got land and i wanna start a communal farm

And all the much more interested in doing this now that I'm getting the feeling you keep your head out of where the Sun dont shine. It's a common condition it seems thats been a major factor in my drifting about the Country these past few years.

:cheers2:

Any topographic maps of the property? Predominant slope and facing of the land?

 

And whats the main difficulty of importation with seeds, the actual logistics or Customs?

 

to ship in plant material a permit is required from customs and from the Ag. Dept. and they don't let just anything in, so you may go through the whole process and the be turned down. it is more of a time thing i guess.
then there is the added bonus that most of the suppliers in the U.S. have a minimum that they will ship international. Me being poor as I am makes it a little difficult. Makes me fell like money is the most evil invention in all of history.
I have had a few things "smuggled in" but it is hard to get what i want that way. If anybody is coming down this way fill your pockets with seeds first.

 

here is a couple of more pics from the farm.
one is just the road going to it.
The other is in a rock outcrop on the land that has several odd holes in it and even though it has not rained in a while this one hole has water in it. the old Mayan guy that has been around forever says if we drill a well there he is almost certain we will hit a cenote. that would be really good to tap, then we could pump from clean running water from an underground river.

 

Now if only we can find a good, steady supplier of recycled double pane glass sliding doors we could build one heck of a serious tropicals nursery in that climate.

I can imagine the Hot peppers 24-7-365, growing them like trees instead of annuals.
And if theres a river with a good flow and you pop open the right sinkhole, we may even have some water pressure no? I wonder if they could be spotted more easily by taking something like a long aluminum pole and spearing at the ground, using the resulting frequency and so forth of the impact measured by a piezoelectric sensor and analyzed on an o-scope, maybe a bit more "resonant" near surface pockets? Kind of like checking for a ripe mellon. Maybe the sensor and o-scope could be traded with a tuning fork?

And as far as limestone, if we can work out an air hammer or a hammer drill it will greatly speed the process,,, worst case it can be done with hand tools as shown below.





I've done a bit of digging, slabbing and shaping in my time on this earth.

And I'll bet that soil has about a 30% clay yeild if you were to slake and seperate it.
I may have to figure out a way to make this trip in less than a year as it's sounding.

February maybe?

What ya' think OldWolf?

We'll need to find a Translator, but maybe theres a few cute ones looking for a ride from Tijuana?
I'm betting Craigslist would know.

 

And while the soil may not be poor technically, it is hard to beat terra preta with a good dose of beneficial microbes and fungi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomus_(fungus)

My one concern is that the trees that are present are as you said rather spindly, the small diameter wood is great for making char in that size when chopped into 4" long stumps so we'll probably get alot cleared quickly but as sparse as the woods are we wont likely get a huge char yeild.. But looking into some sort of local variety of bamboo or some similar high volume plant we could quickly cover the cleared area with more biomass to play with (Some even to eat as a plus and I bet rice would dry quickly. Is anyone else growing rice down there? And isnt rice flour a pretty in demand commodity?
Take some of that limestone and construct an Arroyo to mill our grains and bam, we're the next Bob's Red Mill artisan flour company.

Yea, I get an idea or two now and then.

I think JL Hudson even has a variety of rice thats meant to grow on arid plains and do quite well, so theres more biomass for char from stalks and hulls.

That small diameter, I'd also be tempted to straighten and grind an edge onto a big truck leaf spring, save your saws and axes for felling and splitting, much more fun to go Conan on it. (hey, have an 18 lb splitting maul on hand? Maybe a broad axe?)

 

all that hand digging sound fun, and I always told people "I am not a good landscaper, I am a great hole digger" .that being said, I am wimping out and having a well drilling rig come in and do the first one. I have a car on its last leg that I found a mechanic to buy it. Seems i can get just enough for the well so we are shooting for the first week of the year. It will be almost $800 U.S. but it will only take a day. Right now it is just me and I gotta get water going soon. making water runs to town will get old quick.

 

the soil thing sound alot like some of the stuff we used in the nursery. I am thinking this might be something done in raised beds bordered with retaining stones. maybe like six feet wide 100 feet long with mist irrigation running down the middle.

 

That was essentially the plan for the garden I had been planning in Tecopa CA (Right by Death Valley, a fair bit hotter than where you're at I think.) but I was thinking of the Anasaze styled Waffle garden where they built adobe lined pit's to fill with growing medium, it helped them conserve a great deal of water. Most were 3x3 pits all side by side to make a waffle pattern.

And not saying we would want to dig all over, I LOVE raised beds, lets grab that shovel and kick up a mound around the perimeter then fill and DONE!.
But by digging some waffle-plots it would diversify our crops by giving us another microclimate to work with.

Notice any Ephedra growing out there? Wild Dagga maybe?
We may end up with a banner ad in here at this rate, heck, a few of em'.

 

Come to think of it though, I do love working limestone.

Spiral towers for the mellons to trellace down off of, a fountain or two once we get steady water and pick a good power source beyond running to the gas station to fill the cans every few days.

How do you feel about aquaponics and do you even think a man made pond would be feasible in the region given annual rainfall and average humidity?
(By feasible I mean, yes of course it could be done, but could we keep it filled without too great a drain on our energy resources?)

 

While I'm at it, you might find this title full of some interesting ideas for things down there, if not in the sense of specific projects but more to draw technical reference and inspiration from. written pretty well and relatively understandable by many unlike alot of more modern textbooks.

http://books.google.com/books?id=ESENAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=wagners+chemical+technology&hl=en&sa=X&ei=76D3Tr2POsLsgge0itnVBQ&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=wagners%20chemical%20technology&f=false

 

I have all sorts of things preventing me from being ACTUALLY interested.... But that's cool.

But I feel the need to say, it hurts to see you write that you're "working on" the fact that the property is wooded, keep in mind that you don't need to clear huge amounts, and that you can select the areas to be cleared carefully, stands of trees in the middle don't hurt, leaving nice trees there, etc....

Also, you might consider some lower impact building. Earthburm or otherwise partially underground housing provides good insulation given the climate, and you can have a garden on your roof....

Just saying. You're going there with a hippy view, remember to keep it that way, and not let it look like the suburbs.

Best of luck to you, I'd sort of like to keep an eye on this..... maybe in a few years, if the border situation can be resolved and the US can stop being paranoid about who goes in and out, I'd like to go there with my daughter and her mother for the summers or something, right now there's problems preventing that but if things work well for you and all, I'm working on resolving my own situation. I think I'm reasonably handy, from being able to do some building work to gardening to whatever, and would like to show my kid that sort of place and living.

 

I dont think anyone was thinking of clearing the whole 250 acres or turning it into a suburb per-se, especially as the initial idea for structures is based around using locally available materials, but 250 acres is a nice sized plot to work with.

And have another look at some of those photos, the trees that ARE there, the ones which deposited themselves after the last farm folded up,,, are they really the types of trees which will be most beneficial to the community and the local environment? Perhaps they may be an invasive species and slowly rolling through the area replacing whats there now with native species is a good route to go? (if that happens to be the case at least)

I do like living at a garden-apartment level and the notion of a dug out foundation with a Cob topper does not make me flinch in the least,,, provided I can find some high ground to build it on and handle proper drainage so I dont wake up in a swimming pool during monsoon season. (Part of why I'd love some topographical maps of the property now.)

Or A cob structure in which red or blue glass bottles have been embedded into the walls, allwing light to filter throught them and increase the specific wavelength more suited to growth or flowering as needed, depending on what all we might end up doing crop-wise

 

Great info! Thanks! I'm saving this for future reference!

 

Fritz is right. I in no way plan on clear cutting the whole place.
I only want the farm areas cleared, and for living areas they should be set in nature as much as possible. I have a vision of 50% of less cleared.
I also have been collecting seed for various desirable trees i would like to grow out there to replace some of the less than useful trees with.

I got some pics of our first camp site below. in the coming weeks we will have a dozen more cleared.:sunny:

 

:iagree:
"Ditto"
Good luck and may fortune smile

 

Wish I were there with a good sized bowsaw and a 20 lb splitting maul.

Workin' on it. :cheers2:

Happy New Year down that way you all!

 

I'm not being literal about the suburbs. But you don't need to clear out where you're living, or the area you're farming either. You can leave a lot of trees and not impede light for crops, again, I'd encourage leaving nice or large ones.

And if those are invasive, they've won, invaded, and are now "naturalized species", instead of "invasive".

Also, I don't know of anything doing that in mexico..... "it could be invasive" without having any reason to think it is seems to be just about the MOST flimsy reason to clear land. Even if it was, once it's invaded, it's a lot better than erosion and no trees, that's like the rationale used to clear ash juniper in the texas hillcountry, where they call it invasive, because ten thousand years ago it only grew on hillsides.... well guess'ut, it ain't ten thousand years ago anymore, and now it grows other places, it can be controlled by a little selective cutting or you can make a horrible eroding mess of the land with no shade in sight..... your choice.

Not attacking ya', just saying..... There is NOTHING about a farm that calls for large expanses of cleared land, every nice organic or small farm I've ever been on was more in the form of gardens (not implying small) fringed and interspersed with stands of trees, unless we're talking about a pasture for lifestock, where you obviously need copious forage grass.

My comment about suburbia was obviously not about the whole damn lot, just about the living area. If you have to live there, I'd think you'd want plenty of trees and shit, it makes wind easier to handle, hot easier to handle, cold easier to handle....... it makes everything better and can be useful.

I'm just ranting defensively anyway, OP answered.... But still, I don't think anything I said was out of line, in the least.

*edit* OP, I don't know the trees there, but they all look a little light starved and young, most of what's going to determine how "desirable" a tree is for anything but fuel or structural value is age and light/water. If you thin the woods, they'll get a lot bigger and healthier with less light/water competition. Looks like a beautiful place though, best of luck.

 

And thats exactly the reason I would want to look into rolling through the property and perhaps finding something indigenous to the area, more adaptable for the climate that would grow thicker, denser, like the Acacias I suggested or some other species that would provide us with a more versatile resource like maybe fruit trees, some provide good timber, some good firewood, and they all provide food. Date Palms provide a good heat when burnt thanks to all the additional resins and oils present (But thats jus the blacksmith tinker thinking about that )

And I'm by no means a big advocate of keeping species isolated by reasoon of historical references, I mean hell, birds can and do eat, shit and fly right? I just mean if an invasive species takes over an area I only think it's bad if there were alternative plants that could have done the same while being more useful.

 

Forest garden!