The Land

Today I wanted to take another look at the land that I hope to transform into a productive food forest. My friend Jorge who is working with me on this project sent me a message on my cell phone to let me know he was waiting for me to come over, so we could head over the the land.

When I arrived, his father had just finished packing up his setup where he sells fruits and vegetables every morning. I noticed he had a wooden crate with a mix of plastic bags, news paper, cabag and beet leaves and he was depositing a few mango’s that had gone bad. With my very poor and limited Spanish I asked if I could have his organic trash. He happily started digging out all the organic matter placing it in bags. I also noticed Jorge had a crate with similar contents, so I asked him if he would use 2 crates and put all organic matter and paper in one as I would love to take it every day. Jorge was taught about the values of compost by his father when he was young, He now has a degree in psychology, works at one of the local schools and runs a restaurant. He laughed as i dug threw his garbage and separated all the organic matter and loaded it in my vehicle. He said to me “Maybe everyone thinks permaculturists are crazy”.

“Turning waste into resource, is one of the key principles of permaculture. I've been an organic gardener all my life. My fathers gardens introduced me to the concept and later I continued with my own gardens. I think the waste in this town is an untapped resource. I hope I am able to convince at least a few Fruitarias and Restaurantes to start separating their organic wast and allow me to take it for this project.”

After I collected their organic wast, we headed over to the land. The Rainy season ended back in September threw November, Things are starting to dry out. The ground cover will be brown within the next month. The following are a few photos to help illustrate what I am working with. 

This is the right side of site 1 of 2. It is between 2 other plots that are currently bing worked.

The site has not been used for a while. Its nicely covered with brush and has a few Jabim trees.

Left side of site 1. Notice the relatively bare rocky ground in the field we are shooting from.

Me walking up the rocky hill in the neighboring corn field. The corn is sparsely planted.

Corn growing out of the rocks!
The corn has not been harvested yet. We pulled one cob out and placed between the bent stalk. I later put the cob back in the husk, as I'm sure the farmer worked hard enough to grow this.

Oranges as mulch. I will have to ask the farmer about this.

Site 2 left and right side.

I have been given the option of working one of these 2 sites. I have not decided yet, but I am considering site 1 because it seems to have more vegetation and possibly more rocks.

Now I need to get to work. In the coming days I will settle on one site and start marking out contours. I hope to hire someone with a backhoe equipped with a jackhammer, to chissel out the rough swales, I am sure there will be many hours of hand work to finish them off. 

I hope to start planting just as the rainy season begins in May. I need to find seed for all the plants I am interested in. So far one man whent out of his way to find Moringa seeds for me, he gave us a call a few days ago and told us he had some Moringa seeds.  I was expecting maybe a few hand fulls of seed, to my suprise he had 5 large garbage bags between 1/2 to 3/4 full of moringa seed pods! Other plants of interest are Leucaena, Date Palm, Sugar Palm, Saramuyo/anonas, Ramone "Maya nut", Guanacaste "Piich", Tamarind, Figs, Pitahaya, Passion fruit, chia and many more.

leucaena is native to this region although I hope to get a few improved non hybrid varieties that grow faster and produce more wood or more leaf.

The Concept

Hello Everyone,

I've been living in the Yucatan now for almost 8 months.  I consider myself a novice permaculture enthusiast.

During my stay here, I've learned a little about the agricultural practices here known as Milpa. Some of the land is privately owned, but a good deal of the land is Ejido "Its basically Communal land" I'll let wikipedia explain further details. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ejido

The common practice on each Milpa is slash and burn.  they cut down all the trees and plant matter at the end of the rainy season, than burn all the organic matter near the end of the dry season. They do this for a couple years and than move onto a new piece of land,  leaving the previous land to fallow for 6 years or so before returing to continue the cycle.

The land here is primarily comprised of porous calcium lime stone, which seems to be mixed with varying amounts of red or black soil, sand and gravel.

I was amazed when i first arrived here to see hills of what seemed to be solid rock, planted with a crop of corn.

During the dry season I see extensive use of irrigation. they grow vegetables, fruit trees, coconuts and variouse grasses.

I've began thinking about ways they could posibly improve their land use, reduce costs and increase yields. Permaculture has been demonstrated around the world, to reduce water and fertilizer imputs while further ruducing labour and increasing yields. So maybe these idea's could be put in practice here aswell.

A great example of the power of permiculture was Geoff Lawtons Greening the Desert video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzTHjlueqFI

If results like this can be achieved in such an unlikely environment, than why not here aswell.  The lack of soil may be the biggest problem with this area though. Water harvesting swales seem to be exclusively built on land with either soil, sand, silt or clay.  So the question that needs to be answered is "Can this technique work in this porous rocky landscape?".

http://permaculture.org.au/2010/11/25/gabions-water-soaks-in-the-desert/
Gabions are an inspiration that makes me think this technique might work.  Establishing swales on this type of land in the Yucatan may well work similarly to these Gabions.  So combining the techniques of keyline, swales, gabions, pre filled with organic matter to hold moisture longer. Maybe we can eliminate or at least greatly reduce the need for irrigation.