Unlocking the Hidden Power: Why Carbon is a Game-Changer for Your Farm

you might be missing the boat on one of the most important things out there and it's called carbon sadly I haven't done a really good job on this channel talking about it but we're going to get into it today and you're going to want to check it out but before we do August 29th through the 31st 30th is my birthday we're having the first ever homesteaders United jamere you're going to want to be there and you're going to want to get your tickets soon because our early bird tickets there's only 50 of those and they're going quick there's only going to be 300 total because we want it to be a very intimate Gathering a lot of fellowship and the time to be able to spend with one another so mark your calendars August 29th through the 31st you always hear us on this channel talking about nitrogen and how incredibly important it is how our nitrogen fixers like let's say that black locust right over here takes that atmospheric nitrogen puts it down simplifying this but you get the point essentially puts it down in the soil to the benefit of our fruit trees that are all around it in this area not so much but you get the point and then in every layer of the forest we always talk about these nitrogen fixers we always talk about the overstory the under story The shrub the Bine the ground cover all of it we always talk about the nitrogen but let me tell you what gets left out of the whole equation is the importance the profound importance of the carbon and right here is a perfect demonstration area of what I'm talking about last winter Michelle and I basically cut down all of that nasty nasty Chinese Silver Grass that was basically a government introduction into the area we cut it down and we laid it on this bank because this bank this is where it was cut out in order to put this High tunnel that I have behind me so all of the dirt that came over here is very very very very compacted along with the area that I'm standing on where the high tunnel is so we were in a bind for two years I think we tried to grow comfy over here to no avail not even comfy this ground was that hard we couldn't even grow comfy over here and we didn't do anything about it so finally we got smart and said okay we know the solutions because that's really what permaculture is it is a toolbx as my son always says so we're thinking okay what tool do we need and here it is right here this is all that silver grass that we got laid down over here and all of a sudden because we have absolutely positively covered up that bear soil now we see grasses comrey we even got Clover and everything else popping up out of here man I mean this was not even something it's not fully filled in but all of the comfy we planted 2 years ago here here here here and if you you look down the straight line it basically goes in lines because the intention was to not necessarily extract this comy the idea was to use the comfy and its incredible root system to keep this Bank in place so erosion wouldn't happen well erosion was happening and basically it followed right down this little trench you see here and then on down to the Mississippi now this carbon layer is absolutely providing a blanket to your ground folks when you have bare ground I promise you bad things are going to happen so don't leave it bare do you like walking around naked okay scratch that some of you people do and in fact yeah that's another thing allog together but look at what's happening up here y'all we had absolutely nothing I'm talking none of this was going on up here y'all and just because we laid down a bed of carbon which will and then we use sticks to basically hold it in place place and then these little posts here to kind of pin everything together we're now to the point now that we've become vegetative where this can absolutely come out these don't need to be in here to hold everything in place everything is now weaved in with what's growing up out of there folks this is the perfect demonstration of what I was hoping I would be able to show you I mean good night look at all that comfy coming up in through there y'all this is absolutely incredible just because we valued Carbon Let's talk about another spot how many Gardens do you see where people go out there they plow up the ground which I don't Advocate I mean if that's your method knock yourself out but think about all the weeding and stuff you have to do well right here in our high tunnel this is one of the areas we got straw that we let and we did a video on this we showed you how we did it we have straw that the chickens went through first got all the seeds out basically did their thing so we don't have to worry about you know those seeds coming up in here but we're doing the same exact thing right with these Tomatoes you see behind me so we have and and it's it's jaw-dropping how much the soil will absolutely change in a very short period of time when you just add carbon you see all of this over here I mean every nasty thing you don't want to have in your property well guess what every single bit of it used to be right here Michelle and I a couple of years ago went ahead and did Jeff lon's um instant garden and this ground was as hard as 3 * 9 y'all I am telling you you could barely get a spade in it once again we put the we put the uh pigs through it gave us access and then we came in and then all we did we didn't even plow we didn't do anything all we did was take the cardboard essentially cardboard and more carbon in the form of uh I think that was straw it may have been hay either one and all we did was make that stuff about a foot high in the first year that we grew into it the Harvest wasn't fantastic the second year excellent now here it is and look at this stuff y'all that is the carbon we're using right over here so you can go from something that will not grow anything but weeds to something that's growing a pretty sizable piece of potatoes out here in you know right within the middle of our Orchard out here so I mean you can't beat it and then here's one of the things I love about all this is that right out in the middle of all this I got to do it without stepping what do you got right here nitrogen fixing tree in the form of a uh Red Bud that is essentially we got the potatoes holding the ground until we're able to turn this into more Orchard so it wouldn't even be possible if we didn't use tons of carbon do I even need to tell you about the carbon that is over here and then the carbon that's over there in our Orchard and we have things absolutely positively blowing up comfrey everywhere every beneficial species you would ever love to have it was just as bad if not worse than the area you just saw when it come to the uh potatoes but around every single tree y'all here's how important it is because that carbon is interacting in a massive way it's keeping your soil cool and it's doing all these wonderful things where that whole soil food web the bacteria the nematodes protozoa fungi all those wonderful things that are down in that soil they all get fed as long as we start with our carbon in fact y'all check this out not planned not anything I'm just going to pull back these wood chips by the way 6 months ago not even 6 months were up to here I mean they were about a foot high let's pull back and see what we got look at that you get about that far and we're we're we're turning into compost that's how important it is so around your trees I mean you hear me talk about this all the time but I seem to only focus on for some reason nitrogen but carbon is every bit as important you can't have the yin without the Yang I mean you got to have it all and that is the beauty of using the carbon of things like for example this nitrogen fixer over here isn't one that I would necessarily chop and drop down here because it's a black locust unless they're real juvenile like this yeah I can chop and drop that but when they're thicker and they're Woody I can't exactly chop and drop it because one of its great virtues is that it doesn't break down but let's say you have some of the other nitrogen fixes we have around here we use it precisely to see to our carbon cycle so we chop those off Lop them up and then put them around our beneficial tree right here so that carbon cannot the importance of it cannot be overstated y'all it is a profound value but in so many cases we tend to forget that it's every bit as important as the nitrogen fixures now let's go to another place and talk about carbon in an area you wouldn't necessarily think of it now you don't necessarily think about carbon when you're looking at a pasture but it is of vital importance out there as well and by the way the Sheep are grazing right alongside this or how cool is that in fact when they get older they might even have access to it ain't that right little sheepy anyway here's what they're doing out here they're eating obviously they've had their belly full over here and this grass before I let them out in this padic a little while ago it was all pretty uniform I mean but look what they've done they've already pooped in here they've trampled they've broken over a bunch of this grass you know what it's doing it's creating a carbon layer and in the winter we intervened early on to come out here in all the bear spots because there were quite a few of them we came out and we put hay and we let them eat the hay on top of the bear spots the idea being is that once again I mean it's it's the same principle all over again the microbes I'm not even a grass farmer y'all I'm a microb farmer I can't remember who said it first but that's essentially what we are if we're trying to be responsible about this so all this stuff that they eat they they trample they poop but they knock this over and that big mat of grass that's over there and all around here now becomes a carbon layer okay we always keep some straw on hand and this stuff is unsprayed no junk on it so you might have to pay a little bit more but in this case believe it or not it's actually cheaper than that store-bought junk here's what I'm getting at so here I am out in the orchard we have areas where we've actually processed some comfy out here and okay you see that that's bare dirt see that so we can either go about it this way I can either cover it up that way and mulch over here got the same dog on thing I can go ahead and do that or if I had another nitrogen fixer like this red bud that was more mature I could basically take the leaves right off of that lay them down in place or you know keep some of this around or you could have a bunch of wood chips a big pile of them where you just go out whenever you go to harvest something okay I don't want to leave that ground bare so this is exactly what I'm going to do folks once again do not underestimate the importance and the value of carbon and frankly I've been a little bit deric because I haven't mentioned it enough I mean when we were living in a place not long ago where we had a composting toilet how do you think we kept the smell to a minimum carbon in that case we used everything from wood chips coconut core you name it and then we could turn that stuff into human ore and do a lot of awesome things with it right as I was filming that last little section I looked over and I saw exactly the perfect example of what I'm getting at you see this Golden Rod right here where do you see it growing the one area where there is no carbon so I'll just get it up out of there and then just like [Music] this covered it up just like that hopefully all this stuff was a blessing to you y'all don't forget the carbet all right if you need anything from us like the comfy that we've talked about and the the incredible benefits that it provides we got it at the website we got the world's best deer repellent I make it right here at this farm called bone sauce we got that at the website but hey mark your calendars remember August 29th through the 31st we're going to have the first ever homesteaders United jamere I'm going to be there milk boy I'm sorry you're not going to be able to make it all of us are going to be there minus him and we hope to see you there as well we'll see you next time

Channel: Perma Pastures Farm

Views: 7,724

Keywords: Perma Pastures Farm, Permaculture PIMPcast

Id: d0LKMcJJmW8

Length: 13min 5sec (785 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 01 2024