We are proposing the creation of Global Villages that contain: (1), permanent agriculture, (2) 100% renewable and local energy production, (3), biofuel production, and (4), permafacture.
For the permanent agriculture side a good example for our land would be a plot with hazelnuts and chestnuts as the staples, plus walnuts – all intercropped with wheat, plus free-range chickens in an orchard, small fruit, goats, garden, and greenhouse. Combined with a food processing facility, this could provide a 100% local diet, and if combined with sustainable forestry and fuel crop, could provide 100% fuel (especially with 250 mpg cars as in yesterday’s blog entry) – not to mention building material such as lumber and bricks from the Compressed Earth Block press. Imagine if any new residential development contained an agricultural manager – plus community supported manufacturing manager, and a large portion of needs could be met for the local community. This is a feasible alternative to global supply chains that we are exploring. See our presentation from an earlier blog entry for more about this concept.
On the permaculture side, here is how to graft walnuts. We have a number of established wild black walnuts at Factor e, and we’re grafting Carpathian walnuts and other named black walnut varieties on them. Here is a 6 minute video on grafting from the Missouri Nut Growers Association meeting yesterday. Missouri is the world’s largest black walnut producer. Thevideo shows how to graft a small branch from a desired walnut variety onto a much larger tree. Using this method, one could start getting nut production in as little as 2 years, whereas it would take 7 or more years if one started from seed.
