Getting a Farm Going

[Vespers War]

Originally Posted by Raellus

What about the Native Americans' "Three Sisters" method of planting beans, squash, and corn all together? It's pretty efficient in terms of labor, and the space-to-yield ratio is favorable.

https://www.nativeseeds.org/blogs/bl...sisters-garden

Here's a quote from the blog:

"Corn provides tall stalks for the beans to climb so that they are not out-competed by sprawling squash vines. Beans provide nitrogen to fertilize the soil while also stabilizing the tall corn during heavy winds. Beans are nitrogen-fixers meaning they host rhizobia on their roots that can take nitrogen, a much needed plant nutrient, from the air and convert it into forms that can be absorbed by plant roots. The large leaves of squash plants shade the ground which helps retain soil moisture and prevent weeds."

https://gardening.cals.cornell.edu/l...three-sisters/

-

Long-term, milpa agriculture ends up being basically a five field system, because it follows two years of cultivation with eight years left fallow. It's effective, but it ends up requiring a good amount of space over the long haul because of the long fallow period.

Other crops can also be included - pumpkin, avocado, chili - but I haven't read what the proper spacing of planting is for the additional crops.

[swaghauler]

Keep in mind that if you are not gardening (I highly espouse the Ruth Stout method), that there are three important steps to growing food by the acre (or hectare if you prefer). For visualization, remember that an Acre is the size of a FOOTBALL FIELD (around 100m X 50m wide) and a Hectare is 2.47 times the acre in size (10,000 total meters). This is a big space. The three steps to prepping a field are...

1) INITIAL MULCHING AND NUTRIENT ADD: This is normally done in the fall after the harvest. If you have ever seen a cornfield or wheat field that was harvested, you will see stubs of stalks that are bent over and left to rot. This is INTENTIONAL. Those stalks are putting nutrients back into the soil. This is often leavened with grass cuttings and dead leaves. It is best to let these rot on top of the field ALL WINTER. IF you "breaking in" a new field, you should let this debris molder on top of the field for at least a week. The wetter the better as it promotes rot.

2) EARLY SPRING TURNING: Your field has moldered all winter and you have a good debris cover going. Now it's time to turn over those nutrients that will feed your crops long-term. A MouldBoard Plow or Chisel Plow will cut deep ruts and roll that mulch down into the ground where your crops will feed on it all summer long. Once the field is turned, in comes the "boost nutrients" to be laid on the field for up to a week before the initial planting. These nutrients include Nitrogen and the rapid growth food for your crops. In my neck of the woods that would be cow manure turned into a liquid mixture resembling a thick soup. This goes on top and is allowed to soak in. It's what gives you that "Fresh country air" aroma every spring. After a week, this too gets turned over to ensure the soil is now fully capable of being Furrow Plowed.

Please note that there are several alternatives to using modern fertilizers and these methods are STILL being used today. Some common methods to "season" a field including using a "fish slurry" made up of parts of any fish you ate that were left. These parts (including bones) are ground into a "meal" and added to the ashes from a fire to produce a Potassium-rich compound for poor soils. This is then applied as a "slurry" just like manure is. This is the technique the American Indians showed the Colonists at Plymouth to help them fend off starvation.

Another technique is using human feces and urine. To make this safe, they are burned in a container and their ASHES are added to ash from the fire to prevent the spread of disease. This should also be done with Pig, Chicken, and any other Poultry's wastes. Cow, Horse, Rabbit, or Goat waste can be used as-is. These should all be turned into a slurry to stretch the amount of soil that can be fertilized.

Indeed, URINE (and to a lesser extent feces) is a powerful resource. You can use it to fertilize fields, make explosives or smokeless propellants, and even drugs. It would be a VALUABLE RESOURCE that everyone was expected to provide in a place like Krakow. Putting feces into a sealed plastic container known as a "digestor" will allow you to harvest METHANE gas for cooking or welding. Put in some feces, add a small packet of the microbes found in the product known as RID (used to clean septic tanks and found almost everywhere in the US) and just add water. I'm told you can get a liter of Methane from a liter of treated Digester water. This also has NO IMPACT on your ability to use the feces to fertilize fields later.

3) FURROW PLOWING, DISKING, AND PLANTING: Once the field is "seasoned," you can plow the furrows for planting. We used a 3-Furrow Plow but there are a variety of these plows available. IF you are planting a crop that needs looser soil like lettuce, you will also be using a Disc Plow to break up the soil into a finer grain like sand. Heartier plants like Potatoes or Corn do NOT need the soil to be that fine (which is good because topsoil erosion occurs more frequently in disced soil). This is also the stage where you will Contour Plow so wind won't blow away your topsoil. How you plant will depend on WHAT you plant, as different crops need different spacing (hence my Yields Chart). Once the fields are sown though, you can take a breather before the next step (maintenance of the crops) begins.

That's just a quick overview of how to prep a field for farming.

[Milano]

@ Enfield

After a cursory look throughout the web and browsing through Vesper's PDF, I really cannot give you much help. I get around 17 inches of rain between November and April, on an average year. With that I run a cow on about 25 acres. That is without feeding, which is required if the rain is late the following November. I wish I could give you more but that's about all I've got for you. If the PCs do want to go after a cattle ranch, remember that the fences, corrals, water, etc is a large undertaking. A few cows and a bull is more reasonable.

[Enfield]

Originally Posted by Milano

@ Enfield

After a cursory look throughout the web and browsing through Vesper's PDF, I really cannot give you much help. I get around 17 inches of rain between November and April, on an average year. With that I run a cow on about 25 acres. That is without feeding, which is required if the rain is late the following November. I wish I could give you more but that's about all I've got for you. If the PCs do want to go after a cattle ranch, remember that the fences, corrals, water, etc is a large undertaking. A few cows and a bull is more reasonable.

Sorry, is that 25 or 2.5? And is that about 2.5 (or 25) per cow? If there is a lack of rain (I Understand that the Okanagan Valley is pretty dry) will there not be enough grass regrowth?

[Milano]

That is 25 acres per cow and calf. You seem interested so I'll go into some details.

Our average rainfall is 17". So, last year we had 13" of rain and I had 120 Cows/pairs... this year I've gotten 8". I own and lease around 3,200 acres. Last year I had the stocking rate of 27 ac/cow.. in a week or two I'll be hope to be able to keep 80 Cows, thus 40 ac/cow. But the numbers do not reflect the timing and number of storms to get the rain fall.

Without going crazy on details for a game, that's the jist of it. Remember that acreage is on a two-dimensional plane. I live in mountains, so acreage is relative. There is also the measure of AUMs. Or Animal Unit Months. It's way more precise, but it's limiting in that the samples must be taken regularly to come up with an average.

There is science to agriculture but there is more intuition and wisdom that goes into it. (Remember that Wisdom is what we call our mistakes.)

[Enfield]

Originally Posted by Milano

That is 25 acres per cow and calf. You seem interested so I'll go into some details.

Our average rainfall is 17". So, last year we had 13" of rain and I had 120 Cows/pairs... this year I've gotten 8". I own and lease around 3,200 acres. Last year I had the stocking rate of 27 ac/cow.. in a week or two I'll be hope to be able to keep 80 Cows, thus 40 ac/cow. But the numbers do not reflect the timing and number of storms to get the rain fall.

Without going crazy on details for a game, that's the jist of it. Remember that acreage is on a two-dimensional plane. I live in mountains, so acreage is relative. There is also the measure of AUMs. Or Animal Unit Months. It's way more precise, but it's limiting in that the samples must be taken regularly to come up with an average.

There is science to agriculture but there is more intuition and wisdom that goes into it. (Remember that Wisdom is what we call our mistakes.)

Given that this is Twilight 2000 though, I imagine that not only would you have the usual problems of watching out for predators, accidents, bad weather, etc, but also the problem of a lack of law enforcement and maintenance of infrastructure and information systems. How many people do you think you would need to keep that amount of range safe? How many daily hours of work is that?

[swaghauler]

Originally Posted by Enfield

Given that this is Twilight 2000 though, I imagine that not only would you have the usual problems of watching out for predators, accidents, bad weather, etc, but also the problem of a lack of law enforcement and maintenance of infrastructure and information systems. How many people do you think you would need to keep that amount of range safe? How many daily hours of work is that?

3200 acres is only 5 miles of terrain. You can ride that [on horseback] in a couple of hours.

[Enfield]

Originally Posted by swaghauler

Keep in mind that if you are not gardening (I highly espouse the Ruth Stout method), that there are three important steps to growing food by the acre (or hectare if you prefer). For visualization, remember that an Acre is the size of a FOOTBALL FIELD (around 100m X 50m wide) and a Hectare is 2.47 times the acre in size (10,000 total meters). This is a big space. The three steps to prepping a field are...

1) INITIAL MULCHING AND NUTRIENT ADD: This is normally done in the fall after the harvest. If you have ever seen a cornfield or wheat field that was harvested, you will see stubs of stalks that are bent over and left to rot. This is INTENTIONAL. Those stalks are putting nutrients back into the soil. This is often leavened with grass cuttings and dead leaves. It is best to let these rot on top of the field ALL WINTER. IF you "breaking in" a new field, you should let this debris molder on top of the field for at least a week. The wetter the better as it promotes rot.

2) EARLY SPRING TURNING: Your field has moldered all winter and you have a good debris cover going. Now it's time to turn over those nutrients that will feed your crops long-term. A MouldBoard Plow or Chisel Plow will cut deep ruts and roll that mulch down into the ground where your crops will feed on it all summer long. Once the field is turned, in comes the "boost nutrients" to be laid on the field for up to a week before the initial planting. These nutrients include Nitrogen and the rapid growth food for your crops. In my neck of the woods that would be cow manure turned into a liquid mixture resembling a thick soup. This goes on top and is allowed to soak in. It's what gives you that "Fresh country air" aroma every spring. After a week, this too gets turned over to ensure the soil is now fully capable of being Furrow Plowed.

Please note that there are several alternatives to using modern fertilizers and these methods are STILL being used today. Some common methods to "season" a field including using a "fish slurry" made up of parts of any fish you ate that were left. These parts (including bones) are ground into a "meal" and added to the ashes from a fire to produce a Potassium-rich compound for poor soils. This is then applied as a "slurry" just like manure is. This is the technique the American Indians showed the Colonists at Plymouth to help them fend off starvation.

Another technique is using human feces and urine. To make this safe, they are burned in a container and their ASHES are added to ash from the fire to prevent the spread of disease. This should also be done with Pig, Chicken, and any other Poultry's wastes. Cow, Horse, Rabbit, or Goat waste can be used as-is. These should all be turned into a slurry to stretch the amount of soil that can be fertilized.

Indeed, URINE (and to a lesser extent feces) is a powerful resource. You can use it to fertilize fields, make explosives or smokeless propellants, and even drugs. It would be a VALUABLE RESOURCE that everyone was expected to provide in a place like Krakow. Putting feces into a sealed plastic container known as a "digestor" will allow you to harvest METHANE gas for cooking or welding. Put in some feces, add a small packet of the microbes found in the product known as RID (used to clean septic tanks and found almost everywhere in the US) and just add water. I'm told you can get a liter of Methane from a liter of treated Digester water. This also has NO IMPACT on your ability to use the feces to fertilize fields later.

3) FURROW PLOWING, DISKING, AND PLANTING: Once the field is "seasoned," you can plow the furrows for planting. We used a 3-Furrow Plow but there are a variety of these plows available. IF you are planting a crop that needs looser soil like lettuce, you will also be using a Disc Plow to break up the soil into a finer grain like sand. Heartier plants like Potatoes or Corn do NOT need the soil to be that fine (which is good because topsoil erosion occurs more frequently in disced soil). This is also the stage where you will Contour Plow so wind won't blow away your topsoil. How you plant will depend on WHAT you plant, as different crops need different spacing (hence my Yields Chart). Once the fields are sown though, you can take a breather before the next step (maintenance of the crops) begins.

That's just a quick overview of how to prep a field for farming.

much appreciated. I think being able to explain this will lend a lot of authenticity to the messages from Cascadia as well as emphasizing the need for certain technology to make the efforts easier.

Corn isn't very economical for the space required, and neither are most other grains. techzpod mobdro - edited these were links.


More spammers. Keep an eye out - Kato