Starting small with apple trees?

I’m slowly convincing my husband to lessen our lawn space and widen a food space. We have two apple trees in the lawn that I want to use as a starting point to learn about layers, chop and drop, food production, and water retention. We have deer, but we can fence (as unobtrusively as possible). Can anyone recommend some plants/ideas? I’m very busy so I don’t want to keep things somewhat basic, but expandable in the future.

The answer to this depends entirely on where your garden is.

Welcome to Permies Kathryn!

That's awesome you are shrinking your lawn and increasing your growing areas, I'm working on the same thing myself.

I've found blueberries to be a great plant to start with if the soil has enough moisture, as it is happy in sun or part shade. Thornless blackberries are a little more wild, but I love using them too, and they grow and produce really quickly.

Grapes can be planted beside the trees too, just giving the trees a little head start and planting the grapes a year or two later after the trees are established.

Best of luck with your apple trees and food forest!

Steve