[Stoves] Diesel as an excellent fuel for rural households

[Jock Gill]

Cecil,

I think you  missed the point that Berry makes: animal manure as fertilizer or as a major component of compost.  it is not purely about energy.  We have to also be concerned with the results of our approach.  Do they continuously improve the quantity and quality of the soil or not?  Years of experience at Green Fire Farm in VT  suggest that Permaculture + Compost + Biochar is significantly greater than the sum of the parts.  The sum might be called Regenerative Agriculture as opposed to most practices today which are clearly degenerative. Do we have more an better top soil today than we had 100 years ago?  Now ask this question of our oceans, forests, rivers, lakes, and the atmosphere.  

Expanding on this a bit to the realm of economics:  In the end, it would now appear that the quality and quantity of life here on earth depends on the success establishing something very much like a process of stewardship with continuous improvement in a market economy based on Regenerative Capitalism. How much longer can we tolerate unchecked degradation driven by the model of free market capitalism of the 20th century? 

Do we want our legacy to be an economics of worse and worse or better and better.

PS:  there is a good write up on Green Fire Farm in The Small Farmer’s Journal.  My PDF of this is too large for the list - several megs.  Will send along via email if you ask for it.  Meanwhile, here is the web site: http://vermontbiochar.com/biochar/ <http://vermontbiochar.com/biochar/>

Jonathan P Gill
18 Woods Edge Road
Medford, MA 02155

(C) (617) 449-8111

Stewardship: not dominion, extraction or exploitation



> On Apr 18, 2015, at 11:10 AM, Cecil Cook <cec1863 at gmail.com <mailto:cec1863 at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
> 
> Dear all,
> 
> 
> 
> I remember Wendell Barry claiming he sacrificed only 10% of his hill farm in Ky to grow the feed needed for his bionic tractors who did all the all traction work on his farm.  What’s more they harvest the land and fertilize it every year so the farmer does not have to waste him scarce time and energy planting, harvesting, and process his food in warmer climates (which has to be done in the colder regions of the world).  How great is that?   
> 
> 
> 

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