Farm landscapes bordering on wilderness ….
A farm interacts more or less intensely with boundary environments. We explore the potential dynamic interrelationships with observation and studies.
Long term studies
Long term field trials comparing organic and conventional farming which the author worked on, showed surprisingly large changes over time.
Understanding intensity of composting
The huge force required to churn a compost pile has a corollary in the material itself - rapid physical breaking-down of the structure that normally would decompose over much longer perdio of time. But is the biological-maturation really advanced by all the churning or is it just the fineness of the apparent texture?
Moving towards gentler, more effective machines
The optimal compost is turning/aeration machine. A joint design of Will Brinton and Vladimir Mironov at Mitchurinsk Agricultural University in Russia (“МАШИНА ДЛЯ ПРИГОТОВЛЕНИЯ КОМПОСТОВ”) .- now being built in Pennsylvania. The first patent for the dynamic aerating machine was awarded in 1992 (#5,309,703) in the USA and 2nd patent 2009 in Russia, where it was first built. The uniqueness of the design was the slow lifting of compost on a belt that was force-aerated to displace accumulated CO2 out of the material, before dropping it back into the pile.