Hi good folks,

I am untarnished - and looking forward to Courgette talk

Hahaha........good for you. Welcome to the Mists.

Thanks Sanicle - I'm also partial to discussing other foodstuffs too so hopefully this forum is not too vegetable specific.

Can be with some people lately lol. But I'm sure you'll find plenty of other subjects that are courgette free.

Alas - The Faithful gather...

Welcome Nazirite...

Aloha and welcome Nazirite. We love talking about food and one can frequently find thread drift where the topic ends up on discussions about gardening and cooking. Needless to say, gardening and eating our own produce is important to us.

Thanks for the warm welcome folks.

I lurk in various places around the web and, in particular the Graham Hancock MB - which led me to an interesting topic about agricultural practices at Tiwanaku (Bolivia).

Exract from Wiki:

The area around Tiwanaku may have been inhabited as early as 1500 BC as a small agriculturally-based village.[5] Most research, though, is based around the Tiwanaku IV and V periods between AD 300 and AD 1000, during which Tiwanaku grew significantly in power. During the time period between 300 BC and AD 300 Tiwanaku is thought to have been a moral and cosmological center to which many people made pilgrimages. The ideas of cosmological prestige are the precursors to Tiwanaku's powerful empire.[1]

Tiwanaku’s location between the lake and dry highlands provided key resources of fish, wild birds, plants, and herding grounds for camelidae, particularly llamas.[6] The Titicaca Basin is the most productive environment in the area with predictable and abundant rainfall, which the Tiwanaku culture learned to harness and use in their farming. As one goes further east, the Altiplano is an area of very dry arid land.[1] The high altitude Titicaca Basin required the development of a distinctive farming technique known as "flooded-raised field" agriculture (suka kollus). They comprised a significant percentage of the agriculture in the region, along with irrigated fields, pasture, terraced fields and qochas (artificial ponds)[1] farming. Artificially raised planting mounds are separated by shallow canals filled with water. The canals supply moisture for growing crops, but they also absorb heat from solar radiation during the day. This heat is gradually emitted during the bitterly cold nights that often produce frost, endemic to the region, providing thermal insulation. Traces of landscape management were also found in the Llanos de Moxos region (Amazonian food plains of the Moxos).[7] Over time, the canals also were used to farm edible fish, and the resulting canal sludge was dredged for fertilizer. The fields grew to cover nearly the entire surface of the lake[citation needed] and although they were not uniform in size or shape, all had the same primary function.[7]

Though labor-intensive suka kollus produce impressive yields. While traditional agriculture in the region typically yields 2.4 metric tons of potatoes per hectare, and modern agriculture (with artificial fertilizers and pesticides) yields about 14.5 metric tons per hectare, suka kollu agriculture yields an average of 21 tons per hectare.[1]


Sounds like something I would like to know more about

Nazirite wrote:Thanks for the warm welcome folks.

I lurk in various places around the web and, in particular the Graham Hancock MB - which led me to an interesting topic about agricultural practices at Tiwanaku (Bolivia).

Exract from Wiki:

The area around Tiwanaku may have been inhabited as early as 1500 BC as a small agriculturally-based village.[5] Most research, though, is based around the Tiwanaku IV and V periods between AD 300 and AD 1000, during which Tiwanaku grew significantly in power. During the time period between 300 BC and AD 300 Tiwanaku is thought to have been a moral and cosmological center to which many people made pilgrimages. The ideas of cosmological prestige are the precursors to Tiwanaku's powerful empire.[1]

Tiwanaku’s location between the lake and dry highlands provided key resources of fish, wild birds, plants, and herding grounds for camelidae, particularly llamas.[6] The Titicaca Basin is the most productive environment in the area with predictable and abundant rainfall, which the Tiwanaku culture learned to harness and use in their farming. As one goes further east, the Altiplano is an area of very dry arid land.[1] The high altitude Titicaca Basin required the development of a distinctive farming technique known as "flooded-raised field" agriculture (suka kollus). They comprised a significant percentage of the agriculture in the region, along with irrigated fields, pasture, terraced fields and qochas (artificial ponds)[1] farming. Artificially raised planting mounds are separated by shallow canals filled with water. The canals supply moisture for growing crops, but they also absorb heat from solar radiation during the day. This heat is gradually emitted during the bitterly cold nights that often produce frost, endemic to the region, providing thermal insulation. Traces of landscape management were also found in the Llanos de Moxos region (Amazonian food plains of the Moxos).[7] Over time, the canals also were used to farm edible fish, and the resulting canal sludge was dredged for fertilizer. The fields grew to cover nearly the entire surface of the lake[citation needed] and although they were not uniform in size or shape, all had the same primary function.[7]

Though labor-intensive suka kollus produce impressive yields. While traditional agriculture in the region typically yields 2.4 metric tons of potatoes per hectare, and modern agriculture (with artificial fertilizers and pesticides) yields about 14.5 metric tons per hectare, suka kollu agriculture yields an average of 21 tons per hectare.[1]


Sounds like something I would like to know more about

Hi Nazirite, welcome.

I sure hope you'll share here whatever interesting stuff you bump into on your lurking trips on the www

Thanks Transoco - I used to be a regular poster on some forums but there seems to be so much trolling around that it gets very negative. I have been visiting/lurking here and at Nexus for a while and thought it time to sign up now the Avalon thing has gone quiet.....
This place has harmony and Nexus seems pretty level headed too so I signed up with both forums today (Nazirite at both)

I hope my input can be positive.

Welcome in the Mists Nazirite .
And thank you for that first interesting post.

In the following article the author says :

Tiwanaku, besides being an large city, contained several large temples which were surrounded by a moat, creating a miniature lake with the temple complex as as island. The central temple, called the Akapana, was constructed in a series of seven tiers, to resemble the nearby peaks. Tiwanaku engineers plumbed the Akapana with drains so that when the annual rains arrived, water would thunder through it. "It was a way of renewing the earth and maintaining the circulatory system of the universe," says Alan Kolata, a University of Chicago archaeologist, who thinks the Tiwanaka probably celebrated fertility ceremonies and other rites while water roared through their mountain-temple

http://www.waterhistory.org/histories/tiwanaku/

What a breath taking moment this must have been ... being in that temple as the annual waters would begin to roll down through it .

Have a lovely journey with us.

Love from me
mudra

Thanks for the link, much appreciated Mudra.

Peru and the Andes/Pacific coast has had an increasing pull for my attention for the last few months - the more I learn the more the attraction. Unfortunately I don't think I will ever get there.

Nazirite wrote:Thanks for the link, much appreciated Mudra.

Peru and the Andes/Pacific coast has had an increasing pull for my attention for the last few months - the more I learn the more the attraction. Unfortunately I don't think I will ever get there.

Our friend Vidya Moksha went to a trip to Peru lately on a shamanic journey.
He would give us some news every now and then and post them on his thread :

http://www.themistsofavalon.net/t1102-vidya-s-journey

Love from me
mudra

You have a knack for choosing the right info Mudra

Your first link reminded me of one of my favourite poems:

This Stanza from Kubla Khan (Samuel Taylor Coleridge), in particular:

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:

Thanks for the new link - I am spiritually bereft so maybe that thread will kick start my stony soul

Some would say You're a fresh slate - Free of Dogma - Ready to learn the Truth by not having to wade through Your own Baggage first...

Some would say You're lucky for It...

Indeed I am a clean slate Mercuriel - however, I had to discard a lot of my own baggage and stop wading though that of others to reach this state of virgin slate.

On the positive side. I'm spiritually free of dogmas and religions but this leaves me still with degree of cynicism that will need regular beating with a stick if it is ever to transcend and becomes healthy skepticism - which, I believe, we should all nurture.