We parted ways with an invitation to Kristen: “Keep an eye on the cliffs just before sunset.”
She smiled knowingly before turning to her compact pickup which would tow her boat back home after what must be one of the most eventful days of her life, one with one more small treat left.
We gave the residents of Bullfrog, Utah one heck of a show that night.
I have greatly enjoyed The Leverage of Magic. the combination of nudity magic and environmental awareness is right up my street.
Your two Madges discussed sorting out Farming without needing mined chemicals, using their power to enhance their natural environment (I forget the chapter number). They came to a conclusion that they would need to breed thousands of Madges to enable all farms to be chemical free.
Towards the end they find a third natural Madge. Might I suggest that in a future book they see k in the existing alternative agriculture community for ways to leverage the transformation. Several fields come to mind, one is Permaculture, or more mainstream is simply Organic Farming. In these fields people are also more likely to be open to nudity than the majority.
Just an idea I hope it is useful and you are not offended.
I am greatly looking forward to the third book in your series.
I’m glad you’re enjoying the series. I hope that continues, since each of these books are rather different from each other. Some of that is on purpose, with me not wanting to re-tell the same story in a new locale each time, but at this point, the characters are telling their tales to me, if that makes any sense. They keep surprising me with what all they get up to.
As for the rest, I’m sorry, but we won’t be going down the organic farming route in the series. That’s largely marketing BS.
(Note the source. Nature’s #1 or #2 among hard science journals, if you weren’t aware.)
I can give you more sources, but suffice it to say, I’m convinced, RikkiBare.
The solution to the problem in my fantasy world is more mages, not a return to practices that could keep only 1-2 billion people fed. Without scientific agriculture, I believe we’d have had a Malthusian collapse decades ago.
That’s not to say that this is sustainable. There’s certainly a problem, but out here in the real world, what passes today as “organic farming” isn’t going to do the trick. It’ll make it worse.
As for “permaculture,” I haven’t done more than skim what I’ve found, but what I can tell you so far is that it has echoes of crop rotation. That does work, but it inherently means using more land to grow the same amount of food. There’s good evidence that the amount of available farmland is shrinking due to urban encroachment. It’s why so much of your food has to be trucked or shipped in from increasingly far away, which is part of the whole ecological problem my mages are struggling with.
There’s plenty of un-urbanized land, but it’s generally less productive land. The first farmers naturally went and snapped up all the best land. That produced larger and larger cities, which caused those fields to be more economically valuable as land for suburbs. Now we’ve got massive conurbations sitting atop what used to be best farmland available, pushing the farms further out into less desirable areas.
Maybe I’ll get into this and find that permaculture addresses this, but I suspect not. When a site starts throwing around words like “holistic,” my BS meter starts twigging.
All of this is part of what motivates the series: I look out and see that our options all suck. I really would like to learn to do magic and fix it all. That isn’t going to happen, but meanwhile, here is a bit of escapist fantasy for you to enjoy, hopefully.
Sorry to be so negative, but that’s the truth as I see it.
I have greatly enjoyed The Leverage of Magic. the combination of nudity magic and environmental awareness is right up my street.
Your two Madges discussed sorting out Farming without needing mined chemicals, using their power to enhance their natural environment (I forget the chapter number). They came to a conclusion that they would need to breed thousands of Madges to enable all farms to be chemical free.
Towards the end they find a third natural Madge. Might I suggest that in a future book they see k in the existing alternative agriculture community for ways to leverage the transformation. Several fields come to mind, one is Permaculture, or more mainstream is simply Organic Farming. In these fields people are also more likely to be open to nudity than the majority.
Just an idea I hope it is useful and you are not offended.
I am greatly looking forward to the third book in your series.
Regards
RikkiBare
I’m glad you’re enjoying the series. I hope that continues, since each of these books are rather different from each other. Some of that is on purpose, with me not wanting to re-tell the same story in a new locale each time, but at this point, the characters are telling their tales to me, if that makes any sense. They keep surprising me with what all they get up to.
As for the rest, I’m sorry, but we won’t be going down the organic farming route in the series. That’s largely marketing BS.
(Note the source. Nature’s #1 or #2 among hard science journals, if you weren’t aware.)
I can give you more sources, but suffice it to say, I’m convinced, RikkiBare.
The solution to the problem in my fantasy world is more mages, not a return to practices that could keep only 1-2 billion people fed. Without scientific agriculture, I believe we’d have had a Malthusian collapse decades ago.
That’s not to say that this is sustainable. There’s certainly a problem, but out here in the real world, what passes today as “organic farming” isn’t going to do the trick. It’ll make it worse.
As for “permaculture,” I haven’t done more than skim what I’ve found, but what I can tell you so far is that it has echoes of crop rotation. That does work, but it inherently means using more land to grow the same amount of food. There’s good evidence that the amount of available farmland is shrinking due to urban encroachment. It’s why so much of your food has to be trucked or shipped in from increasingly far away, which is part of the whole ecological problem my mages are struggling with.
There’s plenty of un-urbanized land, but it’s generally less productive land. The first farmers naturally went and snapped up all the best land. That produced larger and larger cities, which caused those fields to be more economically valuable as land for suburbs. Now we’ve got massive conurbations sitting atop what used to be best farmland available, pushing the farms further out into less desirable areas.
Maybe I’ll get into this and find that permaculture addresses this, but I suspect not. When a site starts throwing around words like “holistic,” my BS meter starts twigging.
All of this is part of what motivates the series: I look out and see that our options all suck. I really would like to learn to do magic and fix it all. That isn’t going to happen, but meanwhile, here is a bit of escapist fantasy for you to enjoy, hopefully.
Sorry to be so negative, but that’s the truth as I see it.