One of my goals, both at the last house (which I accomplished with middling success, learning much in the process) and here, is to establish a thriving food forest.

For those who aren’t familiar with permaculture principles and lexicon, a food forest is a diverse group of mostly perennial plants, everything from nut and fruit trees to berry bushes, shrubs, flowers, herbs, vines, groundcovers, mushrooms and root crops that are planted around and amongst one another, to grow in a curatedly-wild manner. The relationship is symbiotic. The various types of plants offer support, protection, pollination, soil renewal, nutrient accumulation. All together do better than any one in seclusion.

At the other house, I was beginning with old, neglected and not entirely healthy fruit trees, and with terribly depleted, dead soil. At this place, I have almost the opposite problem. The soil is heavy, high clay and relatively slow to drain, but there are earthworms in abundance, and tree saplings springing up absolutely everywhere. I am removing dozens, if not hundreds of very scrubby willows, alders, birches, spruces, firs and pines. In their place, I am planting other trees, shrubs and plants.

So far, in the past week, I have planted 1 apple and 2 mulberry trees, 3 hazelnut shrubs, horseradish and comfrey roots, 2 spicebush, and 3 rhubarb crowns. I still have MANY things to plant. The challenge is to plant things such that, as they grow, they will not overly crowd each other or out-compete each other.

The goal is to create not just an orchard, but a semi-wild, low-maintenance ‘forest’ area that is pleasing to spend time in, but also harbors vast amounts of life on every level. A well-executed food forest teems with birds and insects and wildlife as well as being massively abundant in providing food.

Fruit trees, of course, take years to come to bearing. Berry bushes are usually considerably faster, nuts considerably slower. And I certainly won’t have everything in place in one year. Infrastructure takes years to put in place. By the end of this planting year, I will have mulberry and apple, heartnut, hazelnut and hickory, pawpaw and plum, kiwi, elderberry, blueberry, raspberry, almondberry, thimbleberry, cherry, black and red currant, rhubarb, peonies, hyssop, daylillies, horseradish, comfrey, valerian, lovage, mushrooms, a kitchen-herb garden, the beginnings of a medicinal-herb garden, and a raised bed or two with hopefully at least some squash and beans. By the time a few years have gone by, I will (God wiling) have considerably more than that. If all goes well, in 5 years time I should have far more food available at my fingertips than we can ever use, with an abundance to share.

As if that was not enough to do in one year, I also have a dozen honeylocust saplings (as long as they survived the winter) to establish in the wetter areas, as the first step in regaining that land and establishing a degree of silvapasture.

None of this addresses the pasture fences that need to be erected for the chickens and goats this year, either. It all either takes a great deal of time and effort or a great deal of money, and we don’t have money. So…