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NEWSLETTERS
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News from the Mini-Farm,
Friends and Colleagues
• In March a group from
San Luis Obispo, California, interested in having
all the food in their community grown locally, visited
the Mini-Farm. Roland Bunch, who founded COSECHA
and worked for many years in Honduras researching
the growing of velvet beans with maize, was part
of the group. Roland made a PowerPoint presentation
of velvet beans being grown in challenging soils
in Central America. There was a tremendous difference
in yields when the beans and corn were grown together.
At Ecology Action we have produced 5 pounds of dry
biomass for beans per 100 square feet. In Central
America the yields were 15-45 pounds of dry biomass
for velvet beans per 100 square feet when the beans
and corn were grown together!
• In May we gave a special
tour for 5 farm advisors from North Carolina (which
wants to become known as a farm state). The group
was looking for insights into vegetable production.
There were two representatives from tobacco farms
converting to vegetables and herbs and one from
32 nurseries that work cooperatively with a network
that supplies the needed products. The cooperative
sells bushes and trees for new homes and grosses
about a million dollars a year. There was also a
representative from an area where a significant
number of financially independent retirees in their
50s are moving to farm.
• Robin Mankey of East Palo
Alto, California, who is on the track to become
a certified teacher, sent us a drawing of her own
vision of the food pyramid, using 60/30/10. She
writes: “This year I’m working on growing
nutrition and calories. And in the 60/30/10 pyramid
of GROW BIOINTENSIVE, tomatoes will hold a very
small piece of my growing area. They taste good,
and are certainly a common garden choice in our
community, but provide a small calorie/nutritional
content, overall. Square inch to square inch, they
are not a valuable food choice, therefore garden
choice. They will be a welcome addition, or ‘topping,’
to the primary diet I am choosing. So the challenge
I’ve made to myself this year is to grow high
calorie crops and high carbon crops to feed the
people and feed the earth. The trade-off for that
choice is to have fewer tomatoes, more potatoes!”
• This is part of a letter
sent to us by Bob Fitch of Santa Cruz: “I
credit double-dig Biointensive gardening with ‘saving
my family’s life’. During the 70s we
were very poor and living in Weed, California (near
Mt. Shasta). In summary, we had very little money,
lots of family labor. Due to intensive techniques,
augmented with a home-made drip irrigation system
and newspaper/straw mulch, our 2/3s of a former
rock riverbed (great drainage) acre grew us huge
amounts of food. We not only had plenty of veggies
and fruit but also enough roughage and comfrey to
feed critters—chickens, rabbits, with some
left over for hogs. We begged, borrowed and built
most everything…but always ate very well.
Additionally, my yields so impressed the…locals
that they eventually adopted some of our practices
and consulted regularly about their trials and triumphs
in the garden.”
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