Other than getting our building up, which was for obvious reasons priority #1, the major goal for this year was to set down roots in the most literal of senses — getting my ‘food forest’ established. Once we had the proceeds of the sale of our home, I spent a considerable figure on trees and shrubs to bring with us. I had also dug up and potted several things from the last yard to get us started. Some did not survive 2 winters in a pot, but most did.

Mom has also been shifting her orchard from her current domicile to here. The soil at her place is absolutely terrible. Rocky. Dry. Compacted. Even after years of amendments and mulch and chicken manure and all the things, the plants have still been struggling to survive. So, she is bringing them here, where life abounds. Every single shovelful of soil here has worms in it. We have snakes and frogs and salamanders and newts and dozens of kinds of birds and rabbits and animals, and everywhere you look there are tree saplings bursting out of the ground. You can’t go two feet without seeing one. Roots don’t seem to struggle here.

So, all spring, I planted my things, and then the rest once summer was over. This last few weeks, we have been planting hers. Between the two of us, we have planted:
6 apple
2 pear
2 mulberry
1 plum
1 serviceberry
6 sour cherry
5 american hazelnut
6 kiwi (2Male 4Female)
2 heartnut
3 gooseberry
3 grape
5 red currant
3 black currant
Thimbleberry
9 blueberry
Raspberry
5 haskap
Japanese quince
Rhubarb
3 pawpaw
1 seabuckthorn (and 2 more just sprouting)
3 hawthorne
1 elderberry

Even if we were to plant NOTHING else –which let’s be honest, I’m a plant addict. I will plant more things — that is a fairly impressive array of offerings. Add to that the annual vegetables, the small-scale grain and seed crops, and the herbs, and it’s a good chunk of the food needs for our family. We also have livestock and fowls for meat and eggs, and I really want to get mushrooms spawned in next year -a LEAST winecaps, and maybe oysters as well.

In the way-down-the-road, when time, money, and energy permit, we would really really like to dig a half-acre fishpond and stock it with bass. So fruit, nuts, veggies, grains, meat, eggs, milk, fish, and herbs…can you think of anything we’re missing?

I still want to get in another plum, 2 peaches, 2 apricots, cranberries, a couple more elderberry and at least one more serviceberry. I also have 1 seabuckthorn in winterpot and 2 more only just sprouted. But all in all, I am quite pleased with the progress that we have made thus far. Everything I have put in this year has an orange flag on it. Next year, we will switch to blue flags, and another colour after that, so we can see how things expand year by year.