We are doing a primarily fruit and meat based diet (with self-seeding kale and collard greens) on our permaculture project. We're in Oregon on the wet, west side of the Casades, at 1300 feet.
Our fruit and hazelnut and berry orchard is planted with an understory of nitrogen-fixing white clover (trifolium repens) as is all of our 20 acres of pastures. Our American Guinea Hogs (critical to our project) graze under the fruit trees and keep grass from competing with the fruit trees and keep all fallen fruit cleaned up. We also have cows and sheep, but they can't be trusted near fruit trees. We also have chickens. But our American Guinea Hogs are our key animals (because they graze year-round and rarely root, but also eat all our farm scraps).
We have
Apples (Many varieties from the very earliest season to latest season)
European Pears
Asian Pears
European Plums
Japanese Plums
Sweet Cherries
Peaches
Blueberries
Raspberries (ever bearing)
Blackberries
Strawberries
Hazelnuts
Walnuts
Most of our orchard is quite young (as we plant more and more trees each year), but we're getting some good production now and in a few more years we could probably keep 10 people fully fed, year round (so we'll sell our excess or the pigs will eat it). We can "make" our own fruit trees now as we have root-stock plants to providing cuttings to make new root-stock trees, and plenty of varieties to provide buds for grafting.
The MOST important thing to know is that there are apple (and pear) varieties that ripen from late-July to late-November. I just picked some today (Goldrush Apples) that ripen (in storage) for good eating in January and can be good for eating until April (if kept in a cool place). European plums (sometimes called Italian plums/prunes) are a big workhorse fruit for us because they dry VERY easily (they are the plums that make prunes).
Our fruit year consists of
June: Strawberries, raspberries, cherries (end of June)
July: Cherries, raspberries, blueberries
August: Apples, blueberries, raspberries, peaches, plums, blackberries
September: Apples, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, peaches, plums, pears
October: Apples, raspberries, plums, blackberries, pears
November: Apples, pears
December: Apples, pears, dried plums
January: Apples, pears, dried plums
February: Apples, pears, dried [lums
March: Apples, dried plums
April: Some Fresh Apples may still be good, Dried Apples, Dried Plums, Other Dried fruit
May: Dried Apples, dried pums, other dried fruit
Berries freeze nicely, but our plan is to be able to do it WITHOUT electricity, so we graze in the berry patches and eat our fill.
The European prune-plums are VERY easy to dry with VERY little prep work. Just split them open with your hands and pull out the seeds and plop them on drying screens.
Our fruit trees, berry bushes, nut trees and pigs are VERY easy to manage (they manage themselves mostly). The fruit trees get nitrogen from the clover and pig-poop. They get calcium and potassium and phosphorus and other nutrients from wood-ash from our wood-burning stove (which is our only source of heat, from wood from our 20 acres of woods). Our methods require very little work and it sure seems like a VERY healthy and simple diet... Tons of Fruit, greens, nuts, meat, eggs.
.png)
