I suggest you have a look around for some stuff on permaculture which
is what it sounds you are really looking for. Permaculture is
designing a whole system for sustainable yielding of produce. The
definitive book is "Permaculture Designer's Manual" (I think) by Bill
Mollison.
If you have WWW access have a look at the Bay Area Permaculture
Group's page at http://www.nbn.com/people/bapg/ - this will give you
pointers to various resources that would be useful. Just be careful
of the evangelising, some people take this stuff really seriously but
you don't need to be that fervent. Bill Mollison's ideas make a lot
of sense and are, for the most part, just common sense applications of
things that occur in nature.
Hope this helps.
-- Brett Lymn, Computer Systems Administrator, AWA Defence Industries
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