guildfordcycads

Building on my first post, I wanted to ask people who have done this before. Zone 6b in a prairie, high altitude climate. Here’s pictures of plants on the land (avoiding the skyline for safety). I’m wondering if I can just throw everything in the ground Year 1 and see what grows or if I should bother strategizing it. And how do I best go about improving this soil? I’m not doing this for at least a couple years, but I want to be ready.

It’s a new year, and with my basil crop coming in hot, I felt the compulsion to make a bigger, better seed thresher than I had last year. Why this motivates me, I’ll never know…

This year’s model is bigger and better! And by bigger, I mean smaller, and by better, I actually do mean better. If you think it looks suspiciously like a manual coffee grinder, don’t be fooled! …Well okay, it basically is, but with some key modifications to make it less grindy and more threshy. Functionally, it’s simple: I add basil pods in the top, turn the finger crank, and out the bottom come seeds and husks. There’s some mechanical mumbo jumbo happening in between, but that’s not really important.

The big upgrade this year is an adjustment option! I twist the top section to set the spacing between the inner and outer burrs. Too tight and I get aromatic seed powder, too loose and I’m just moving intact pods from top to bottom. But once I found the right middle ground, the seeds separated cleanly and without damage. This also should make it usable for other seed types. In theory… It’s a solid theory…But I’m leaving the experimental confirmation of that to others if they are interested, I already hit my motivational limit.

Next on my project list is a trommel-style cleaner to separate seed from chaff. Last year I tried to combine threshing and cleaning in one tool, but it wasn’t very effective or adjustable. This time I’m making it a dedicated tool. Ideally it will be compact, adjustable for different seeds, and fully 3D printed. After that, I’ll revisit my seed sorter. The one I built last year works, but it’s big, tricky to print, and over complicated to operate.

Hi all, I recently came to know about syntropic farming and am very fascinated by it. My parents have 10 acre land which I am planning to convert into Syntropic food forest.

Before I commit to it, I wanted to check with others on what are the challenges in growing food forest at large scale. And, what would be its labour requirements in terms of maintenance.

I am based out of India and haven’t come across anyone trying Syntropic forests yet in India.