Self-sustaining fertility

nitrogen and potash are not problem as i have plenty of poo and wood ashes. i do need to suppliment phosphorous.

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this message has probably been edited to correct typos, spelling errors and to improve grammar...

"All that is gold does not glitter..."

Marvella -

How many rabbits do you have? Do they really make that much poo?

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If you can dream it, you can do it. Time isn't an excuse; it's just part of the challenge. Pursue your dream whenever you can, however you can. The first step is belief.

Our place has been a closed loop for over 15 years, except for what feed we purchase off farm.

Now, according to the post above-if you have to "buy" anything, ie, feed, wood, etc, it dosent qualify as "being from your farm."
not sure where he lives, but here in the ozarks, if you dont buy anything to feed your cattle/horses/hogs/chickens, someones going to come calling. it would take few animals--or a big farm to be completely self-sustaining, under these standards.

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In Life, We Weep at the thought of Death'
Who Knows, Perhaps in Death,
We Weep at the though of Life.

Not buying ANYTHING is pretty unrealistic. Even when we grew all the feed for our goats, we still bought kelp and molasses to add to the feed and an occasional bag of rabbit pellets and laying mash. Do I get debited for all the deer poop in my woods that the deer leave there after eating in the neighbor's corn field? :baby04:

100% here, and enough to give away on Craigslist. All organic. 24 acres, half in pasture, 7 acres of woodlot - ash, vine maple, birch, lots and lots and lots of leaves, 2 acre truck garden, barns, paddocks. Horses, dairy goats with associated bedding (organic feeds only), chickens penned 12 hours a day, free range in the garden areas. Rabbits in open dirt floored barn, earthworm beds, rolling compost bins, sheep. Manure management takes up bit of time, most people neglect to "collect". It's a toss up, keeping animals penned up on bedding/ in paddocks, but loose fewer to predators.

A dozen large breed rabbits, kept in hanging wire cages over dirt, will yield about 4 toyota truck beds of pure manure a year. I know this because it's my son's job (and his truck) to shovel it out every three months.

If you have animal products leaving your farm, then it balances out the input of feed. Eggs, milk, meat go OUT of this loop in larger quantities than feed in brought in.

Are you referring it me, or Matt, or somebody else? I'm in NY, he's in NC.

Uhmm, I was trying to say that if you bring OM onto the farm, it came from off the farm. How does that not make sense?

It's not an 'all or nothing' kind of thing. If some came from off the farm, that portion came from off the farm. I just think that running purchased hay through a goat and saying "I produced that manure here" is a little like saying "Milk comes from the store". You're ignoring how it got there.

The original question was "What percentage of your fertilizers are produced on the farm?"

Not really. You could just be poor/inefficient. After all, that IS how it was done, not all that many years ago.

There is some pretty cool research on full sustainability based on families living in India, where people did it because they had to in order to survive. I can't quite remember where i saw it but you could probably google it. I have also heard accounts of 10 people living off of 1 acre in China, once again I can't cite references, but sure sounds interesting.