America's Oldest Food Forest?

https://www.shelterwoodplants.com/blog/2018/10/17/exploring-americas-oldest-food-forest

Has anyone spent time at this 100 year old food forest near Philadelphia?  I'd never heard about it until I just stumbled upon it in a google search.  So much diversity....I want seeds!!!

Here's another article about it:
https://www.phillymag.com/articles/2018/07/07/downingtown-food-forest-urban-farming/print/

I wrote to Dale (wonderful guy!) to see if he can offer some help in getting some of these trees or their seeds.  Fingers crossed.

One picture that jumped out at me was that of the black walnut below.  Not just because it's the largest one that I've ever seen (though that's really some cool genetics!) but because I once had a dream about a large pear shaped nut that looked a lot like this.  At the time I had been harvesting a windfall of acorns and in my dream it was a giant yellow pear shaped acorn :)  I actually did some googling for that when I woke up but alas it was for not.  But this actually looks a bit more like what I dreamed about....I'll count that as a dream come true and try finding and adding this one to a section of forest I want to push in the direction of high canopy, true forest garden.  Hope future generations will appreciate it as much as I do!

Here's a close up of the foot and the half long honey locust pods from the tree in the last photo of my first post.  These can have sugar contents of between 30 - 40%.  Probably these were selected by the Cherokees from their forest gardening days.  What treasures!  There has been some confusion over whether honey locust trees fix nitrogen as they don't nodulate, but it has been determined that they do this within their roots without making nodules.  Get them as grafted plants if you don't want scary thorns.  You can feed them to livestock, but I want them for myself!  Anyone have recipes?  Wonder how the Cherokees ate them?



Picture from Perfect Circle Farm in Vermont.

Greg Martin wrote:Here's another article about it:
https://www.phillymag.com/articles/2018/07/07/downingtown-food-forest-urban-farming/print/

I wrote to Dale (wonderful guy!) to see if he can offer some help in getting some of these trees or their seeds.  Fingers crossed.

Interesting!   I'm about an hour away from this, and had no idea.  I smell a day trip when spring comes.  Thank you for the heads up!

On a sidenote...  Dale is one of those exceptional humans, for sure.  I had the opportunity to visit his place back in the summer, and he has quite the food forest himself!  I found out through a friend that he's the guy to talk to about pawpaws, so my friend took me to see his place.   Wow.

He gifted me some wild ginger root that I planted and am hoping to see it again in the spring. It did well last summer.

Thanks again!

Ed Belote wrote:Interesting!   I'm about an hour away from this, and had no idea.  I smell a day trip when spring comes.  Thank you for the heads up!

Good luck Ed!  If it wasn't so far I'd want to join you.  Take some pictures!!!  If you head back in the fall on a seed expedition let us know :)