuming good microbes, but I don’t know for sure since I don’t have lab equipment to measure that.

My prior paragraphs (I hope they weren't rambling) now have me thinking about the title in this thread, and if there are ways to grow good bacteria, and spray them everywhere in our homes as an alternative to what seems to be the current mainstream culture of sanitize, bleach & kill.

A few days ago a standing and decaying pine tree fell and part of it landed in one of my fields. With my neighbor coming to mow in the near future, I gotta get it out of the way.

In the last couple years since I've joined Permies and also reading a lot of books, some of those about homesteading, I have developed this new way of thinking. I mean the information I'm putting in my head is making me think differently. I now look at everything and think about how it can be a resource. What can I do with it that benefits my farm, nature, the soil, or me & my wife. I'm not prepared to create a massive hugel right now, so while I'm cutting up the part of the tree that's in my pasture I'm thinking of something, anything, I can do with at least some of this material. My wife wants to have a mown walking trail around the perimeter of the farm and some of the larger clusters of trees, and this is one of those clusters, so I thought I'll make a bench that we both can sit and rest on and enjoy observing the little nuances of nature going on at any given moment. I've never made a log bench before, and it wasn't difficult. I think the hardest thing was getting the cut outs on the bench top that rest on the legs as close to flat and on the same plane as possible.

I chose a couple of the better pieces that wasn't completely falling apart and just eyeballed making two bench legs close to the same height as possible. Looking over the log that would be the bench top, I rolled the seat top so it was on its side, then using the chainsaw made guide marks as close to perpendicular to what will be the top. Instead of continuing to cut vertically and putting the nose of the chainsaw bar in the soil, I rolled the log over 90 degrees and proceeded to make my cuts. I then rolled everything into the edge of the cluster of trees and placed the bench top on the legs. I don't expect it to last long, maybe five years, it's softwood pine and has been decaying but when nature reclaims it, I'll make another when a storm brings down a tree in the future.

Aside from the bench I piled all the smaller limbs up and placed a few other tree branches that came down as collateral damage and also the chinese privet I cut to gain access into the understory which is also the spot where the bench now sits. I hope that the loosely piled limbs and brush will become home to reptiles and other critters.

I've also included a neat picture of fungal mycelium which is all throughout some of the remnants of this tree. Hurray fungi! It'll be neat to see what sort of mushroom shows up when conditions are just right. :)

Ben Schiavi wrote:

Does anyone have a similar story?

Not a first hand experience but I've read multiple accounts of arthritics being stung by bees (I don't know what kind of bee) and the bee venom seemed to provide a very long lasting relief from pain and discomfort associated with their arthritis.