0tterbot wrote:

never mind the goss
I just suspect that it is normal post-grad student did all the work and
Prof getting all the glory scene.

- i've read 3 permaculture books so far & i'm just not
GETTING IT. what's the goss on that? :-)

which ones?

All it really is is bringing together some ideas in sustainable
agriculture so you basically have a self sustaining block of land for a
family. And perhaps sell/trade your surplus at the local market.

Buy a block of land, establish vege garden, orchard, grazing, etc, etc
so you are not forever mowing, ploughing, suffering major pest attack,
dispensing chemicals, etc, etc

afaict, it's all about slopes and windbreaks & planting stuff irrelevent to
soil type etc, & the remainder is what i'd call "the bleeding obvious".

What do you base the statement about soil type on?

It isn't obvious to people who don't have a clue and haven't talked or
looked at stuff before.


who the hell needs a fire mandala? what am i missing??

I have absolutely no idea if your rubbish burns off better in a fire
mandala or not.

Just have a chuckle at the touchy-feely stuff earth spirit stuff and
ignore it.

Chookie wrote:

I don't see why Sydney people wouldn't be able to put up with that,

Umm, where are you gong to shit?

And of course
our decision-makers are often dills (don't get me started on Sartor or
desalination!) so they're the ones who start talking about pinching the water
from Tallowa etc.

I think you will find that Sydney has been taking water from Tallowa for
a long, long time.

0tterbot wrote:

personally, i don't think there's such a thing as "unviable" land in & of
itself -

The general adjective is farming and basically land meets this criteria
when it can not be farmed in a sustainable way, i.e. you are generally
degrading the land over time. Another definition of unviable is that the
"farm" can not return a profit, which is also a reasonable definition.

Although most unviable land is thought to be (for NSW) in the western
division, there is some lands on the west of the dividing range that is
also unviable. There are a number of farms that basically survive from
collecting wild goats.

"Terryc" wrote in message
...
0tterbot wrote:

never mind the goss
I just suspect that it is normal post-grad student did all the work and
Prof getting all the glory scene.

- i've read 3 permaculture books so far & i'm just not
GETTING IT. what's the goss on that? :-)

which ones?

most recently "permaculture two" (mollison) and prior to that two others
which were so underwhelming i can't even think what they are called. and i'm
not about to re-borrow them from the library in order to remind myself ;-)

All it really is is bringing together some ideas in sustainable
agriculture so you basically have a self sustaining block of land for a
family. And perhaps sell/trade your surplus at the local market.

Buy a block of land, establish vege garden, orchard, grazing, etc, etc so
you are not forever mowing, ploughing, suffering major pest attack,
dispensing chemicals, etc, etc

ya, that all makes sense (the entire motivation goes into the "bleeding
obvious" basket ;-).

afaict, it's all about slopes and windbreaks & planting stuff irrelevent
to soil type etc, & the remainder is what i'd call "the bleeding
obvious".

What do you base the statement about soil type on?

the fact it was 100% never mentioned whatsoever in any of the books (and i
do understand that "gardening" or "farming", as information-based concepts,
aren't what the books are really about) - at all. in fact, the only physical
aspect of the land they seemed interested in at all was SLOPE! i couldn't
even find any references in any of them pertaining to flattish land!

perhaps it's just mollison et al's appalling writing style. it was like the
books had no beginning or end, it was all just bla.

It isn't obvious to people who don't have a clue and haven't talked or
looked at stuff before.

i'm assuming that people would get a basic grasp of the process before they
progress to permaculture (permaculture being so design-based) but again,
such basic things are worth incorporating into a book on a concept which is
supposed to be wholistic(???)

similarly it occurred to me that what we call obvious in 2006 might have, in
the 1970s, been temporarily forgotten or pushed to one side & had to be
reintroduced by garden writers generally. certainly modern books & info are
pretty different to 40 year old stuff in general.

who the hell needs a fire mandala? what am i missing??

I have absolutely no idea if your rubbish burns off better in a fire
mandala or not.

the mandala's in perm two. i would not be able to tell you what it's for. in
the cartoon there was a little bloke sitting with his campfire in the middle
of his mandala. perhaps it is a way to have an illegal outdoor fire during
summer, without anyone knowing? (and presumably with no risk of it getting
out of control..?).

Just have a chuckle at the touchy-feely stuff earth spirit stuff and
ignore it.

i just sort of feel robbed - as though i was supposed to have "aha!" moments
reading about this marvellous movement but it was all babble, politics (and
slopes and windbreaks ;-) and the intense and repetitive way mr mollison
wants us all to CONTROL our land rather freaks me out. most of my property
is regenerating bushland. big bill is evidently of the opinion i should sell
most of it, as it is too big for me to CONTROL.

i must have just wanted to have a whinge!! g
kylie

"Farm1" please@askifyouwannaknow wrote in message
...
"Chookie" wrote in message
My letter on a related subject was published today. I am now
awaiting the
backlash from the anti-germ brigade. (Near the bottom of the
page...)

http://www.smh.com.au/letters/index....e#contentSwap2

I went to this site and couldn't find any letter relating to water or
drought. Was I a day too late?

ya, it was yesterday. chookie wrote that although running through the
sprinkler is a thing of the past, that her wee boys can still dance in the
greywater pumped onto the lawn. sweet :-)
kylie

"Farm1" please@askifyouwannaknow wrote in message
...

again, just because most of them
don't rely
on rainfall to make a living does not make the awareness any less
acute.
(snip)

Well they know is a very, very limited sense.

well, "know" is a word with various meanings. (and then there's the biblical
sense! but let's not go there.) it really only sounds like you are cross
with them because they experience the effects of drought too but don't
suffer. should they somehow be _made_ to suffer like we suffer?!

And that sense is that
they are now talking of the need to get MORE water for Sydney. And
taking it from further and further way, like the Shoalhaven River.
The bloody Shoalhaven for God's sake!

are you mistaking the iemma govt's machinations for what literally everyone
in sydney wants? i'd hope not as i suspect they're even less popular in
sydney than elsewhere. in fact, now i'm back in nsw they represent me as
well, and i _still_ don't approve of them any more than anyone else does
(i'm just glad to be out of the sodding a.c.t.). many people come up with
many ideas concerning "what to do about" sydney. many of them are rubbish.
rarely are they backed by a critical mass of sydneysiders. like chookie
said, the presence of the dills does not mean everyone's a dill - otherwise
all the countryfolk are clearfellers, fertiliser polluters, and dickheads,
aren't they? the fact remains though that a city of 4 million people, and
the biggest in the country, is an important place which one would rather not
see turn completely to shit (and not least because the rest of us rely on
them in many, many ways for the time being).

And frankly I'm equally amazed at your inability to take on board refe
rences given to enable you to do some research and that may challenge
your generalisations (you can even access then online so don't even
have to inconvenience yourself by going outside) .

let's not be snarky. which references was i unable to take on board? the
fact you referred me to two things, and i didn't reply specifically to
those, doesn't mean much. i have an extremely long reading list & i'll get
to it. much as i would love to magick books out of thin air, i can't do
that.

why am i not allowed to speak generally, but you're allowed not only to
generalise wildly but also think your generalisations count for more?

Really? I particulalry enjoyed the one about:
"city peeps are generally better-educated and have a much broader view
of the
world, their world is just bigger than ours is"

Such a generalisation really surprised me.

clearly. you're having a great deal of trouble getting over it, i see. city
people are, proportionately, better educated (this partly includes people
who left rural areas _in order to receive_ more education not available in
their area). not least because educational facilities tend to be
concentrated in cities, where many small country towns don't even have a
high school, never mind a tafe or a uni or any private adult ed. for
example, amongst others:
http://ofw.facs.gov.au/publications/wia/chapter6.html
While retention rates for secondary school students, particularly girls, are
increasing, these numbers differ when examined geographically. That is,
students in remote and regional areas are more likely than those in cities
to face problems of access and limited choice as they aim to complete their
education. Residents of regional and remote Australia have consistently had
lower rates of attendance in the non-compulsory years 11 and 12 of school
and at non-school education institutions than city residents.5
Evidence from Haberkorn et. al. indicated that in 1996, average school
attendance rates of 16 year olds in non-capital city Australia were below
those for capital city Australia (76 per cent and 83 per cent respectively).
Attendance rates had remained stable over time, increasing only 0.6 per cent
across Australia between 1991 and 1996. However, in non-capital city areas,
there was a decline of 0.6 per cent in this period.6

According to Collins et al., in 1996 rural girls were only five per cent
less likely to complete school than urban girls, but the chances of rural
boys completing school were 11 per cent less than for urban boys. Girls and
boys in remote areas were both noticeably more unlikely to complete school
than their urban counterparts: 19 per cent and 16 per cent respectively'.7

Haberkorn et. al. found a negative relationship between the proportion of 16
year olds in school and the degree of remoteness. However, some care needs
to be taken in interpreting this as people aged 16 who grew up in remote
areas may have left home to continue their education.8

I know I get to the Opera
House more often than my city rels do now that the ballet dancer has
ended her career (and they only went to see her anyway, not a range of
things) and I am always amazed at how busy my city friend and rels are
but how little they actually use the benefits of the city. The
routine of daily living for them is much more restrictive on their
lifestyle than it is for the country people I know. They go to more
restaurants and movies but not to do anything useful in a cultural or
educative sense - just much more social. Lots of talk but no meat.

And when it comes to education, my (country born and bred and working)
Mechanic has 2 degrees and he's not the only country person I know who
has such surprising qualifications behind his rough exterior. I also
get a particular kick out of the very traditonal sheep farmer I know
who looks like a total hay seed and lives in the deep deep country but
who has a PhD (thesis was on sheep).


what has this to do with anything? how often your rellies go to the opera,
or how many hicks you know with phds, is really not relevent to anything i
said. if you cannot see the obviousness of a statement entailing 1: a
literal truth (that city peeps are more likely to be better educated -
they're also healthier & slimmer - do you want to argue about that too?) and
2: that the outside world is a great deal closer to, and interacted with, a
person who lives in a very big, international city which contains every
imaginable type of person from literally everywhere on earth, living cheek
by jowl in every imaginable economic and family situation, then i really
can't help you. if i want to fly to beirut or london or marrakesch tomorrow,
i think i have to go to SYDNEY first, don't you? that's the literality of
it. the figurative element is what is gained by meeting & working with &
living amongst more people, with different experiences, and having further
access to more of those people and experiences should one wish. i moved to
the city from the country at 17 & believe you me, it was a real eye-opener.
i make my claims from experience & in good faith, but even so, it's hardly
worth arguing about.

i'm NOT saying "the city is better" or "country people are all dumb" or
anything LIKE that. i'm making some observations which you've decided to get
completely off-side about, for absolutely NO reason i can fathom. what's the
problem??!
kylie

"Terryc" wrote in message
...
0tterbot wrote:

personally, i don't think there's such a thing as "unviable" land in & of
itself -

The general adjective is farming and basically land meets this criteria
when it can not be farmed in a sustainable way, i.e. you are generally
degrading the land over time. Another definition of unviable is that the
"farm" can not return a profit, which is also a reasonable definition.

Although most unviable land is thought to be (for NSW) in the western
division, there is some lands on the west of the dividing range that is
also unviable. There are a number of farms that basically survive from
collecting wild goats.

what i'm trying to say is that definitions of "unviable" might be a bit
limited - in settling on the definition, i'd hope that not only
"traditional" farming is considered. anything can be farmed, it's just a
question of where, when, and how!
kylie

In article
,
Terryc wrote:

Chookie wrote:

I don't see why Sydney people wouldn't be able to put up with that,

Umm, where are you gong to shit?

They'll bring back the night-men. I suppose it will be employment for all
those idiots who have had to declare bankruptcy after buying unsustainable
McMansions on unsustainable mortgages...

And of course
our decision-makers are often dills (don't get me started on Sartor or
desalination!) so they're the ones who start talking about pinching the
water
from Tallowa etc.

I think you will find that Sydney has been taking water from Tallowa for
a long, long time.

Sorry -- MORE water from Tallowa (after raising the dam wall).

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

"Parenthood is like the modern stone washing process for denim jeans. You may
start out crisp, neat and tough, but you end up pale, limp and wrinkled."
Kerry Cue

In article ,
"Farm1" please@askifyouwannaknow wrote:

Truth be told, there are probably too many people in Sydney who
don't 'think about things' because they are trying to keep their heads
above (metaphorical) water of some kind. I work in TAFE and I see these
people.

You mean you have such things as TAFEs within easy access?

THere is actually a TAFE in my suburb, but I don't work there. I have a
45-min drive through Sydney traffic to get to mine... is that 'easy access'?
:-)

Of course all of Sydney is not posh but at least it has such things as
hospitals and schools and police stations and all sorts of other
services. On a platter.

Most large (and even small) country towns will have those things. You must be
pretty remote if you don't have a TAFE within reach. Bourke and Coomealla
have TAFEs! And TAFE is in reach of everyone via OTEN.

Maps he http://www.tafensw.edu.au/campuses/index.htm

The city people are very busy and talk lots (and
that is even the ones I know and love) but they really don't observe
too well. Too many fleeting glimpses or thoughts and not enough
cogitation before saying or half thinking about soemthing before
heading off to the next social engagement or need for busyness.

shrug
You can find that anywhere. One of my online friends from rural SA -- a
district with maybe 1000 people in it -- mentioned a relative who seems to be
all style and no substance.

With two small boys, I'm perhaps a bit lacking in the social engagements dept.
It's funny getting the Herald 'subscriber benefits' e-mail. Gosh, I'm missing
out on dinner with Lord Wedgwood this time. Or should I say *he* is missing
out on dinner with *me*?!

The question is: what did they DO about it? For example, farmers
were still *clearing* the WA wheat area in the 1920s. The plantings/
earthworks I saw were, I would estimate, ten years old. Bit of a gap there.

Yes, I agree. But to solve dryland salinity and all sorts of other
land related problems is not one where a quick solution or rushing in
and doing anything and/or everything will always work. It was many
years before it was found that the way to treat erosion was to treat
the head of the erosion and not the body of the erosion.

Not only that -- you have to find the limits of your solution, eg you might
find a solution that is fine in terms of your own climate/soil etc, but it
might not be appropriate elsewhere. And the information has to be passed
around and retested, too.

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

"Parenthood is like the modern stone washing process for denim jeans. You may
start out crisp, neat and tough, but you end up pale, limp and wrinkled."
Kerry Cue

In article ,
"0tterbot" wrote:

I'm asking because I've had a couple of
country people tell me I'm more like a country person than a city person,
and it seems to be a compliment ;-)

perhaps they mean you talk really fast but with your mouth almost entirely
closed? g

Definitely not!

i don't know what people might mean by that. ime city peeps are just as
friendly as country peeps & i'm unsure where the idea comes from that cities
are "unfriendly" (if it's about "friendliness" & that sort of thing). most
country peeps seem much less inclined toward one-upmanship &
jones-keeping-upping & mad consumerism & all that stuff.

Probably that...

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

"Parenthood is like the modern stone washing process for denim jeans. You may
start out crisp, neat and tough, but you end up pale, limp and wrinkled."
Kerry Cue

In article ,
"0tterbot" wrote:

- i've read 3 permaculture books so far & i'm just not
GETTING IT. what's the goss on that? :-)
snip
perhaps it's just mollison et al's appalling writing style. it was like the
books had no beginning or end, it was all just bla.

i just sort of feel robbed - as though i was supposed to have "aha!" moments
reading about this marvellous movement but it was all babble, politics (and
slopes and windbreaks ;-) and the intense and repetitive way mr mollison
wants us all to CONTROL our land rather freaks me out. most of my property
is regenerating bushland. big bill is evidently of the opinion i should sell
most of it, as it is too big for me to CONTROL.

Sounds like you missed out on the Permaculture Design Manual and (IIRC)
Permaculture One. The Earth User's Guide to Permaculture (by Rosemary Morrow)
is quite accessible and better written than the others.

Permaculture is agriculture for engineers. It looks at ways of saving energy
rather than money. For example, my chooks are at present living under my
lemon tree. They have removed the grass that was competing with the tree
roots, spread mulch, and added fertiliser to the area. There are other ways
to achieve the same results, but this is an energy-efficient one.

The idea is to consider inputs and outputs and see how you can make things
work for you with a minimum amount of effort. Soil characteristics are
definitely an input. I think they are covered in PDM.

In my example, my chooks need as inputs: a run to scratch in, green stuff to
eat, and shade. They produce scratched-up ground, eggs, and poo. The lemon
tree needs: the grass removed from its roots, nitrogenous fertiliser, and
water. It provides: lemons and shade. (This list is not exhaustive, of
course.) Therefore I arrange matters so that the chooks and lemon tree
provide some of each other's needs *without my further intervention*. THAT is
"control".

The rest is broad conclusions and sample technique.

HTH,

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

"Parenthood is like the modern stone washing process for denim jeans. You may
start out crisp, neat and tough, but you end up pale, limp and wrinkled."
Kerry Cue

"0tterbot" wrote in message
"Farm1" please@askifyouwannaknow wrote in message
"Chookie" wrote in message
My letter on a related subject was published today. I am now
awaiting the
backlash from the anti-germ brigade. (Near the bottom of the
page...)


http://www.smh.com.au/letters/index....e#contentSwap2

I went to this site and couldn't find any letter relating to water
or
drought. Was I a day too late?

ya, it was yesterday. chookie wrote that although running through
the
sprinkler is a thing of the past, that her wee boys can still dance
in the
greywater pumped onto the lawn. sweet :-)

I see what she means now about the anti-germ brigade :-))

"Terryc" wrote in message
Chookie wrote:

I don't see why Sydney people wouldn't be able to put up with
that,

Umm, where are you gong to shit?

Shades of the Florida Superdome all over again. With any luck they'll
have a lidded bucket.

"0tterbot" wrote in message
"Terryc" wrote in message
0tterbot wrote:

personally, i don't think there's such a thing as "unviable" land
in & of
itself -

The general adjective is farming and basically land meets this
criteria
when it can not be farmed in a sustainable way, i.e. you are
generally
degrading the land over time. Another definition of unviable is
that the
"farm" can not return a profit, which is also a reasonable
definition.

Although most unviable land is thought to be (for NSW) in the
western
division, there is some lands on the west of the dividing range
that is
also unviable. There are a number of farms that basically survive
from
collecting wild goats.

what i'm trying to say is that definitions of "unviable" might be a
bit
limited - in settling on the definition, i'd hope that not only
"traditional" farming is considered. anything can be farmed, it's
just a
question of where, when, and how!

But not sustainably. Any land can be farmed if there is enough money,
equipment and the person owning the land is prepared to mine other
land or lands to bring in the materials to bring their land up to a
level where any form of farming (whether traditional or not) can take
place.

0tterbot wrote:


It isn't obvious to people who don't have a clue and haven't talked or
looked at stuff before.


i'm assuming that people would get a basic grasp of the process

Nope, wrong assumption. Seriously, you have got to meet some of these
people to believe how little they know/knew. It was good for a laugh,
except when some poor animal was suffering.

Obviously you are the wrong market.



i must have just wanted to have a whinge!! g

Naah, one of the benefits of being able to speed read is to decide if
the book is really worth the $$$ asked. Do not ever trust anyones
recommendation.