The Red Baron Project year three

[Dutch]

Originally Posted by Redbaron

I'm sorry for not posting much-needed updates. My computer crashed. Will try to catch up soon.

Thanks for the update Scott.
Dutch

[aclum]

Hi,

It occurred to me recently (esp. during news reports of bad weather in OK) that we haven't heard from Red Baron for a while. I did a search and didn't find any posts from him since about February. Sort of looking forward to year 4 of his project.

Anyone heard from him recently?

Anne

[MissS]

No, and I miss hearing from him too.

[bower]

I'm always worrying about Scott this time of year - tornadoes on the news and seems to be every spring in Oklahoma.
Scott, if you're out there without a computer, I hope a new one is finding it's way to you and getting there soon.

[JLJ_]

Originally Posted by bower

I'm always worrying about Scott this time of year - tornadoes on the news and seems to be every spring in Oklahoma.
Scott, if you're out there without a computer, I hope a new one is finding it's way to you and getting there soon.

Been a while since this was posted and I haven't seen any sign of him anywhere I visit. I believe his most recent post here or at idig was in February, and most recent activity here shows as March 22.

Most of us have had times when 'real life' keeps us too busy to even hop by T'ville . . . sometimes for months . . . hopefully he's just productively busy but was wondering if anyone had heard if he's OK.

[MissS]

I have been wondering about him too, but it is normal for him to post only in the winter months.

[JLJ_]

Originally Posted by MissS

I have been wondering about him too, but it is normal for him to post only in the winter months.

With all his projects, it could be that he's just in a 'too busy to think about T'ville' mode -- hopefully -- but he hasn't shown a previous tendency to only post in winter months. Perhaps you're thinking of someone else? Anyway, hope he's OK and that his non-appearance is because all his projects are going so well, not because of problems with them.

[imp]

Now that Scott is posting again, he could update on last year and what he hopes for this year- I've been reading along with interest. Does anyone know if he got the grant?

[Redbaron]

Sorry guys no I didn't get any grants and I did have computer problems which have been solved and my father died which also set me back. But somehow the project remains active and still doing better than expected... at small scale. Still no one believes it can work full scale yet but me though. At least no one with any money to lend or grant.

So I will just keep on keeping on until I find my angel.

Click here to support Sustainable Ag Research by Scott Strough Right now I am asking no more than 10 dollars and only if you honestly feel you learned 10 dollars worth of information from the "free" project so far. 10 dollars is pretty cheap for free! haha I figure it could take 10 years but one day I will reach the goal needed to run a scale-able proof of concept. (less is fine but please no more than 10 because I will feel obligated to work out arrangements to reimburse, unless you are a bank and we can really draw up a contract)

[Worth1]

Scott always look forward to you progress lack of progress or anything about your project.

I am re reading Jared Diamond's book Collapse again for I dont know how many times.

This book has so much to do with your ideas in many ways that I highly recommend it to you or anyone else that may find it of interest.
It isn't so much as on how to fix things as it is on whether we decide to fix things or not and the results.

I always hear people say we have been doing so and so for years.
Well we haven't been doing it for years compared to older societies.
Modern industrial grade farming hasn't even been around for 100 years.
Not even close to what some of these other people did and finally failed.

I think your idea is doable on a large scale but not with the mindset of society we have now.

Not with the general public or the huge corporations running most of the farms these days in one way or another.
They are treating our farmland like mines with nonrenewable resources and not like they should be a renewable resource.

In my way of thinking if we run out of oil which is mined our society will change it wont collapse.
If we make the right choices starting now.
If we run out of food which should be coming from a renewable resource but treated like a mine we will collapse.
Oil hasn't been around in heavy demand for even 100 years, at this time regardless of what we want to think it is a luxury.
A luxury in many ways that has allowed our population to explode to a point it cant sustain itself without it.

Right now I compare society our soil, food, water and oil to a bunch of drunken people with a giant keg of beer sucking it down not even thinking about running out till there is nothing left but foam.
Guys we almost out of beer and the store is about to close.
What are we going to do?

Worth

[bower]

Scott, so sorry to hear about your father.
+1 what Worth said, I'm always looking for news from you and updates on your projects whether good, bad or ugly. So I hope you can stick around for a bit this winter and talk more of these things out.
I'm really interested in questions of scale, not just how to scale up agricultural projects but also, what is really the optimal scale, and why.
Also, I don't yet understand what has been questioned as "not scaleable" for the methods you have described and used in your garden (and which you said were not scaleable in your recent post). Will be catching up on these ideas I hope.

[Redbaron]

Originally Posted by bower

Scott, so sorry to hear about your father.
+1 what Worth said, I'm always looking for news from you and updates on your projects whether good, bad or ugly. So I hope you can stick around for a bit this winter and talk more of these things out.
I'm really interested in questions of scale, not just how to scale up agricultural projects but also, what is really the optimal scale, and why.
Also, I don't yet understand what has been questioned as "not scaleable" for the methods you have described and used in your garden (and which you said were not scaleable in your recent post). Will be catching up on these ideas I hope.

I wrote up an answer on Quora that describes exactly what I am doing and the scale issues I am developing. But I can go into more detail here of course. Let me post the Quora answer first then any details you want to discuss feel free.
What are the interesting gardening experiments that you have done? Was it a success?

[MissS]

Scott, here is an article that supports much of yours. Grasslands need to be re-established.

Tyson Foods Linked to Largest Toxic Dead Zone in U.S. History
By Shana Gallagher

https://www.ecowatch.com/tyson-foods...504305201.html

[bower]

Originally Posted by Redbaron

I wrote up an answer on Quora that describes exactly what I am doing and the scale issues I am developing. But I can go into more detail here of course. Let me post the Quora answer first then any details you want to discuss feel free.
What are the interesting gardening experiments that you have done? Was it a success?

I did read this, Scott. These are the same ideas you discussed some time ago about how to scale it up, and makes perfect sense to me.
I thought you had a chance to try out those ideas on the second piece of land, though. Seems you are still hung up on the funding, and I'm sorry to hear it.
Do you think it may be possible to scale up to an acre or even a half, without the big machines? I'm thinking market garden scale where you would at least be able to earn a living from it. The fact that mulch eliminates the weeding work, I would think it could be doable as a one-man operation.

BTW it was really interesting to read about your first experience with the soil there in Oklahoma, and your no-till heavy mulch approach makes even more sense in that context - it couldn't be more different from the soil situation here. But maybe similar enough to farmland right through the prairies. I am surprised that none of the agencies you approached were willing to help with a scaled up trial.

[Redbaron]

Originally Posted by bower

I did read this, Scott. These are the same ideas you discussed some time ago about how to scale it up, and makes perfect sense to me.
I thought you had a chance to try out those ideas on the second piece of land, though. Seems you are still hung up on the funding, and I'm sorry to hear it.
Do you think it may be possible to scale up to an acre or even a half, without the big machines? I'm thinking market garden scale where you would at least be able to earn a living from it. The fact that mulch eliminates the weeding work, I would think it could be doable as a one-man operation.

BTW it was really interesting to read about your first experience with the soil there in Oklahoma, and your no-till heavy mulch approach makes even more sense in that context - it couldn't be more different from the soil situation here. But maybe similar enough to farmland right through the prairies. I am surprised that none of the agencies you approached were willing to help with a scaled up trial.

I had the local land grant college offer to help with a double blind control should I happen to get my proof of concept up and running. Just to have confirmed results. And Oklahoma carbon project offered to assign me this county's "demonstration farm" allocation if again, I got the project started. And Nobel foundation offered me a collaboration/cooperator, which gets me advice from dozens of Phd scientists to help out with the project...again once it gets started..... And the land owner across the road offered a free lease for a couple years if I clear it and then offered to make it available for sale to me too.

Pretty much everything is waiting on me being able to afford to clear the scrub and buy miniature versions of the equipment I need to prove it can be mechanized.

The size of the tractor doesn't matter much to any of them. Even a little garden tractor would suffice. Because any farmer could see the demonstration and easily convert his own tractor to do the same thing, only bigger. But they all told me that with the hand planter etc... is fine for proving the biophysical impacts in the soil, but not sufficient to prove it is scale-able as a commercial business.

Multiple people all told me this, and at least to the guys here in Oklahoma it appears to them to be radical enough they want to see it done first before they will help.

Only two of the experts I contacted really believe in it, the rest are more like "show me". A few are downright hostile to the concept for some reason.