Dreamingofren

You just have to be able to bring the other colours forward when necessary, regardless of how much wine it costs you in the evening.

But why? For what?

Do you sell the produce you make from the farm and if so any idea what sort of profit you're getting per acre etc?

Do you think it's profitable for people to buy de-forested land, regenerate it, and then grow / sell the produce naturally grown and harvested or does that still require outside investment?

Guess big question with lots of 'it depends', with the country's jurisdictions being a key one maybe?

I've just started a college course in horticulture and the whole perma culture / forest farming / forest regeneration / bio-diversity regeneration area is insanely interesting so thanks for all your videos.

It would be interesting if (once you setup a coop for them) you could just leave the chickens and let them roam naturally throughout the forest eating what they find. That way it might encourage them to roam more helping to spread nutrients etc maybe.

Hey thanks for taking time to respond.

I actually prefer to donate most of my excess food, although I must admit this year with Covid we have been on hypermode canning and preserving as much food as possible so that we don't have to go to a store more than once a month or so for the stuff I can't make, or that doesn't make sense for me to grow (sugar, flour, rice, etc).

Yeah makes a lot of sense.

Also, my goal isn't to make profits, but my goal is to maximize how much I can expand this puppy. Tree systems also tend to take a bit of time to really kick in, and I'm in year 4-5 now.

Yeah that long wait factor seems quite key in those early stages.

My production on this land is going to ramp up extremely quickly over the next decade or so, likely well beyond my capability to keep up, and I will likely have to think about hiring people, creating a business, and maybe even renting land and opening a store. Some people also sell to restaurants, since the fresh food just tastes miles better than store bought.

Yeah makes sense, I know the vertical farming companies in London (UK) sell their herbs to local restaurants because of quality etc.

Infact, at a tour I ran last year, we had a restaurant owner show up, and after eating one of my black krims, he said he would buy every tomato I ever produced.

Amazing.

For deforested land and regrowing it, there's tremendous value in that, especially if the land isn't fully cleared. Fully cleared land can be expensive, because it's better for development and agriculture. However, damaged forest land, like say, a harvested timber plot of "pines in lines" can be of tremendous value. Plant a few thousand black walnut trees on that, and innoculate stuff like shitake mushrooms under the walnuts, and you have a REAL investment there.

Which profits could go to regrowing the fully cleared or even contaminated land (assuming it's more expensive to fix and or longer).

And thanks for getting into this. Your education is going to be very useful in the future that we're walking into. Keep up the hard work, your life and work will have tremendous value to humanity.

Hey thanks! Feels good to be doing something more aligned with nature / something important. Thanks again.

Awesome will check that out thanks, but sounds good.

There's a lot of people who will say they will destroy the herbaceous layer, and will also do a lot of damage to young tree roots with their kicking and scratching.

Right got you makes sense.

1) To tractor them through a grassland to prep it for initial planting. I.e. kind of use them like a reset on the land. They often combine them with pigs in this way, and use the animals like a natural fertilizing rototiller.

Sounds cool.

2) To completely free range them, but through an established forest. Often combined with cows (they follow the cows 2 days behind them), in a system called Silvopasture. https://drawdown.org/solutions/silvopasture

That's a cool little 'nature grouping', will check it out thanks.

And yeah seems like once you get to certain sizes / growth of forests it opens up more options that are easier to implement (such as letting the chickens just roam around).

The more I learn the more it seems to be that getting as much viable land going from day 1 as possible, as you need those big trees to be grown before other options open up (not to say you can't do stuff in the meantime but getting those trees in asap seems to be important?).

Would be interesting to explore how you could do this commercially and scale up. For example having a someone manage x size of land for x years until y stage, then employ 1 person until z stage. Etc etc until you're 20 years down the line and have people employed for various things etc. Natural growth. What do you think? You mentioned you can see yourself going down that route.