Ecological Synergy is an agricultural system to do more with less. Actually you do a lot more with more, since monocropping is not compatible with Ecological Synergy. It requires some 60 to 200 varied lifeforms to cross the synergy barrier, where productivity per unit of time increases drastically, while work effort plummets dramatically. You substitute intelligent management for time consuming labor, and you substitute knowledge for expensive technologies.

The system is designed to be low-stress, low work, "organic" or "natural" with no purchased fertilizer, no pesticides except those grown on the farmstead, no herbicides, and nil-till using no rototillers or tractors. The system uses space very intensively, so less land is needed, therefore lower mortgage debt, plus lower equipment debt. It is possible to make a comfortable living in beautiful surroundings.

The basis of the system is nitrogen-fixing microbes, bacteria which breathe the nitrogen out of the air and incorporate it into their bodies, where it is released as water-soluble form into the soil minutes, hours, or many days later. This replaces the store-bought chemical nitrogen fertilizer. Understanding the role of the microherd is fundamental to success of the system. Chemical fertilizer will kill the microbes forcing you to rely on chemicals thereafter. The microherd also plays an important role, along with plant roots, in extracting minerals from weathered rock particles of the soil. The system depends on the willing free services of the microherd. From the free air and dirt comes a high-quality growing soil if produced the Ecological Synergy way.

Making conditions ideal for all the successive lifeforms requires learning something about each of the players. It is not hard, and most everyone can learn, but it does take time and effort.

Understand that chemical pollutants and deliberate release of toxins (like pesticides and herbicides) have contaminated many soils, water supplies and even the air. Decades ago lead paints, or lead batteries might have been buried where you want to grow things, and this lead is still there ready to be taken up by plants and passed to animals and people. Hazards like these can be tested for, but so many thousands of chemicles have been released that it is impossible to test for them all, and the expense of testing for many of them is astronomical.

The Ecological Synergy solution is to make your own growing soil as much as possible, using the least contaminated sources of materials you can find. Dilute native soils with ingredients which are most likely uncontaminated, and catch rain-water for best reliably pure water. This is your best defense against toxic hazards, and it just so happens that it is best for productivity too.

Alfalfa has deep-reaching roots, going down fourty feet and more, bringing up matter from many depths and thereby not just from one pool layer of past waste disposals. Deciduous trees, like maple are ideal for composting the leaves in the fall, which were made from deep sources. Composting cardboard and paper is another source, since the wood they were made from not only comes from different depths, but also it may have grown long before the chemical era became widespread.

Taking these types of ingredients, diluting local soils with them in standard compost heap layers, and mixing high quality organic manures gives the basis for making a reliable and fairly pure growing medium or potting soil. This is standard "organic" farming lore. Ecological Synergy carries the practice much farther, processing the compost materials in a variety of steps to improve the tilth and the favorable habitability factors for the nitrogen-fixing bacteria.

An optional first step in processing these materials is to grow mushrooms as a crop. This modifies the composting materials through the breakdown activity of the mycellium fibers. Although this step might be omitted, it should be practiced because pasturization required for the mushroom spores to succeed also modifies the materials, and kills every viable weed seed. This is so valuable a contribution that it is worth the extra three months and small expenses involved in raising a modestly profitable crop. The real profit is weed-free, no herbicides, and the mushrooms are frosting on the cake.

Next the worms are added. These are bait worms, known as "hybrid worms", or unglamorously as manure worms. They take to bed- run conditions readily and if given the proper bedding, the proper foods and the proper water will do nothing much besides eat and multiply. It is typical for a population to triple in number in three months. These are not field earthworms, nor should they be night crawlers. I am partial to red wigglers.

The worms will be concentrated at a rate of 8,000 per cubic foot of soil medium and be harvested at 90 days when their numbers are about 25,000 per cubic feet. In the 32 square feet by 1 foot depth raised walled-bed that is a quarter million worms per bed to start. It will be three-quarters of a million in three months. It takes a while to get your worm population high enough to make lots of soil for you, but as you will see further along it is worth the couple of years investment to get booming. With drip irrigation for the mushroom crop, your bed is ready to care for the worms with no additional work.

There is some market for bait worms, and there is another market for wholesale worms, but your Ecological Synergy farmstead is the best closest market you have. You will be feeding worms to chickens, ducks, quail, and fish, and if you ever decide to sell your worm castings don't take less than the going price ($9.27 per plastic sack of one cubic foot retail in 1997). You can sell some of it when your operation is going strong, but in the beginning you want all you can get of the worm castings potting soil you (and your ecological partners) make.

So far, little expense has been involved. If you can grow your own alfalfa, great, otherwise buy some bales of it. You don't have to feed them directly to the worms. Feed it first to the rabbits, and then feed the second-hand alfalfa (manure) to the worms. The worms will chew up everything you give them which is ingestible to them. In passing, their stomach bacteria will digest it a bit for themselves and the worm hosts, and the worms will cast it out and reingest it again and again in their burrowings.

The worms add structure to the soil, pushing holes like swiss cheese throughout it, pasting the walls with their secretions. This increases aeration and surface area so much higher densities of the nitrogen-fixing bacteria can multiple. The living bodies of the bacteria hold nutrients which are released and recycled in the soil. They are like time-release fertilizer, giving off steady rates over time.

Plants love the pre-dug tunnels of the worm holes and readily push their roots down into these prepared fertilizer chambers. Plants do their share in the micro-ecology, using root tip cells which are sloughed off in great numbers very rapidly. This is a source of starches and sugars which the microherd eats and reciprocates by delivering nitrogen and other essentials. In legumes this is advanced to a high art, where the bacteria are invited to live directly inside the roots in special nodules for them.

Once the mushrooms and worms have processed the soil it is time to plant. Standard sized beds made out of salvaged scrap lumber, or permanent ones insulated with foam can be made 4 foot by 8 foot, giving dimensions that work with standard sized building materials. The point of raised beds is to bring the work up higher, improve drainage, and to have something to sit on while you work with your hands harvesting or inspecting. It also serves as a base to hold the temporary covers you use in spring, fall, and even winter, for season extension.

Plantings are done in intensive style, using the plants themselves as living mulch to keep down weed starts. Now aren't you glad you installed that drip irrigation, and can amortize the cost over three crops (mushrooms, worms/animal-feed, vegetable/herbs/flowers)? This is synergy. This is doing a lot more with more. Or doing more with less.

If one never steps on this soil it never compacts and it never needs rototilling or tractor plowing. The raised walls keep the rain inside, rather than running off so there is no erosion or nutrient pollution downstream. Adding nightcrawlers later on will dig this soil to eight feet deep, cycling up and down nutrients and aerating deeply. Anerobic decay with all its bad results never happens here. No gasoline is used, no smelly noisy engines. You can actually hear the birds sing, which is the way it is supposed to be, isn't it?

Pests don't get started here. Not if you pasturized the compost for the mushrooms. No bugs pass the 160 degrees, just like no weed seeds. You will be growing in these beds for most of the year, if you have removable covers for season extension. You will be rotating every couple of months, so there is no dependable preferred food source for that second year pest build-up. You will also be growing herbs and plants with insect repellant qualities mixed in with the other plants. Companion planting is a high art, but even a few feet away, some plants have powerful insect repellant properties. Conventional monoculture agriculture cannot afford to think this way. Ecological Synergy cannot afford to think any other way. The microherd and the worms are too valuable to be allowed to be killed by pesticide and herbicide chemicals, even if you wanted to eat stuff grown in that toxic cloud.

Every so often it might be necessary to start all over on a bed, but just adding a few inches of worm castings as mulch on a bed after each harvesting will keep them producing for a long time. Meanwhile, you will get at some level where you have enough fertile grow beds to satisfy your plant production desires, and you will keep a few beds rotating as composters, mushroom and worm bins.

The Ecological Synergy method requires animals, even if you are a vegetarian. It so happens that rabbits are easy to produce, gain market weight in 8 weeks from birth, and can be fed largely out of the garden and with alfalfa hay. Chickens likewise are easy to raise and keep, get to market weight fast, and can be largely fed out of the garden and the worm bins. Certain pond fish are also good companions in the synergy system. Ducks and fish are synergistic in this system. All the trimmings, waste, scraps, and manures make high-priced organic soil amendments which cost nothing much in this system. Check the prices of organic fertilizer soil amendments: bone meal, blood meal, feather meal, fish meal, worm castings. The nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria are the basis of all this increase, turning air and dirt into all this life.

This home-made soil, highest purity and fertility possible is constantly being improved, season by season, year by year. It is possible to enrich it too much, and that subject has to be dealt with in advanced courseware. Trace minerals can be concentrated to levels which are too high. It is not a problem anyone needs to think about too soon, but it must be learned about before it is too late.

Since the Ecological Synergy system is planned to use permanent grow beds, eventually insulated, eventually with removable covers, some of these beds might get used year round in mild climates or almost all year in severe climates. That means more plantings of more crops, and more harvests. Harvest-time is weekly. With intelligence, planning, and some investment it is possible to be bringing in income all the year round, although the summer is the normal best productivity.

Ecological Synergy has recommendations for off-season income projects which play off the equipment already acquired to produce in the "on-season". Let us defer that discussion for now.

If you had a plant nursery business with a greenhouse and a grow field you could make a living off that. If you had an organic foods market garden raising a variety of vegetables in the traditional way, you could make a living off that. If you had an herb farm, or a flower farm, you could make a living off that. If you raised small livestock, say chickens, ducks, eggs, or fish, you could make a living off that. Lots of people already do all of these things in just about every different climate zone and make a living doing it. The difference between how they make their living and Ecological Synergy living is how much has to be bought and paid for all those other ways in order to make that living. So much of what has to be bought by conventional systems is produced internally through Ecological Synergy. That is money not spent giving a living for someone else, that stays right in your pocket.

You can use the same practices and principles as Ecological Synergy and get the same results. There is one big difference: you can't use the name without permission and certification.

Only authorized people can use the trademarked name "Ecological Synergy" to guarantee the public that they are getting all that they expect and nothing they don't expect. This customer assurance is brand name protection which benefits both producer and customer alike.

All customers are assured they are getting comparable quality from every producer using the certified trademarked name. All producers benefit from the word-of-mouth advertising from satisfied customers telling their friends and neighbors.

Over time brand names build customer confidence and loyalty, making repeat sales easier. There is value in contributing to building a brand name. There is value in an intellectual property which creates a system like this which makes work easier, productivity higher, profit margins bigger, and costs lower. This value can be stolen or lost through many people taking these ideas which they never researched and never blended together, throwing them together with shoddy careless quick-buck schemes, and calling that "ecological synergy". I will not stand still for that. Part of building brand name recognition is protecting the brand from misuse.

For the record, Lion Kuntz is the sole designer of the Ecological Synergy system. In order to publish and promote this system a not-for- profit corporation is being founded by Lion Kuntz. This non-profit corporation is named "Morning Star Institute of Ecological Synergy". As soon as the Institute has obtained recognition from the IRS as a 501 (c)(3) tax-exempt corporation Lion Kuntz will transfer personal rights to certain intellectual property to the Institute.

From then on, Morning Star Institute of Ecological Synergy will be the legal owner of the trademarks, and other bequests relating to the system. The Institute will establish a laboratory to test soils and products for toxic contaminents. It will have a model farm where test plots will help determine the answers to questions of best methods and practices, and get to the bottom of some folklore about organic methods once and for all. It will certify independent operators to use of the trademarks and proprietary methods under specified conditions. The institute will publish information to promote the benefits and values of the Ecological Synergy system.

Morning Star Institute is expected to acquire a permanent facility in the near future for teaching, testing, library, and publishing. This site will be habitat for a genebank of over 2,000 species and varieties of lifeforms, for teaching purposes, for propagation, and for preservation.

The Articles of Incorporation for Morning Star Institute of Ecological Synergy gives an ambitious mandate to the corporation to accomplish additional things beyond this brief summary.

It is hoped there is public interest and support for the goals and practices described here above, and that people will contribute to the accomplishing of these goals in some manner. Some membership plan may be appropriate, where members avail themselves of services of the corporation and contribute something to promote "their" own brand name.

This is an area where reader feedback is highly welcome. The Institute is made a public corporation to make it common property. You are part owner of an Institute of Ecological Synergy. There is a surprisingly wide variety of contributions anyone can make to make this a better Institute and a more effective one. Just make contact if you are interested in these concepts, and maybe more synergy will happen.

Thank You for your interest, Sincerely, Lion Kuntz
EMAIL: LKuntz@efn.com
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