Category Archives: Lessons

Planning spaces: working animals into a sustainable permaculture plan

Posted on March 21, 2012 by dlhitzeman

I’ve learned a lot about utilizing the ground for food production over the past few years, and one of the things I have learned is that there is no space, whether it is a garden, a tilled field, or a pasture, that should ever be left for a single use. Nature multitasks everything, and the [...] Continue reading →

Posted in animals, food, Gardneing, Lessons, permaculture, sustainability, Tools | Leave a comment

Web roundup

Posted on February 28, 2012 by dlhitzeman

Want to know what I’m reading about agriculture, food, and sustainability? Well this periodic post is the place to find out: Kajabi on the old wise farmer Treehugger on exploding pig barns The New York times on the rise of the artisanal food producer Scientific American on the impracticality of the cheeseburger Foreign Policy Magazine on [...] Continue reading →

Posted in animals, artisans, barns, Challenges, Choices, commodities, courts, crying, explosions, food, forests, gardens, Gardneing, Goals, impractical cheeseburgers, inflation, Law, Lessons, Local, Monsanto, Morality, philosophy, pigs, poisoning, Prices, producers, Readiness, Resources, Revolutions, secrets, Self-sufficiency, superbugs, Web Roundup | Leave a comment

MENF 2011: Show me the money

Posted on October 3, 2011 by dlhitzeman

Sometimes its easy to get lost in encouraging people to grow their own food and forget that this stuff still costs money. As idealistic as we may all want to be, at some point we have to pay the bills. It turns out paying the bills may not be as hard as you might think. [...] Continue reading →

Posted in animals, Challenges, food, Gardneing, Lessons, Local, money, Mother Earth News Fair, options, paying the bills, philosophy, Self-sufficiency | Leave a comment

MENF 2011: Small steps are better than no steps at all

Posted on September 30, 2011 by dlhitzeman

The task of becoming sustainable, local-reliant, and ready can be a daunting one. If you’re just beginning, it can seem impossible. Yet, it turns out that far too many people want to do it all instead of doing what they can do when they can do it. It turns out that small steps are better [...] Continue reading →

Posted in Choices, Goals, Lessons, Mother Earth News Fair, philosophy, small steps | Leave a comment

MENF 2011: It takes a village

Posted on September 29, 2011 by dlhitzeman

While it is possible to do, there are very few people who manage to establish complete self-sufficiency, and it is my belief that such an effort is counter-productive and, in many ways, wrong. Perhaps a better term for the effort I advocate is “local-sufficiency” because I believe that it really does take a village to make [...] Continue reading →

Posted in Challenges, Choices, Goals, it takes a village, Lessons, long-term readiness, Mother Earth News Fair, philosophy, Readiness, resource sovereignty, Self-sufficiency, sustainability, village | Leave a comment

MENF 2011: More on not having to go it alone

Posted on September 28, 2011 by dlhitzeman

I think it is a human trait to view new undertakings, especially ones that are large or difficult, as occurring in some kind of isolation. Yet the truth is that very few people are really going it alone at anything we try to do. The growing desire so many people have to establish sustainable, ready [...] Continue reading →

Posted in advice, commiseration, going it alone, help, Lessons, Mother Earth News Fair, philosophy, Resources | Leave a comment

Figure it out

Posted on June 3, 2011 by dlhitzeman

Let’s get something out of the way: growing food to feed yourself is not rocket science. Now, I understand that in the last half of the 20th century, a lot of rocket science found its way into growing food, and I think that fact is responsible for so many of the problems we face in [...] Continue reading →

Posted in Challenges, Choices, figuring it out, food, food independence, gardening, Gardneing, Goals, Lessons, philosophy, Revolutions, you can do it | Comments Off

Sometimes, the best way to learn is to do it all wrong

Posted on April 25, 2011 by dlhitzeman

So, we had a bull calf born out of cycle last spring, and for some reason for the past year, I’ve assumed I was going to band him for a steer. Now, we don’t really need a steer that will be ready sometime in the fall, but that’s what I had in my head, so [...] Continue reading →

Posted in animals, banding, bulls, Lessons | Comments Off