08-19-2012, 03:03 PM
I have been in Hawaii for four years and have made a few observations.
My lifetime of observing leads me to believe that certain modes of existence, modes we accept without thinking very deeply about them, are doomed to failure due to their extreme lack of sustainability. For example: Fill your land with a monoculture so that you can have a commercially viable enterprise. Coffee for example. Well, coffee does well in Hawaii and it commands a premium. Coffee also requires some extensive processing and equipment so you might as well raise enough beans to make it worth the investment . . . right?
What about a big patch of avacados, bananas, or mac nuts? Why not?
Well this system breaks down without transportation - which breaks down without oil/gasoline/diesel. So how many coffee beans can you carry? How far away can you walk from your farm? How many pounds can you sell to nearby neighbors? Provided, of course, that they didn't jump on the caffeinated bus (or the mac nut rage, or whatever else the craze of the day might have been).
There's an additional problem with monocultures. They invite pests. Pests that have, in the past, wiped out potatoes in Ireland and grapes in Europe. Wiped them right out.
Additionally fallen fruits and nuts invite pigs and rats. Nothing wrong with that . . . unless you're unwilling to eat them (for control purposes of course). But flies join in the orgy too. Fruit flies as well as regular ol pesky flies which leads to a grotesque jump in coqui frog populations. Coqui frogs, by the way, put out an ear piercing 130 decibels - each. Now you've got sonic pollution rivalling anything in any inner city, any industrial area, or any underwater Navy experiment.
So the next time you are marveling at some dude, with seemingly boundless energy, who is planting his property with thousands of fruit trees ask him "Who is going to harvest all of this fruit? Where can you walk it to? What is your plan for dealing with invasive pests?"
Would it be a better plan to grow only what you and nearby neighbors might consume? And what about protein? How about raising egg layers or meat chickens? What about growing rabbits, goats, sheep, fish (via aquaponics), Muflon or cattle?
How long will we praise the misguided assault of the fruits and nuts and ignore the fact that our meat comes from off island. I can buy lamb from New Zealand as well as pork, beef, chicken and duck from the mainland at the supermarket . . . right now . . . but there are precious few animal protein sources, that are grown here, available to us.
And what happens when the gas runs out?
I will hastily add that chickens are THE WAY to go. Local birds require little, if any, shipped in feed. You see them island wide doing just fine without off-island inputs. Coqui frogs, fly grubs, and local vegetation seem to provide ample feed stocks for wildly successful (re)production.
Don't go into chickens lightly though. They can be just as damaging as any other critter. They love expensive ornamentals and garden crops. Culling more than one or two roosters and isolating overly abundant birds is critical to maintaining a sustainable program. Egg breakers and tail peckers should also be removed from the sustainable domestic gene pool.
Local birds are tasty, and productive layers, but they have a tendency to be tougher (if more flavorful) than their factory farmed counterparts. They also go broody at the drop of a hat which is a good thing unless you already have too many birds.
At Fowl Mood Farm we are still in an experimental stage. We are using local birds and, to be honest, it is too soon to tell whether we can make good (non broody) layers out of them. We have an abundance of young roosters that we use for our own food as they get big enough (about the time that they start to crow). They are smaller than store bought birds and we're anxious to get a new pressure cooker to see if that makes them less tough. We use the offal as the fertilizer base of a fruit tree pit. We throw in some lime and compost and our trees look great - more than we expected from a high ratio of lava rock!
We're using the caged birds to pick areas clean, and fertilize, where we want gardens, grasses or fruit trees. Eventually we'll add the ruminants.
As for fruits and nuts?
A little goes a long way.
My lifetime of observing leads me to believe that certain modes of existence, modes we accept without thinking very deeply about them, are doomed to failure due to their extreme lack of sustainability. For example: Fill your land with a monoculture so that you can have a commercially viable enterprise. Coffee for example. Well, coffee does well in Hawaii and it commands a premium. Coffee also requires some extensive processing and equipment so you might as well raise enough beans to make it worth the investment . . . right?
What about a big patch of avacados, bananas, or mac nuts? Why not?
Well this system breaks down without transportation - which breaks down without oil/gasoline/diesel. So how many coffee beans can you carry? How far away can you walk from your farm? How many pounds can you sell to nearby neighbors? Provided, of course, that they didn't jump on the caffeinated bus (or the mac nut rage, or whatever else the craze of the day might have been).
There's an additional problem with monocultures. They invite pests. Pests that have, in the past, wiped out potatoes in Ireland and grapes in Europe. Wiped them right out.
Additionally fallen fruits and nuts invite pigs and rats. Nothing wrong with that . . . unless you're unwilling to eat them (for control purposes of course). But flies join in the orgy too. Fruit flies as well as regular ol pesky flies which leads to a grotesque jump in coqui frog populations. Coqui frogs, by the way, put out an ear piercing 130 decibels - each. Now you've got sonic pollution rivalling anything in any inner city, any industrial area, or any underwater Navy experiment.
So the next time you are marveling at some dude, with seemingly boundless energy, who is planting his property with thousands of fruit trees ask him "Who is going to harvest all of this fruit? Where can you walk it to? What is your plan for dealing with invasive pests?"
Would it be a better plan to grow only what you and nearby neighbors might consume? And what about protein? How about raising egg layers or meat chickens? What about growing rabbits, goats, sheep, fish (via aquaponics), Muflon or cattle?
How long will we praise the misguided assault of the fruits and nuts and ignore the fact that our meat comes from off island. I can buy lamb from New Zealand as well as pork, beef, chicken and duck from the mainland at the supermarket . . . right now . . . but there are precious few animal protein sources, that are grown here, available to us.
And what happens when the gas runs out?
I will hastily add that chickens are THE WAY to go. Local birds require little, if any, shipped in feed. You see them island wide doing just fine without off-island inputs. Coqui frogs, fly grubs, and local vegetation seem to provide ample feed stocks for wildly successful (re)production.
Don't go into chickens lightly though. They can be just as damaging as any other critter. They love expensive ornamentals and garden crops. Culling more than one or two roosters and isolating overly abundant birds is critical to maintaining a sustainable program. Egg breakers and tail peckers should also be removed from the sustainable domestic gene pool.
Local birds are tasty, and productive layers, but they have a tendency to be tougher (if more flavorful) than their factory farmed counterparts. They also go broody at the drop of a hat which is a good thing unless you already have too many birds.
At Fowl Mood Farm we are still in an experimental stage. We are using local birds and, to be honest, it is too soon to tell whether we can make good (non broody) layers out of them. We have an abundance of young roosters that we use for our own food as they get big enough (about the time that they start to crow). They are smaller than store bought birds and we're anxious to get a new pressure cooker to see if that makes them less tough. We use the offal as the fertilizer base of a fruit tree pit. We throw in some lime and compost and our trees look great - more than we expected from a high ratio of lava rock!
We're using the caged birds to pick areas clean, and fertilize, where we want gardens, grasses or fruit trees. Eventually we'll add the ruminants.
As for fruits and nuts?
A little goes a long way.