Ok my background. West Virginia Six generation is a county with no stoplights to this day. I am the first generation with electricity and plumbing. I still have relatives that live with out modern conveniences.
In Honduras and Thailand I saw 1/6 acre or so fish ponds about 3 feet deep with chicken houses over top of them. The chickens were fed garden waste and the fish fed off of the Manure and alga. The water from the ponds was use as a manure tea to fertilize crops.
Now I do not know how a plan I had for homesteading in a temperate zone would work in D.R. but I will give you the run down of what I had researched as a teenager and found it still is relevant.
I would have set up a series of ponds. In those ponds I would have used cattails and other water plants that had edible parts. I would harvest the plants and feed them to goats and rabbits. (Rabbits unfit for D.R. due to heat I believe.) I would process all animal waste in a methane digester and produce natural gas. I would have worm beds to process the sludge left from methane digestion and all plant waste. The worms I would use to feed fish in the ponds and chickens set up in pens around my gardens. The chickens in the pens would provide natural pest control as wel as eggs and meat. The worm casting I would use for potting soil in the raised beds of my gardens. The excess and wasted crops would be fed to hogs. The Goats would be used for dairy and meet. Excess milk also goes to the hogs. The methane would be used for generators for electricity. Crops in the gardens would be high priced truck crops.
A few years ago there was a variety of Strawberry that was produced that was day neutral so it could be grown in greenhouses year round. I have read the info about bringing new plants each year into Haiti and growing strawberries there. If the day neutral variety could grow in the D.R. without the need for constant plant replacement from outside sources then strawberries and lettuce grown in heavy shade would be good money crops.
Someplace in a scrapbook I have the figures but off the top of my head I can give you this. A one-acre body of water with out outside food and aeration will produce 1000 pounds of edible fish per year. Fish give you a return of over 70% of meat produced per input of feed. If aeration and outside feeding is given then the carrying capacity is 10,000 pounds per year. For each pound of animal waste a methane digester will produce 3 cubic feet of methane.
Well when I have more time in a month or so when I am back in from sea I can look up more.
John
Edited to add link on strawberries
http://www.tropical-seeds.com/tech_f...awberries.html
What about methane digestion
hippie want to be
