Jack Daw

You seem like real nature lover. That's good, we need people like you in the lungs of the world, so that there's still more and more trees to fight the smog plague.
I hope you will be succesful in your actions and that those who oppose your reforestation ideas will eventually stand on the losing side.

__________________
Thnx to Marcel, Ante, Dr. Chiranjit Parmar and Francesco for the plants I've received.



Zeitgeist - Corporatocracy 101 (~2hrs)

Zeitgeist - Moving Forward (~2.5hrs)

mahning

OOPS I clicked "submit" instead of "preview".
continuation:
this forest will not stand if the folks who are coming to cut it don't see a better opportunity in having it stand. these are entreprising lads. rough and ready. it costs about U$65 to have one hectare of forest "cleaned" (macheteros, chainsaws, gasoline..everything).
It should be easy to beat that if we cared. but it's hard to focus when so much money can be made just collecting donations.
So.. back to land price. Actually it is free. just come with a dozen cousins, walk 3 hours into the bush and take what you want (and do whatever you want with the cousins as well ;-). you being a foreigner might complicate things a bit, but it should be fun.
More seriously - prices are between U$600 and 1,600 per hectare with fair road access and 250 to 500 without. Remote forest is 80 to 150. These are properties with real titles, but then, you must consider that nobody cares as you get further from the road. you would be on your own and will have to hold you ground.
This being said, i think this is worth it, if you enter the situation with proper dispositions (you'd be well ahead of me!). I would certainly help any decent person to take position. Send me a private message if this is on your mind.
regarding distance to market, the road is about 75 Km from a soon completed international airport, but as of today, it's about 3 hours drive. Considering that we are also about 3 hours walk from the road, I was thinking of building-up inventory ans sell the plants to folks with better acces.
I just saw you kind response to the 1st part. thanks for caring.

Jack Daw

No, thanks, I was just curious about the prices. I thought that once I would like to move to some Central/South American state and buy some land there, to start off a new life. But I'm still thinking about it, that would be a whole new language, culture, infrastructure, life... ahead. And there's so much to think over.

Anyways, thanks for your answer, I shall give it a thought. What country are you located in precisely? And where were you born? Thanks.

__________________
Thnx to Marcel, Ante, Dr. Chiranjit Parmar and Francesco for the plants I've received.



Zeitgeist - Corporatocracy 101 (~2hrs)

Zeitgeist - Moving Forward (~2.5hrs)

mahning

We are doing this next week and I want to get this right: we to want plant the bananas 6 feet apart on center.
For an extensive garden of mixed foodstuff, they will be arranged in rings. Around the banana ring will be papayas. (Rough ring dimensions: 8 bananas for a 14’ ring or 6 bananas for an 11’ring). We will guide the next generation to grow toward the center of the ring.
How much space between rings? Do we feel it all with papaya or we make room for taller trees?
Then, looking inside of the ring: In this time people plant rice, corn, yucca & malanga. This is what we can get easily. Do feel with malanga with a couple yuccas in the center? (You call for café, citrus, cacao and pineapple, yes, but that will take time to get and we need staple food anyway).
An idea: we want to do a little chicken farm and I’m trying to get some seeds of Amaranth. It grows chest high. Should I fill some of the rings with it?
I look forward to any corrections & suggestions. Wednesday is the latest I can send instructions. I’m very thankful and promise to post photos.

lorax

Sounds good for your ring dimensions and plantings; I space the rings about 5-6' apart so that they're not competing. Don't fill the space with Papaya, leave it open for adequate airflow or grow a short crop like Yuca or Amaranth in that space (although not the Malanga, as that competes with the bananas for nutrients and will stunt both crops. It's better to start the Malanga on its own and just grow a great big patch of it.)

In the centers I'd reccomend corn with beans, or yuca and dry rice. I may be able to get you the Quinoa seeds; it's a staple crop here. It will do best in full sun, though.

Don't worry about the cash crops for now - they're easy to transplant in later, and if you've put corn and other grains in the center of your rings you'll have good soil conditions for them later.

mahning

Thanks for the spacing - 6 feet (3 meters) banana to banana and ring to ring.
Yes, I was wondering about the malanga because it propagates in the ground somewhat like the banana. I'll keep them out like you say. Thank you for the Quinoa seeds, but bringing anything through customes seems a real nightmare (post cold war, post banana company world looks like digital age processes dumped on a carbon paper infrastructure)

mahning

oops
Sorry, I keep on hitting the wrong button (I probably didn't want to post my smart remarks about our post post world ;-)
anyway, thank you for reminding about airflow. our yuca get kind of tall (6 -7 feet). yes, I'l try dry rice (but it drive me crazy to see the hand labor involved - is there some lo-tech hand operated machine available somewhere?). I let you know how things go.
thanks a million.

lorax

I don't know of any small machine that works well with the grains, but if you have a couple of tossing screens, the harvest and peeling are really not all that bad.

If you have area where you can grow wet rice, please consider culturing Tilapia with it - that will both provide you with fast and inexpensive protein, and keep the mosquitoes down. If not, they can live in your water-reclamation irrigation system.