What percentage of your own food do you produce?

Just curious as to where everyone else is as far as food production for themselves.

As we are in the UK  this is a fascinating question to me, I am looking forward to seeing the replies you get.

For us personally, very little, we live in the North East of the UK, it is nearly the end of October, we have fruit tree crops, apples, pears and a variety of nuts to come (hopefully), we have a few salad leaves, an occasional tomato, some perennial spinach and chard, all of which are just holding on in the greenhouse.

I would love your question to be extended to see what percentage of own fuel and materials are home grown/provided and how wastes are dealt with too.

A really interesting question, thank you, I will watch it with interest.

at this point for me it is a very small percentage calorically speaking. none of my own grain products which calorie wise makes up a significant percentage probably 30-50%. in the summer I can provide 50%-80% of my own vegetables usually and quite a bit to put aside for the off season (didn't happen with the dudd garden at the new place this year) dairy products makes up a large percentage of calories in my diet, but didn't have any goats in milk this year either so that was out too. only butchering a few chickens and goats each year.

eggs are generally pretty easy to provide and can help significantly. of course eggs and milk require some purchases in they way of grains, hay  or supplements to forage at this time. and I am always researching ways to aleviate those costs. even with those purchases i still can provide milk and eggs for a fraction of the cost of purchasing them and have much better and healthier food imo.

I would like to get get to a point where I can year round provide most of my own....

tomatoes
potatoes
green beans
chicken
pork/beef/chevon meat
eggs

I have been very close to doing so on all but the meat products.

I don't expect to ever provide all my own nuts, fruits, or vegetables. I and my family are accustomed to quite a variety and don't intend on giving that up ever. I also don't foresee ever doing without or providing my own grain products. too difficult to grow in this climate and in large reliable quantities. although I find wildcrafting and hunting fun and adventurous I don't expect it to ever contribute a large portion to my diet either.

the meat products are the hardest. we are making plans to try several beef calfs some time in the near- ish future. and will likely do pigs again and more regularly. we can hopefully recoup any costs through the sale of 1/4's to freinds and family. goat meat is good but has its limitations. providing more of our chicken will take significant input and facilities and I don't know how far off that is. 

I would be happy if I could honestly say that most years I provide 50% of our food calorically speaking. and by provide I mean raise or grow it myself even if that means some outside input from purchased products to help me achieve that. of course this year has been a lesson to me. things don't always go as planned! wasn't able to put up any vegis. and my milker died.  I still have some tomatoes and potatoes from last year but that is about it as far as home grown garden products.

as we lost most of our gardens when we had our house fire, we are basically starting over here now and our production isn't reaching the level where it will in a couple of years, yet..so not as much as I would like, or that I have in the past.

in the past we used to have all the peaches, apples, cherries, pears, and berries that we could ever use, so much so we were selling them..now only a few of the grapes and some apples suriveved the fire and some of the new berries produced all summerlong..but we fell so far behind.

as far as salad greens we have done fine, lettuces and cabbages, carrots and corn were a bust this year. beets, green beans, peppers and tomatoes did really well, as well as all of our herbs and wild things. Morel mushrooms didn't produce this year as it was too cold and dry.

i still have some muskmelon in the frig and apples, besides frozen and canned foods..and we are on our last fresh tomatos..we have also supplied a good deal of our wood fuel..but did buy some.

I also didn't have any grains in the ground this year..and our squash was very limited we did pick a few. the pickles didn't germinate for the second year in a row..going to try a differnt co for some seeds..carrots also didn't germinate.

was a very bad  year for a lot of our normal veg production...2nd coldest summer in 60 years

in times of high production (spring summer and fall ) id say 60-90% comes from the garden. the rest of the year( winter) 30% is a good estimate.

I'd estimate my production at 30%.
There are some things that I know I just don't have enough dedicated space to grow like grain.
Fruit trees and nut trees are just coming into production. Berries have been producing for a few years now.
Hope to do better with the enlarged greenhouse next year and new raised beds that were not in use this year.

80% to 90%.  All of our vegetables, and, as the trees mature, an increasing amount of our fruit.  Between the bluegill and bass I pull out of my pond and the occasional lamb from the flock, a good chunk of my meat supply, augmented by some canned salmon from the store.  I can the summer surplus of vegetables, but cold frames keep the beds producing all winter, so I end up canning surplus greens throughout the winter and only need to raid the canned stores for out of season vegetables.  About the only things that I buy at the store is oat meal, sugar, jam, and milk.

2%? 

My neighbors love the green tomatoes, though!

Like some others on this post, my produciton is rapidly improving.  I will probably get the hang of garlic this year, and I know I'll do better on beans this time than last.

Still a small percent of the total. Citrus to eat every day between October and April, plus calmondin citrus year round. Vegetables - rather minor but expanding.  Bananas and plantains are the next push ... planning to produce significant calories, equal to the typical person's bread and potatoes (with less work and less soil disruption).

i enjoy the idea of being able to provide for myself in a lot of ways from the garden though now i only manage a glut of fruit in autumn. At first i thouhgt i must try that, if it is necessary to prove that permaculuture will work i must try it, but i have come to think the idea of providing for some of the expenses from the garden is a relief. I am sorry to give up just seeing how the  plants evolve on their own in a great part of my garden, i was spreading seeds in places i dont usually cultivate apart from planting trees a mounth or so ago. agri rose macaskie.

An attitude that I have noticed developing in myself over the years as I've been getting mostly self-sufficient food-wise, is that I'm getting more and more leery of grocery store and restaurant food.  I know the complete and total history of all of the food that I bring in from my garden and pastures and process in my kitchen, but I know next to nothing about the history of the food sold in the stores as far as its origins, sanitation in processing, and storage conditions.  You have to make a big leap in faith that everything was processed correctly and that they didn't try to do some unwarranted cost-cutting at the expense of sanitation.  So do I really want to take the chance that the food wasn't left out too long at room temperature between shifts or over the weekend when being processed at the factory, or the guy in the plant processing the food hadn't washed his hands after going to the restroom and getting exposed to hepatitus/coliforms/influenza, the processing machine hadn't been cleaned for 2 weeks, or the refrigeration unit on the semi trailer died while the truck was enroute across the country in July, etc.

          I am much more worried about whether or not they have posioned the food with herbicides and pesticides greatly increasing my possibilities of getting cancer than with whether or not they have washed their hand after going to the bathroom.
      Sanjee Gupta CNN's doctor was saying that next year more people will die of cancer than AIDs maleria and heart attacks all together, the truth is I  can't remember his list exactly but that is the gist of it.  What is it the goverment not telling us that makes all this increase in cancer? They have got a lot less keen on atomic power, must not it be that reports on the number of people getting cancer for example, show them more clearly than they lets us get to see how much more cancer there is around recently or is it the tremendouse use of pesticides that creates these increases in cancer. It is probably both.
      There was a documentary about a french journalist who had been shot following the trail of some mafia people who were dumping barrels of nuclear waste in Africa. Probably ew have seeded all thrid world countries with neclear waste and now they will start dying of cancer as well as all the toher illnesses that they suffer from an dwe don't.
    We steal there goods by buying them cheap, we dredge their seas clean of fish, dump nuclear waste by their desert road sides and when their poor measly pirates try to get a bit back we get inflated with rightouse indignation, and shoot and jail them. It is us who really need shooting and jailing.
      In india there are babies with skin cancer because they use so many pesticides in cotton growing areas that the air and the water ways are full of them.
        Somtimes the goverments employ scare tactics and sometimes they would rather keep scarey things to themselves, like how really dangerouse pesticides herbicides and uranium are, at least till they have reduced them a bit.

    I started to think of how many unwashed hands had touched how many objects i touched  when i was a child and decided that with all the people handling food there were bound to be some who had not washed their hands before handling food or the milk bottle you also touched , or before grabbiing hold of the rails in trains and busses and so on and that i just could not go down that road or i would spend the whole day washing things.
      Do you get hepatitis from unwashed hands how usual is that or do you have to eat shell fish, actually eat them, that have been living in the sewers, or just were the sewers open out into the sea. I know people who will eat sheel fish and i mean shell fish, not anything that shell fish could stand for, i live among those who endlessly talk in simils so that you can't' talk straight anymore everything has a double meaning. They will risk themselves for things as unimportante as good meal. agri rose macaskie.

We must be at more than 50% now, and the percentage is growing. But I will say it isn't me doing it, we have workers who raise our veggies and take care of our flocks of sheep, and soon, my ponds of catfish.

The manure from the sheep fold goes to the garden, the vegetables just about leap out of the soil!

We produce 80+% of our home heat, all of our chicken (75% of our meat consumption is chicken), probably 50%? of our veggies.  We still eat a lot of junk food (especially brownies), though - and we haven't eliminated pop.  Of course we still have to buy things like oil, sugar, etc. - and we haven't grown wheat yet so we buy our flour.  We don't produce our own dairy products yet.  We're getting there - slowly but surely.

Leah Sattler wrote:

goat meat is good but has its limitations.

I'm curious what you meant by this.   Is it about limited recipes or something else?

I'm not sure of the % of our food that we grow here on site.  We are getting better at preserving what do do grow though.  We are starting into citrus season here and have already been juicing the tangerines (oh it is the sweetest juice!)  I would say we need not buy citrus we also have a bitter orange if we ever want it for cooking and a wonderful ruby red grapefruit tree.

I probably grow about 90% of the greens we eat and probably closer to only 30-50% of other veggies.  I've tried a couple times to grow grains and it just isn't worth the trouble in my climate.  We still buy nuts, pork, beef, chicken, bread, milk, oil, salt, sugar, cereal and brownie mix.

We run Aquaponics and grow our own fish on site.  We get catfish fingerlings from a local fish farm to grow out.  I do buy feed for them but am working to supplement more with BSF larva.

We have chickens that provide wonderful eggs.  I try to give them as much fresh paddock area as possible but I will buy perhaps a bag of feed a month to supplement the scraps and what is growing and the bugs they find.

I'm only on a 1/3rd acre residential lot so I'm not trying to raise other livestock at this time.

Waste?  Well we still throw out some trash but anything organic is composted here and we quit using flush toilets in 2006 I think and humanure compost so the primary waste around here is plastic packaging which we try to reduce as much as we can.  During much of the year, we only need to take the trash out about every 3 weeks.

I get asked this ? all the time.I'm not sure I see the virtue in limiting your food to 'what you produce' on your 'private property'.The Native Americans here had family gathering grounds in several different soil types.Alluvial soils provide different nutrients than glacial.Fish live in different areas then mt.goats yet both provide important elements for our health.In this culture of 'private property' some end up with 'good' soil and some  are marginalized to 'poor'.Private property,as it is expressed in the European land use model currently imposed upon the landscape,demands market participation and specialization for proper health.Growing plants not suited to your site is calorically a loss(not that any first world people care about that).Wild animals are able to accumulate trace elements from the different soil types they pass through and so have access to and provide superior food.Farmers spend time dealing with animal health issues because 'their' animals are confined to the nutrients available on the land they are caged/fenced on.
  The last thing I want to do is limit my food intake to an arificially constructed and imposed land use model.That said,I probably 'produce' 50%.People in pre historical cultures are usually born into an existing infrastructure and established culture of land use.I am homesteading on raw land(a fairly recent phenominon)and therefore have to juggle and fill physical needs as well as spiritual and emotional needs.

Few of these needs are met in this culture without driving or consuming lots of resources.A village could provide me with those needs more effeciently and people would ideally have their gathering grounds in various different locations.Instead we are handed an inherently broken land use model and then hopelessly attempt to do their best within it.A village would give everyone a good location for their homes out of the flood plain but not susceptable to fire.(natives used fire to keep succession in check.Europeans used steel and slaves.Fire is calorically far more efficient but not compatible  with the current land use model.)
  For ideal nutrition,I would like to eat food from both fire and flood zones and niether of those is where I would like to live(The transition zone might be nice).In order to get food from those different zones I have to become a specialist and participate in an economy of trade,ultimatly undermining my desire for a diverse subsistance existance and enforcing the bordom inherent in specialization.Pray for collapse!
 

The question wasn't to limit food choice to what is on ones property, but rather perhaps to determine what is possible on a certain piece of ground. Nomadic hunter gatherer is probably not the most caloric efficient us of energy but would certainly add variety to ones diet. Trade or barter of production could also add variety to ones diet. My question was to see what has been possible.

What is possible on a peice of ground is totally dependent on the peice of ground and thus is not quantifiable.I am in no way advocating a nomadic hunter gatherer lifestyle.The model I am promoting is the one in place here pre-contact.The people of the Pacific NW were semi-sedentary.They had permanent residences(In ideal locations) with gathering grounds(which families 'owned')spread all over in order to have diverse plroduction.They had some specialization and trade but also were self-sufficient in that they were not dependent on such things to survive).They managed the ecosystem for production using a calorically eficient model that takes hundreds of years to establish but little effort to maintain.They maintained high population dencities by utilizing the vast mountain acreage.I am not advocating that we return to their existance but if you look and compare the cultures from our vantage point in history .I think their is alot to be learned here!Land managment paterns are based on the land and anyone living in the NW interested in sustainability would do well to look closely at native models for their area.Keeping It Living by Nancy Turner is a great book about just such a subject or if you live down the coast try Tending the Wild by Cat Anderson?

The ? itself is very problomatic.People buy bread mix and say they made the bread.People import resources at caloric loss and say they produced the food.Instead of `locally grown`,I prefer `locally assembled`as most farms I know use lots of outside inputs.It just seems vastly more efficient to move to where the plants grow good than to make the plants grow good on ill-suited land by bringing them what they need.Its better on your body and mind to move around as well.

Its possible to grow tropical fruits on the top of mt.everest with enough outside inputs but Im not going to be impressed with someone for that.

Mt goat. You say that we should grow things that wil grow where you are and maybe move around to places that will grow other things,as did those in the pacific coast is that native americans? I agree with you that is an interesting idea, here they move cattle up to the mountains in summer and down to hotter lower places in winter. thats why they have cowboys the origin of your cowboys i would say judge by their attire.

  As it fits in, i would also like to say that as desertification happens in lots of bits of the world because the soils have been ruined and the vegetation decimated or, as in the case of the Aral sea -:
      because they started to use the water of rivers to irrigate to mmany crops and the sea dried up this is also true of as the lake in Chad called lake chad is doing. that last peice of informatio come from dr sanjay gupta of cnn.The thar desert was also a sea a long time ago so another sea dried out and turned to desert. and so there is a point in trying to do things you can't at first do returning the land to optime vegetation for that latitude and for the other geografical aspect of the land when the very little you can grow at first is  the result of a reduction in the areas capacity because of abusive farming. agri rose macaskie.

  The indians, by never ploughing, preserved soils, the organica matter and scientific humus, fine black dust that was probably the cause of the dust stroms of the dust bowl, was held under the ground cover that had never been ploughed.
  it is good to grow things were they will grow but also to remember that your place may not be functioning at its maximum because of abusive farming and you can better things.
      It was an American book and one prefaced by Hugh Howard Bennett, written i think by different agricultural engineers, a joint effort, that made me try to better my soils- It said that if you want to reinstate good soils with trees it will take you up to a century while with grass and a bit of clover and some currant bushes, it can be doen in six years and certainely in my garden the soils have got better about that quick, well the twelve years or thirteen really has made them better. except the bit herbicides had been used on.
    The agricultural engineer who was talking about bettering your soils with grass and clover also planted some currant bushes for the wild life. He said that a corner of each feild should be for the wild life because they need a bit of food every so often, not a lot in one place with enormouse gaps between the bits for wild life. However in the peice of land he wanted to reinstate good soils, a, once, bit of road. He put currants into the whole stretch of once road that crossed his farm. He said this land he was restoirng, could be grazed but only very lightly. agri rose macaskie.

Import independence is in my definition of permaculture. A locavore attitude would be favorable. The bread mix made with local grains versus a bread mix that has traveled 100s of miles would be more "locally assembled".
  I have a problem in suggesting that one can't quantify an improvment on a piece of ground, a simple swale that helps water retention and boosts production. I can safely say that the addition improved production so I can quantify it. I've done nothing but create a catchment system. What can you do to with what you have was the premise of my initial post. I see a plus in a decrease of import dependent food and one way to accomplish that is to boost productions. More is certainly quantifiable.
You'll get no argument from me that there was an abundance of resources pre-contact. We have successfully killed off buffalo, dammed and changed river flows that have killed off salmon runs. Over fished the oceans. Polluted clean water. I unfortunately don't think reverting to that lifesstyle is a practical option until your prayed for collapse occurs.

Ok,you build a swale and increase production but if you used more calories to build it then you get out of it,you are technically moving backwards.Without the bigger picture,I personally find the information(what%)useless because my value system is placed on whole system caloric efficiency(sustainability),not increasing one component of the equation while hiding the rest.I also agree that some(mainly local)transfer of nutrients is healthy but where do we draw the line.Most small organic farms I have worked on use fences,greenhouses,tractors,and hoses.Last I checked,these are all manufactured using oil from the other side of the planet.I dont accept the term`locally grown`when the majority of the calories used are supplied from afar and I dont accept that someone produced something themselves when large oil corp.did most of the work.I agree that much land must be repaired first and that is going to be at an initial caloric loss and what better thing to use up our excess calories and time on.Unfortunatly,most calories used in food production are not for long term repair,but for maintenence of a system with no long term plan to exit dependence.That said,moving perennial plants around to do that work for you seems very efficient.Shifting nutrients from one place to another is not going to solve the larger problem.

Thanks for your insight rose.The natives here avoided denuding the hillsides be managing wild animals and by having a complex multi-generational managment culture that dicouraged short term exploitation for quick gain.Family units`owned` gathering areas and constantly improved upon.Moving from annual dependence to tree crops takes investments in a future you might never get to and therefore are short term caloric expences with long term results.Our present culture exploites the present with no regard to future generations so annual production is the order of the day.

Mt Goat,
What you are leaving out of your model is that the pre-contact people were not individuals but familly units and nuclear tribes. Unfortunately there are few family units that are cohesive in todays economy as it was pre-machine age. The building of a swale would not be an ongoing caloric expenditure. Once it is constructed it continues to boost production. an initial outlay of work followed by a bonus in production. Each harvest paying on the caloric expenditure. As with any use of an outside import it's longevity of use should be looked at and considered. A greenhouse that lasts 10 years should have it's caloric cost/impact spread out over it's life. A quality tool that lasts is worth it's cost if it boosts production and reduces impact.
I see the future as a half full glass and increasing local or individually produced calories from crops as a repairative step towards a future for me that will hopefully be long and productive. A collapse in the future perhaps, either way individual production on land one has control of shouldn't be dismissed as inconsequential. At what point does your circle of
gathering grounds become calorically challenged? Living in the PNW is quite different than living in Colorado let's say.  The PNW is a great place to live and it would be far easier to maintain what you propose in that coastal area than Christmas Valley.

Certain structural inefficiencies in the currently imposed social organization model(famililial/landuse)make it impossible to presently be sustainable.Its like trying to prune a tree with root rot.The problem is deeper.A Swale might pay off calorically but its an example of how hard it is to quantify production without natural limits on outside inputs.Is a wild animal "your own"if you manage the ecosystem.Does gathering berries from a burned hillside count as `growing` them.The question implys `on your property`by how its framed.I am not advocating for anywhere other than my watershed.Which is why I only deal with theory on this site.Specifics are just that-specific.Personally,I dismiss individual production as inconsequential if it operates at a major caloric loss.Whatever technique they are using will ultimatly be phased out by neccessity and therefor is not worthy of study in my short lifetime.

Mt Goat.  We just aren't going to agree it seems.
Gluttony would be a caloric loss if we use that model  as a guage.
Barring our disagreement of the ability to make a gathering circle sustainable and calorically responsible and a permaculture homesite doing the same.
What percentage of food do you produce currently?
Gather currently?

I currently have 15ac in nut production but its all been planted within the last 5 years.I picked 150lbs of hazels(60lbs wild)from a u-pick this year(and have for 10yrs).I harvested 4 select deer off the road which I will continue as long as I can.I have 20+ac under managment with wildlife for hunting and trapping in mind.I work at at farm down the road(in the good soil) 3 days a year for my winter carrots,onions,and squash.I meet all of my greens needs through perennials and tree crops.I gather over 500#of native fruit for seed a year but sell it all.Quantify that!I gather 200#of winter fruit for my own needs.I avoid grains and beans but still use imported spices(2ac in shrub spice production)Ive never bothered to do the numbers cause like I said earlier,its  meeningless info to me.The #s are so subjective that Ive met people who said 80% but I would peg at 10%and thats just on the surface.Since most systems operate at a caloric loss ,Ive seen people grow -200%of their calories.

Mt Goat,
Impressive with those numbers it appears that you should be 100% sustainable locally, other than the spice.
That is something quantifiable. Probably more intense farming than pre-contact indigenous people. Impressive effort none the less.
Does an orchard that is not up to full production have a caloric loss or gain? At what point would an orchard from planting to harvest your of size 15ac reach a caloric plus?

I should mention that I import cooking oils as well but have some energy invested into oil producing shrubs besides nuts and that I operate in a gift economy with my friends so I am not forced to eat just roadkill and nuts and I also have a cutural/comfort relationship with easy calories and so probably end up consuming more starch in the form of grains than I like to admit.The nut tree question is of urgent importance because the caloric return on a nut tree takes place between 20 and 40yrs of age.This takes money,time,and land as well as forsight.All without any return for many years.Should society start to crumble,people will find themselves without the surpluss neccesary to plant stuff with such a long term yeild.NOW is the time to plant nut trees.As collapse starts,we will have some time to adapt to meeting our imediate needs but we will not have time to implement long term goals.

I only produce fruit and as jam is too sweet for my teeth and fattening i dont eat it when i cook it so that a bit of  a problem,this year i didot get round to cooking it. I suppose another way out woudl be to invest in a big freezer and freeze stewed fruit and purees.
i have just started trying vegetables, have acutualy grown a few turnips and they were deliciouse an dnot too sweet and juicy I ate them raw and hope to have some salad plants. I have thrown seed all round the garden and see lentils or chickpeas coming up everywhere and a cabbage or two and a pea or two
    . In madrid in th ekitchen i Have managed to grow some small plants from the seeds of the vegetables i bought to eat, tomatoes and aubergine and ksome melons. Its a bit early for the plants but not too early to start experimenting.
I only learn if i experiment. Agri rose macaskie.

We're in the very fortunate position of being able to provide almost all of our own food and food for all our animals and we eat a lot of game in the winter. We buy or swop beef, wine, cereals and other produce.

I sometimes buy onions and potatoes if we don't have enough and I regularly buy rice, pasta, quinoa and other cereals. I buy citrus fruit and a lot of other exotics like avocados and bananas.

When we go shopping, it's an occasion and we buy whatever we see that looks just for a treat. 

I'd guess 40%...but that's not including the fact that we sometimes buy feed in winter for chickens. I say sometimes because we have a local theatre with an open dumpster and huge bags of popcorn come out of it weekly-when we go to town...It's a SWEET free meal for the chickens (and I just try not to think of the chemistry in the toppings...)
We grow all our greens and sweet potatoes and white potatoes, which we eat a LOT of...eggs from the chickens...I can really only eat chicken and turkey-we have heritage breed turkeys who eat popcorn as well.
We don't really buy (and I don't eat) red meat, but we get fresh leavings from hunters and road-kill deer, and the infrequent possum or rabbit that wanders into our garden.
I can't eat dairy-so that's easy, but hubby buys a block of cheese once in a while.
I also can't eat wheat or other grasses, so I do buy quinoa, amaranth, and buckwheat, which hubby refuses to eat unless it's about to go to the chickens.
We do buy olive oil, bananas sometimes, lemons & limes, and avocados, but I try really hard not to BUY much tropical stuff since it's traveled so far. We go pick oranges at a friends farm in FL every year (just a couple of hours a way) we are in GA) for a cut of what we pick...We buy apples on our annual fall trip to Asheville...
I do right now buy dried blueberries and cherries, although we have several fruit bushes and trees in that we hope will take up for those purchases soon.  We also have peaches and persimmons already.
We buy nuts from a friend who sells pecans, or pick them up around that farm...
If we have to buy we try to buy local, and try to eschew all but the most necessary goodies...Olive oil, lemons and avocados. I also can no longer eat chocolate, nor drink coffee-but hubby gets coffee from a local fair trade company (company is local-coffees' from central America.)
Hubby is a bit fanatical about raising it himself, as much as possible, but I guess that's a good thing!

Isabel

Wife is gluten intolerant so I understand the  the need to buy other digestively friendly grains.
Have just begun cheese making and have had some good results.
Blue berries, huckleberries and black berries are all close by in the forests near us in addition to the berries we grow ourselves.

not nearly enough, but i eat a load of wild food

i also regularly inspect Trader Joe's dumpster

i don't spend more than 5 bucks a week on food

this season i am going to try for growing and gathering all of my food

besides a few supplements

The fruit trees i have planted are by the house.  I have a photo of several and as paul Wheaton is so concerned about hippies who do nothing  I think I ought to show every small bit  of something I have done.
  Here left to right there is, a small persimmon  and behind and indistinguishable two peaches, a decorative plum that produces plums if you remember to look really early in the year, I planted it to make my husband feel at home his fathers country home has one.  Plums get a thick trunk really quickly one of theirs grew and got an impressive trunk in ten or fifteen years, it was were all their lawn  mowings are left maybe they helped it grow . A tamarix that is not a fruiting tree but a desert one that holds dunes and has really long roots and is in many varieties a salt resistant tree sweating salt from glands on the branches. A olive and somewhere imperceptible here behind other things a mulberry., and their leaves are good for forage, as much according to the Spanish collector of information on the uses of trees Juan Oría de la Rueda,  as because  a Chinese article on the web says they are, it talks of mulberries leaves serving  to feed the silk worms in spring and the sheep in autumn,  behind them is an umbrella pine that will give nuts agri rose macaskie.

I am going to post a picture of the decorative plum i flower becxause jennifer smith said she wanted to see pictures of gardens. Fruit trees are great when they are in flower. as well as producing fruit. rose.

Does bettering your soil count as production, here is a picture of the roots of a small blue flowerd clover i left in my garden to help it have more organic matter and because clover is a nitrogen fixing plant. This comes into the restraining you hand type doing, not weedin git up . i think the length of the root is interesting.
  The foto does not even get the whole thing in, not that itsz like a redwood or anythign it would hav ebeen possible to stand back a bit.  rose