"Chookie" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"0tterbot" wrote:

people round here only have livestock & don't grow crops except tree
crops
(or annual crops for pasture for their animals). looking at this one way,
it's quite obvious why - the soil's not "fertile" in the classic sense,
although obviously i'm exploring its potential. but looking at it another
way, it doesn't make that much sense, actually, so i think i would be
onto a
good thing to have a mixture of things i am doing to get the farm to pay
for
itself. (dh has a job so there's no rush with this - hence i ended up
focussing in the immediate term on making the land support US only, then
it
can progress to supporting itself). i need systems! i'm trying to put
them
in place but underestimated how long this all takes. the chicken-garden
system is well underway albeit still terribly time-consuming, the next
system will probably revolve around some little pigs to get bigger areas
of
soil more fertile, and a bit of a house-cow system when the fences get
fixed. past owners have farmed commercially in the past (for most of its
history) but they're not here now, so i want to fix their messes & get on
with it myself.

Have you considered something like alley-cropping? You'll find it
mentioned
in peermaculture books, and I've seen it being done in the WA wheat belt.

permies make me scream.
kylie