Planning to establish myself in Canada, zone 4 to 3.

Growing fruit trees will be a challenge. I've listen Paul talking about growing lemon in Montana, and saw some Sepp's videos showing the same kind of extrem condition food forest.

I don't expect to have a tropical forest up there but need to find more on creating micro climate on site, stone walls and stone mulching to trap heat and so on ....

Any good books, dvds and others to recommend ?

Thanks in advance, Bart

Here is a zone 3 vendor. They have a huge selection of nuts, trees, shurbs, berries, etc.
http://www.sln.potsdam.ny.us/

For general information on plant (height, yield, bloom time, harvest time, etc), check out these guys.
http://www.onegreenworld.com//product_info.php?cPath=4_107&products_id=1411

You mention citrus. Here is a few zone 6 citrus (bitter orange and thomasville citrange). With a little micro climate you might be able to take grow it in zone 4 or not
http://mckenzie-farms.com/photo.htm

As for water/earth works. Just do the usual terrace/keyline/swale/hugelkultur/imprinting depending on your terrain.
If you are worried about guilds, just do the usually 9 layer thing Nut/fruit tree/tall shurb/berries/groundcover/herbs/vine/ self seeding vegetables.
A good vine for you is artic/hardy kiwi.

Bart, check out Micheal Pirlarski's Whispering Pines Homestead 1 on youtube. This is the 1st in a series of 3. They are in a zone 4 or 5 I believe but there are a lot of the same plants you can grow in zone 3 or 4. Skeeter is very good with his plants. He also sells seeds at http://www.goodseedco.net/. http://www.oikostreecrops.com/store/home.asp has cold hardy trees as well. Hope this helps.
I also wanted to say welcome to Mark Shepard and I love his work.

great thread bart! i have also been looking for info on this.

great links sbengi and dave. i have ordered from Oikos tree crops before and have been very happy with their plants.

In Michigan I'm on the warm side of 4 and the cold side of 5 so I'm a slight bit warmer than you are. You can see in my blog what I am growing here. I have in the past had good crops of peaches, apples, cherries, plums, hazelnuts, grapes, and many others..but this past year (2012) we lost nearly all of our fruit to a hard late freeze. I'm hoping that doesn't happen again but it is something that happens in these zones. You gotta realize you will have some very bad years. In the past I have also had evergreens freeeze to death from cold winds, so windbreaks are very important in these climates.

I also have a small greenhouse so that I can extend my seasons, but I mean small. I know if I had more coldframes and a larger greenhouse I could do more..but I don't.

As far as the food forests, first and most important is establishing a windbreak or some type of protection for your food forest, and also making sure that the trees that you plan to plant are the hardiest ones available. Canada has some really great nurseries up there, so buy from those closest to you with similar conditions and they should perform well for you. As for those pesky late freezes..good luck with that..I have heard in some places burning smudge pots works or spraying with water (if you can find a hose that isn't frozen solid).

One plant I've really ben impressed with is honeyberry frost doesn't seem to hurt the blossoms I've learned that for me it has to be pruned.
Currants and gooseberries, chokecherries some call them aronia berries have all been good producers. Blueberries produce but I fimd that they need a lot of irrigation so I plan to move them from their current location to a hugel bed.

Thanks everybody for all those reply, i have some watching and reading to do, and some people to visit !

I'll keep you inform of the experimentations that will be going on, a blog in preparation.

Hopefully i ll find some people doing those kind of thing locally to get advices.

Bart

... I cut my Permaculture teeth in the Mentasta mountains of Alaska USDA zone 0. Imitating the boreal forest suite of species is a pretty good bet...

From tallest to shortest:
Siberian or Korean Pine (pine nuts) cherries (Nanking, Evans) Hazelnut (NOT from west coast sources.. they are not cold hardy enough) Siberean Peashrub, Serviceberries (saskatoons)
raspberries, American highbush cranberry, blueberries, arctic beauty kiwi, strawberry...

This system is described in the book Restoration Agriculture available here: http://www.forestag.com/book.html

Thanks Mark,

Can't wait to get my hands on your book.

All the best,

Bart

My favorite cold climate permaculture nursery is Foxgreen Farm in Maine which has jiovi plants https://www.jiovi.com Tons of plants and seeds that work.  Another favorite is Twisted Tree Farm in New York http://www.twisted-tree.net/