The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Permaculture implications of traditional Central American farming

Farmers in Central AmericaGood Farmers: Traditional Agricultural Resource Management in Mexico and Central America by Gene C. Wilken explores the methods Central American farmers have used for centuries to maintain the health of their farms without fossil-fuel-driven machinery or chemical fertilizers.  Farms were small, and the materials used came from the farm itself or from nearby. 

Although farmers in Central America are now giving in to modern farming techniques, those of us intrigued by the permaculture concept of creating a healthy food web within our garden have a lot to learn from traditional American farmers.  I'm going to skip over the traditional techniques everyone's heard of --- like interplanting legumes with hungrier crops to keep the soil rich in nitrogen or applying manure to the soil.  Instead, this week's lunchtime series explores four intriguing management techniques we are considering working into our own farm ecosystem.


This post is part of our Central American Permaculture lunchtime series.  Read all of the entries:





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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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