We have ducks in the garden, neighbours have chickens, glad of our choice - ducks seem more fun.
Ducks help mow grass, eat slugs and bugs, don’t seem to damage vegetables. At any sound of digging they gather around - in the way - waiting for worms. Make mud near water, otherwise tidy. They are managing ok with buckets awaiting repair of pond. Our dog loves watching the ducks, stalks but doesn’t touch them, useless at herding them home. Searching for eggs is a family game, but mostly just during the first half of the year.
p.s. fwiw, here’s a lemmy community on ducks
I have ducks and they are so high maintenance, especially as babies. I had one get a niacin deficiency as a baby and her legs got all fucked up. I had to do physical therapy with her twice a day and give her supplements. She recovered enough to not need put down, but she still walks hella weird. She’s thriving though and turns a year old next month.
I have some Muscovy ducks too. They have to have Vaseline put on their caruncles and feet in the winter to prevent frostbite.
My one fave mallard got severely injured by an aggressive Muscovy male(who was put down because he was vicious) and I spent two weeks nursing this bird back to health only for him to somehow get strings embedded in his legs. I had to perform minor surgery to get the strings loose and he spent another week in the duck hospital (my bathroom) He’s doing great now and you can’t even tell he was hurt.
Despite the birds being so high maintenance and being absolutely disgusting creatures naturally, I love them so damn much. Caring for them is one of my passions. I have them trained to go to bed when I tell them and they get so happy to see me.
Maybe I’m a cynic. I’ve got a small allotment in a subtropical area. I’ve got almost 40 trees planted. I would never refer to it as a forest. I think if you are managing something as a food system, forest isn’t the right word. Every tree, bush or plant, on my property is intentionally planted. They all serve some purpose. And yes, it is a system. But forest just like, its not what it is. It seems like a value signal, and pretending you can just put plants out there and not manage them to get results, is just ridiculous.
That all being said, I did get to bring in bananas, lilikoi, papaya, a couple hand fulls of calamansi, enough eggplant to make people avoid you because every time you see them you hand them an eggplant, all this morning. You can absolutely manage a property to be a valuable and productive food system. But everyone I know who manages their land as a ‘food forest’, they get utterly laughable yields. Food plants, almost all of them, are the product of thousands of years of genetic cultivation, and their productivity is based on being exposed to human management.
I thought the term “forest” used in the permaculture sense refers to the inclusion of layers together (in the same space) rather than separate strata like an orchard. Not an actual forest. People like to label things; in one or two words what would you describe your system that is closer to the actual definition?
The people managing it like a hands-off forest, like you say, are doing it wrong.
Syntropic Agriculture with final plan of reaching a forest that is partially food and timber productive as a finished product can probably take that “food forest” crown since they are producing all the way to maturity and forest climax, albeit different crops all the way through.
Yeah, even if you’ve got a yard, in the typical density around me you are not likely to have 6 hrs of sun anywhere. That said, there’s usually something you can grow well.
Oh, for sure! I’m hoping to keep growing a little bit of tomatoes, basil, garlic in my yard. That’s why I clicked on this in the first place!
But when the overwhelming impression from the first 20 seconds is “Nothing here is relatable” then I’m not going to learn it by watching this particular video.
I would love to see similar projects done as a collaboration among neighborhoods. Kind of incorporating elements of a community garden and a permaculture garden.
India has a lot of land. Drawing a comparison between housing cost in urban India and this Portuguese farm. Honestly, it would be better if I could move to Portugal and live like this.
3 BHK flats are easily going for $110k+ in major cities. My parents bought our flat for ₹10 lakhs in 2003. Right now, it’s valued at around ₹63 lakhs and only going up every year. That’s fucking insane to me, more than 600% in two decades. And we live in one of the cheaper cities.
Unless you’re like the top 5% of the country, major cities are just unaffordable right now. Even with the relatively privileged job I will get upon graduation, I don’t see myself affording a place of my own without my parents pitching in with their savings.
I recall reading that someone discovered that a primary reason the amazon forest is so fertile now is that it has a huge stock of biochar left by the mayan civilization.
Either they knew what they were doing, or it is a happy effect of all the cooking fires they made, from the char they left in the area.
Depending on the livestock and source of water, generally yes.
Irrigation from a water well is almost always safe. Surface water irrigation from a lake or river can sometimes be subject to pollution from toxic algae or wastewater that could lead to disease, but unless there is a known water quality issue, it’s fine.
Tougher livestock like cattle, goats and sheep can drink nearly anything. Livestock like chickens and pigs are a little more sensitive to water quality and may not perform as well.
Very interesting and a strong hint that sustainable farming should try to enhance the natural composition of the earth. Phosphate fertilizer works but the mycorrhizial fungi will leave over time. This leads to earth where you have to use Phosphate to grow plants. I am allways facinated by the intricate relationships in nature.
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