C Murphy

Hear hear. I'm not interested in any of that stuff, either. Every new tech fad is just a way to part you with your money, or your information!

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:C Murphy, we live in interesting times. Your location and ability to grow and ship fresh veg may be of national importance very soon. We have the resilience and the will to push past the current nonsense. My 2c.

Thanks, I happen to agree with you! Almost all our apples are currently shipped in from Washington. No reason they can't be grown right here. We also have a burgeoning craft cider movement that is pretty exciting!

Ulla Bisgaard wrote:While we don’t have as much room as you do, we do have a food forest plus a raised bed garden. The food forest is 3300 square feet, where I am growing mediterranean and sub, tropical fruits and vegetables.
In the food forest I have a wide variety of trees, shrubs and ground cover. The top layer is a pecan tree, cashew tree, prickly pear and palm trees, some being bananas. Eventually my Barbados cherry will also get up there. The middle layer is plum trees, guava, lemons, elderberries,  tangerines and peaches. The shrub layer is Natal plums, tree collards, hibiscus, roses, rock roses, borage, coffee, cardamom, tea, raspberries, blackberries, pineapples, artichoke and currants. The bottom layer has strawberries, and a mix of herbs, onions, cassava, rams, wild garlic, bayleave,  clover medicinal flowers. For vines I grow black pepper, sweet potatoes, melons and passion fruit.
It has taken us almost 9 years to get to this point. We starts with some raised beds to grow annual and to start perennials in. Once the perennials out grew the raised beds, they were moved to the food forest. As the years passed, we added more and more raised beds, so we now have 20 of them. Out of those 5 are full of perennial vegetables and heat sensitive herbs and plants.
Have you thought about making the food forest into a tourist attraction and educational spot? I give tours several times a year, teaching people about permaculture, food production, pest control and wildlife management. I am sure that schools would love to visit as well.
As for cash crops for restaurants I would recommend mushrooms, herbs, dandelion leaves, dead nettle, and edible flowers. I know several people who do that mix, and earns a lot that way.
Last, I would recommend you do your planning on paper first. Did you take the permaculture design course?
I didn’t and have regretted it. Instead I used a program called garden planner 2, which works great, for our small homestead.

The paper plan is definitely happening! My fiancée is about to get her horticulture red seal so very good at making garden plans. She may get a PDC as well.

As for the tours and such, I would consider it, but farms and permie stuff isn't that out of the ordinary on our little island (there is a very public Food Forest run by the local conservation society). We are really focused more on growing food. Your property sounds great!

Anne Miller wrote:We do small wildlife food plots and a large sunflower garden.

This is what we use:

https://permies.com/t/120293/garden-scale-drill-seeder#970283

https://permies.com/t/59219/permaculture/Seed-Drill-Broadcast

https://permies.com/t/108805/seeder-Ruth-Stout-method

Cool, thanks!

Anne Miller wrote:Since you will be having a 1/4 acre market garden and a 1/2 acre annual garden do you plan to use equipment to do the planting?

I cant answer your first question though I feel rebranding might not be a bad idea as you learn what works and what doesn't work.

No solid plans for equipment yet. There have been some brief chats with a neighbour about going in one some but will require a lot more hashing out. Thanks for your response!

Hey my fellow permies,

I have a small (4.5 acre) property on the southern gulf islands. It has historically been both an organic vegetable garden and a flower garden. Up until now we've been focusing on building our house, but the economic downturn has meant less work from my day job and I'd like to use my extra time to get the land back into farming shape. We have about 2 acres of excellent soil that just needs some TLC.

The eventual goal is 1 3/4 acres of primarily apple orchard with a perennial cash crop understory and 1/4 acre market garden. However I plan to grow annuals on 1/2 acre while we wait for the trees to start producing.

Where we live, our primary market is selling to tourists and wholesalers, as almost everyone here grows some of their own veggies. I am looking at growing tasty snacks that don't require cooking and can be brought on a hike/to the beach, I.e. cherry tomatoes, snacking cukes, personal melons, strawberries. Once the trees start to produce, I'd like to start selling our tree and cane fruit, as well as what we grow in the understory such as wild garlic and fiddleheads. We have a couple very fancy restaurants that buy such items and try to source on island.

My question is, has anyone transitioned from a more traditional vegetable market garden to a food-forest adjacent orchard? I know that people alley crop however our land isn't laid out for growing everything in straight lines. I worry that I am essentially doubling my work by having two ideas at once, and having to rebrand/market in a few years. Thoughts and advice very much welcome!

Very interesting. We have loads of bracken here (Southern Gulf Islands just off the West Coast of Canada). I'll be honest that the carcinogen warnings have scared me off eating them, especially since we get lots of asparagus and nettle tips that time of year so aren't really in need of greenery. I've had a lot of success getting starch as a by product from cold leaching acorns, but never heard of bracken root. I hope you're able to get something from all your hard work!

Please let us know how it goes! I'm a few years away from having chickens (need to build my own house first) but always had lofty goals of growing at least some of their feed. Our place is on a small island with limited access and I'd like to know I could keep them alive if I can't get to the store!

I had an interesting baptism-by-fire into cooking when I went vegan at 15 and my mom, who was fairly supportive, rightly told me that she wouldn't be cooking all vegan meals, but would make whatever was easy enough to swap. So I learned how to cook then. And when you don't use meat or dairy, and you cant eat most of what's available that's processed, you learn to cook from scratch. So for the last 20 years of my life this is normal.

Then I found gardening.. Okay, that's fun. Time consuming, but fun. Then permaculture.. Nice, all these perennials cut my time needs down even more. And by planting strategically, I can grow in areas of the garden that barely need watering (high water table) even in our drought summers.

I certainly don't grow everything we eat but consider myself an opportunist. If there is some free time, I'll work on something - weeding, seed organizing, planting, pruning, etc.. Similarly if a friend's farm is overrun with cucumbers, I'll buy the surplus and make lacto pickles. I don't see it as an all or nothing thing, but something that I try to priorize when the opportunity arises.

I've had friends say that they would love to do what I do if only they had the time (backhanded compliment maybe). I have structured my life to allow for it because it's important to me.

I happily eat 3 meals a day, and a snack. I am also very healthy. Certainly not slim, but none of the women in my family have been, it's our build. We are tall and strong. My strength was what attracted my fiancé to me when we first met, I impressed her with how easily I wheelbarrowed pig shit up the pile. I digress..

During the work week I have a cup of black coffee and a slice of homemade sourdough (rye, acorn, buckwheat, or any other flours I can find all in rotation). Currently I'm adding about 5% sunroot powder too. I'll have that with nut butter or some homemade jam. In the winter I also really enjoy porridge. Usually rolled oats or groats, but I also like to mix grains. I cook it up with some applesauce or other fruit and chopped nuts, and sweeten with maple syrup. And in the summer, raw quick oats with fresh berries from the garden and a splash of pumpkinseed milk.

Weekends we make a little more effort and will do either a buckwheat pancake with compote or fresh fruit, or a tofu scramble with toast or roast root veg. I love breakfast!