Edmonton Folk Fest 2009

My three. And 25 000 others.

Hanggai, a Mongolian band.  The highlight of my Folk Fest experience this year.

Layering

Duckling hatch! These 7 little guys showed their beaks right in the middle of Edmonton Folk Fest.  Had to rush home and haul the first 2 hatchlings and the incubator into the city for a sleep over at my friends.  Her family took duck sat for us.  Thanks, Carpenters!

In permaculture, it's called layering.  I've just always liked figuring out how I can utilize things by overlapping purpose.  Things such as fuel for my vehicle by saving chores and city visits for one outing or working close to a grocery store so that I can go on my way home, time by walking, doing yoga and doing art while visiting family at the lake, tools by being creative with what I have instead of buying a new, one-purpose one.

There are probably lots of other things that can be applied like this, and I love every one of them.  Including permaculture's layering.  One example of layering is to integrate livestock into perennial food crops.  Masanobu Fukuoka was the first very cool model I heard about.  He took a good look at modern agriculture and found much fault in it.  The rice paddy he consequently developed, using ducks, fish, and figs produced not only an increased amount of food per the one acre he grew it on (partly due to the fertilizer the ducks and fish left behind and partly due to the fact that he disturbed the area less, having natural weeders in the same ducks and fish, who love the types of weeds typical of a rice paddy) but also produced figs, eggs, duck meat, and fish.  The decrease in work, increase in food productivity and decrease in the amount of land to do it on all proved this model a brilliant one. If interested in reading about Fukuoka, his book One Straw Revolution is still in print.  I've just picked it up for my trek to BC for the permaculture course.  yummy reading.  

Another forward thinking farmer is Joel Salatin.  Michael Pollen writes about him in his book, The Omnivore's Dilema, a very interesting look at North America's food system.  Salatin's family farm goes off the beaten  path with his farming techniques.  Instead of calling himself a beef farmer, he claims to be a grass farmer.  Grass, after all, is the thing that grows the beef.  Knowing how many heads of beef can eat on how much grass in what amount of time is of essence.  Beef grown on grass, their natural diet (not the much pushed corn, which actually makes the cattle sick) is healthy, delicious and nutritious for us. The beef eat only the tops of the grass before moving on, leaving the grass to grow again in a healthy way.  Unlike modern pasturing of beef, where the grass is eaten down to the dirt, leaving it open for weeds.  Staying in the same pasture creates the possibility of parasites in the beef as well.

 The layered part of Joel Salatin's farm is that after feeding the beef on one field, they are rotated off, and followed by poultry.  There is an egg mobile, a moveable chicken coop, the meat chickens and a moveable turkey shelter.  The birds are moved in 3-4 days after the beef, so that they can eat the fly larvae in the beef manure.  This sounds gross to the average human, but to chickens it's good protein.  In fact, the diet of grass (again, a natural feed for this animal, giving them omega 3 fatty acids) and protein from the larvae, the feed costs for the birds god down considerably.  That the birds can scratch (part of their chickeniness), eat bugs and grass, breathe fresh air and move around is far more healthy for them. It stands to reason that healthy animals equal healthy food for us. 

These, and my neighbours who decide to let their horse loose in the front yard to mow the lawn, or my sister who searching for the best way to replace parts of her lawn with food, or my other sister who doesn't have a lawn, but uses some of her deck steps to grow food in containers are all good examples of layering.  

Me, I'm taking my daughters desire (since she was 3) to have ducks (11 years in the planning) and using it to layer up in our food production.  It'll be a while before they are able to eat the fallen fruit in my orchard, which is not yet a reality, fertilize the fruit trees, and keep down the grass.  Until then, we'll learn how to care for them.  

I'm told they are a far cooler bird to have around than chickens, with their waddling, puddling and quacking.  So far, they are cute and fluffy in their little rubbermaid tote.  The waterer has marbles in it to keep them from swimming. They are unable to create heat of their own without their mother sitting on them in the nest, so we have a heat lamp on them, and keep them dry.

I'm sure there will be more on ducks.