Re: [Biofuel] Proper intgration of Biofuels for small farms

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 10:07:06 -0700

Hi Kirk,

That might be worthwhile if I lived in a more developed country. I´d prefer to keep things as close to my homestead as possible. Transporting one oil to work with another does not make sense in my case. There might be a neighbor closeby to make a trade. I´ll look inyo it when the time comes. Thanks.

Tom Irwin

From:  Kirk McLoren <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To:  biofuel@sustainablelists.org
To:  biofuel@sustainablelists.org
Subject:  Re: [Biofuel] Proper intgration of Biofuels for small farms
Date:  Sat, 11 Aug 2007 08:24:07 -0700 (PDT)

I would sell the olive oil and buy something cheaper like canola.
  
Dont forget solar thermal for energy. Properly done it works well.
     
 
     
 
  
Meanwhile NASA cant match the efficacy of projects demonstrated a century ago.
  
 
  
Solar pumping is in phase with water demand.
  
 
  
Kirk

Tom Irwin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
  
  
  
  
Hi Keith,
  
I was hoping by asking a generic
question with regard to farm size there might be the chance of an answer that I could use for my circumstance. Let me lay out the whole story instead. My land ( I wouldn´t call it a farm yet) is about 4 hectares. There is a tiny stream that in dry years goes dry in summer, according to the previous owner and neighbor. It splits the plot almost in half. I have two small ponds on one side of that stream that hold maybe 100,000 liters total. The land is flat with maybe a 1:100 slope on either side of that stream. The land had been fallow for at least one season when I first purchased it two years ago. I haven´t touched the plot with the ponds at all so it has remained fallow. The other plot had soil that was grayish brown to gray in color. It was very hard and tended to be quite bricklike in summer. Friability and tilth seemed to be lacking. I had the entire plot disked to chop up everything that was growing on it. Then I seeded with a mixture of red
and white clover. After the clover set seed I disked it all again. Now I have a much more brownish soil that doesn´t clump up and turn to brick. The clover is regrowing along with whatever else will grow natuarally with it.
  
From my reading on JTF, Dieoff and elsewhere I figure my family is going to need energy in some form and I want to grow my own fruits, vegetables, and eventually animals. I do not live on the land yet, there are no buildings. That is why I was looking into permaculture design. I´m setting off about a seven meter perimeter to establish hedgerows that will include fuel, fruit and timber trees, perennial herbs, and insectiary plants. I´m looking to plant about 300 to 400 olive trees of three different varieties.  They will be very widely spaced to permit hand picking, and alternately grazing space or cropping between rows.
  
But I´m worried about water. Gentle, all day rains occur occasionally But the shift
seems to be toward 2, 4, and 8 hour violent thunderstorms followed by 3-6 weeks of nothing. The area has a historical rainfall of 110 cm per year on average but who knows how that will go with climate change. Three more ponds with a total capacity of 500,000 to 1,000,000 liters seem like it would be enough but I´m not sure.  I´m fairly certain I can capture that much from the thunderstorms to use during the dry periods.  I could make the ponds larger but that would mean forgoing turning them into cisterns if the climate goes really dry.
  
I should be able to get 3000 liter of olive oil at maturity. That should be enough oil to pay the taxes, replenish toolsamd equipment, buy livestock, eat and make biodiesel for transport and generating electricity. I like the idea of permaculture with trees and perennials because it seems less labor and energy intensive. I´ve been deliberating other oilseed crops. That was where my question on Emergy came from. Any
insights are helpful. Thank you.
  
Tom Irwin
  
4zz57r
  
 
  
From:  Keith Addison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To:  biofuel@sustainablelists.org
To:  biofuel@sustainablelists.org
Subject:  Re: [Biofuel] Proper intgration of Biofuels for small farms
Date:  Thu, 9 Aug 2007 20:59:02 +0900
> >Hi Keff7ith and all,
> >
> >I was wondering if does anyone have any information or insight into
> >H.T. Odum embodied energy calculations. Are they a valid way of
> >comparing energy sources? Has anyone done any good work on using
> >them for biofuel production on a small diverse farm? I saw some
> >discussion of it in archives in 2001.
> >
> >Tom Irwin
>
>Hello
Tom
>r
>Maybe I dron't understand it well enough, but it seems a bit superfluous.
>
>What's a small diverse farm? Answers I've heard range all the way
>from a 100-acre farm (that allegedly wasn't big enough to be diverse,
>nor to earn a living) to our current case here, 700 square metres.
>"Emergy" measures wouldn't be a lot of use in either of those two
>cases, I don't think.
>
>If it's really small and diverse probably the most important aspect
>is integration, and if you're good at that (patterns, in other words)
>you shouldn't need too much else. What are the values of a crop (or
>whatever) within your system? Say potatoes - you grow them to eat? To
>eat as well as sell? To eat, sell, for livestock to eat, as a
>cleaning crop (see Newman Turner), as an energy crop (ethanol and/or
>biogas)? And so on. Eg, geese will dig up potatoes themselves, eat
>them raw (like
apples) and manure the land while they're doing it.
>Chickens and ducks won't dig them up and won't eat them raw, but they
>really like them when they're boiled. (Chickens will clear a crop for
>you though, down to bare land, and feed themselves in the doing, and
>manure it for the next crop - just sow and mulch.)
>
>Direct by-products like the potato tops (haulms) can be valued on a
>descending scale: edible or not, can or can't be grazed by livestock,
>or fed to livestock, used for compost (how much bulk), or for mulch
>(how much bulk), plus possible energy use (separate). Potato tops
>don't get a high rating, but it doesn't matter much in the case of
>potatoes; with other crops it can matter much more. You can add in
>other factors as you need them - yield, time to harvest, season,
>plenty of others depending on the ever-changing circumstances.
>
>It's not difficult, and you're
dealing with real values in the unique
>context of your own farm, values that you know, you've seen them
>unfold and reveal themselves, you know how it works and how it all
>fits together. There's no substitute for that.
>
>Sometimes, not always, we bring mother birds and their new hatchlings
>inside the house for the night for the first week or so, away from
>the hoi polloi, though they're out foraging with the rest during the
>day. At the moment it's Lucy the Muscovy with her week-old ducklings,
>before that it was one of the "Primoss" chickens (Plymouths) with her
>chicks.
>
>It doesn't take them long, mums or hatchlings, to see the advantages
>of the electric light bulb. They turn partly nocturnal, spending half
>the night occupied in the slaughter of very large numbers of moths,
>bugs, crickets and I don't really know what else, but they sure like
>it, and of course it's
very good for them, high-quality live protein,
>replenished daily, and good exercise too. I had no idea how many
>moths there are in a house in the summer until a certain little
>chicken revealed all. You don't notice them, they lurk about at low
>elevations and don't move much. The birds notice them though.
>
>What would be the "emergy" value of that? And why would it matter?
>What's the emergy value of feeding poultry (or pigs) excess worms
>from a worm composting unit? If the worms are composting the
>poultry/pig manure vs if they're not? As opposed maybe to putting the
>manure in a digester for biogas, or into aerobic composting for both
>a much higher-grade product (than the biogas) plus heat? Could it
>really tell you which is more worth doing, beyond your own immediate
>sense of it (which might be different next month)?
>
>I don't see much use for it, sorry.
>
>Here
are some refs on Odum:
>
>Environment, Power and Society, Howard T. Odum, 1971
>
>Environment, Power and Society for the Twenty-First Century: The
>Hierarchy of Energy by Howard T. Odum and Mark T. Brown, new edition
>April 6, 2007
>
>http://dieoff.org/page170.htm
>eMergy Evaluation, Howard T. Odum, 1998
>
>http://dieoff.org/page232.pdf
>Emergy Accounting, Howard T. Odum, April 2000
>
>Best
>
>Keith
>
>
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