Mark may have stumbled on the number one reason the average age of farmers continues to increase, approaching 60 years old in the US. “The problem that you will encounter as a farmer, whether old or young, is that you will be required some days to get up before dawn. You will be required some days to work when its freezing rain and you have holes in your boots. You will be required some days to stay out passed midnight with a flashlight on your head trying to find that calf that is down before the coyotes get them. It’s allot of work, allot of seasonally crazy work, and the pay sucks… That is what you can expect on the job.[1:07:40]” Mark Shepard
what is the minimum size acreage you'd need to create a polyculture with 25 pigs, 5-10 cows, & 500 pasture chickens? are your chickens raised for meat, or are they older females?
Part of it is the plant selection process. He grows plants that typically grow well there in that biome. If it does poorly he plants something else and tests that instead. This helps ensure what he wants to grow outcompetes less desirable plants. Diversified livestock also provide management. What's often toxic to one animal is okay for another (with caveats). Weeds often provide 'medicine' for the livestock because of their individual properties and added diversity...
How do you keep pigs and deer from browsing on and breaking trees and shrubs when the plants are small and from eating perennials added later? Right now I just have some 2-year-old fruit trees planted with fence around them to keep the deer from eating the leaves and the pigs from rubbing against them in my sloped pasture but would like to do more
I saw a video at a California pecan nut tree operation. They cut five foot long lengths of five foot high woven wire. They put this around the trees and pound in a T post to hold it.
Mark selects for earlier production and overall productivity, as well as using the STUN method. If the plant/planting process is fussy he considers it problematic and opts for something else to grow instead.
You like cheap pigs but up to purchase they were raise contrary to your overall mission. Cheap pigs are cheap because the owners feed them trashy gmo whole corn, they didn’t have names, they probably didn’t get any sun or fresh air. Just weird that you would say cheap.
Why bother with any of it then? Why try to change something you support? Why spend more on organic if you can really just eat trashy franken corn and detox it?
