Shinsan said:
Are chicken and goat dung considered "fertilizers" to a permaculturist?
They sure are, Dahc. And when you're done burning those trees, spread and dig the ash in too.
What can you do with the 8 acres? ....... What would you be like to do with them? There's plenty of ways to earn an income from that much space, especially if you want to go into organic gardening, but you have to be interested in doing that.
I have actually been entertaining the idea of growing passion flower (
Passiflora incarnata) there. It's a decent plant for dealing with insomnia when a tea is made from the leaves. They do very well in white field sand and full sun. I already have about 20 of them established and they produce enough seed in one season to seed the entire 8 acres if that's what I chose to do.
The only downfall is that passion flower patches will overgrow themselves and create a haven for rodents and therefore, snakes. We have a large variety of venomous snakes down here and this is a valid concern.
They are vining so they would need trellising and also need to be pruned regularly but what is pruned is part of the product that is sold so it's not just maintenance.
I see a lot of passion flower producers include the stems in their products (for tea)but the stems are an inferior source for the alkaloids that actually help with insomnia. I believe I could produce a superior product (only leaves) and still earn a meager living from it. I have the plants and I have the knowhow, I just don't know much about the governmental standpoint of it and business related issues. I see folks selling this stuff on ebay and you can see the large chunks of stem right through the bag in their photos. lol.
The soil there now doesn't need amending for this plant to thrive but I imagine it will if harvesting the leaves of the plant were to be a steady thing.