Voisin grazing/permaculture/biointensive gardening

Discussion in 'Planting, growing, nurturing Plants' started by digging, Sep 22, 2010.

  1. digging

    digging Junior Member

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    I've been studing and I think these three method will work very well together to produce a lot of food and fiber on the smallest piece of land possible. The Voisin grazing method is very interesting! He learned how to get grass to grow wayyyyy more by grazing and moving the animals every day. So this is a way of increasing solar energy harvested! Couple this with food forest and biointensive gardening I think will be a very powerful system.

    Digging
     
  2. Dreamie

    Dreamie Junior Member

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    Depending on your definition of permaculture, bio-intensive and permaculture are at odds with each other. Permaculture is about working with nature and the systems that exist to maximise yield, while bio-intensive is about altering what you have to increase the yield.

    Voisin is spoken about in permaculture as it is what nature does naturally anyway with migration of animals.

    However using all three together would be of great benefit, a few ideas that could be used;
    Zone 1 and Zone 2 farmed bio-intensively and at the end of the season you let your chickens and ducks through your vegetables patches to eat the scraps left, clear out the bugs and to lay down some manure to be dug in.
    Zone 3 would be long term crops that need little maintenance and after you get what you want out of them you let the cows through to have a feed (Grains etc). After the cows have gone through let the chickens in to spread the cow manure around. Then let the sheep in to eat the crop to stubble, let the pigs through to dig up the ground a little and you are ready for planting out again. (This way you could plant a grain crop with a ground cover of sweet potatoes, you get two harvests, then any left can be used by a certain animal.)
    Zone 4 would be your food forest areas that are set up as paddocks. During the fruit season you let your chickens; pigs etc eat all the fruit that drops and help keep down the bugs while adding manure. Add a sheep or two and you don’t need to do any weeding in these areas.

    If you can work out an animal rotation you can maximise the yield from a single animal while benefiting the next. I would like to try cows, chickens/ducks, sheep/goat, chickens/duck, pigs then back to cows. They all offer a different service that is important and leave something for the next animal or crop going in.

    Edge each paddock with perennial companion plants like tagaste, tansy, borage, comfrey etc that is good for the crops but also provide some extra fodder for the animals. You could also plant these crops inside your food forest with a small chicken wire tent over the top to enable the animals to eat the leaves that grow out while leaving the main plant alive.

    So yes the systems can work together but beware that they can also be at odds with each other.
     
  3. digging

    digging Junior Member

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    Well how many of us are 100% eating from a food forest?? No one I think, now even the natives of north america ate some from annuals by digging up roots in fields. So what did the digging do?? It must serve some kind of function?

    I've noticed that even mice will dig to eat the roots of beets.It seems to me that digging does have a function in nature, it's just the scale that needs to be held. Also digging and adding compost/char is away of helping restore damaged soils on which most of us are trying to live.

    So I would think the biointensive method is a good transition to food forest until they are mature enough to sustain us.
    I think the spreading of our human manuer mixed with char & then on the fields our animals graze and then uses thier manuer for our compost mixed with biochar for our gardens will build up the soils very well.

    Digging
     
  4. SueUSA

    SueUSA Junior Member

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    Writer/farmer Joel Salatin has been using rotational grazing for years, and finds it works extremely well, without all the drawbacks of regular grazing. He has several books out, very readable, https://www.polyfacefarms.com/

    Sue
     
  5. digging

    digging Junior Member

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    Yes he makes reference to the viosin methods, so we have these three systems that are working some what apart from each other, but permiculture is about working with nature and designing the best systems we can to have good yields with reduced work and impact. So I believe these three could work very well at producing food and building up soil and fertility while we are waiting for our food forests to mature.

    Digging
     
  6. SueUSA

    SueUSA Junior Member

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    Use permaculture in the way it is likely best for you, try everything you think might work best for your locale. Permaculture is a good concept and a guide, it is NOT a religion.

    Sue
     

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