In this first of (hopefully) many collaborative episodes of the podcast, fellow Agrocaster Mike Moon interviews permaculturalist Mark Shepard about his strategies for developing a permaculture on the natural model of transitional upper mid-West savanna ecosystems. Fruits, nuts, and birds abound.
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5 responses to “Episode #42: Permaculture in the Savanna”
Loved this podcast! (And how wonderful to have podcasts on permaculture to listen to!) Thank you for all your work. It’s a real gift to have this available.
maybe I’m missing something, but if permaculturists aren’t bring the shit back from the food they ship out aren’t they still depleting their soil?
Something is lost that way, but well-designed land can capture enough carbon and nitrogen from the air, and attract enough of the other essential minerals from transient birds and insects etc, and pull enough latent nutrients from the subsoil with fungi, that the losses are more than accounted for on Shepard’s farm. But like Joel Salatin he probably doesn’t have any qualms about bringing in trace minerals from mining deposits or in the form of animal feed if somehow that were needed.
lamp: That would be a good use for “humanure,” if you can get past the seeming grossness (we apparently have less yuck-factor for horse and cow poo…) perhaps one way to get over the gross factor is to use humanure in cover crops which are only used to add nutrients to the soil, and mix those into the soil.
Some also recommend sea salt — it contains every element in the periodic table. I want to test a cheap product called Sea90. Also many report seaweed has good results.
Both of these take trace elements washed down from the land into the ocean and deposit them back into the soil, for what /should/ be 100% return of elements. I hope to find out.
[…] Permaculture in the Savannah- With Mark Shepard […]