Let the old-man-trail begin.

Welcome back guys. It is the fall and this is one of my favorite times of the year. It's where my mind gets racing about all the expansions that I can do and where I'm going to extend my food forest, join them together and really go crazy. Listen, I need to tell you how much of an idiot I am because I woke up the other day when I was thinking about how I wanted to design this space and I woke up at one in the morning and we went to bed around 11. So I went to bed at 11, woke up at one and I couldn't stop thinking about how I wanted to walk around that place where I would put leaf bags. It's stupid. So three o'clock rolls around and I'm thinking I'm not going to get back to bed. I have to get up, go downstairs, watch a permaculture video or something like that and fall asleep to it. Well, I didn't. So I didn't fall asleep at all. So I got like two hours of sleep that day because I was thinking and I couldn't stop thinking about how I'm going to make this land amazing and I don't know if you guys get that but I get that all the time and I think it's a good thing but it's kind of really annoying because the other day I was going off of two hours of sleep. Now one of the areas that kind of bothers me on my property only because I know it's not at its potential is this lower area here. The reason why is because some of these food forest strips, I haven't put as much effort into them as the ones closer to the house. Now that doesn't mean that I can't continue to expand them though. The areas up near the house are pretty much done. I kind of can't put any more plants in without pushing into the grass. I'll push into the grass a little bit but down here I've got a little more room. So I'm going to really radically change this space in the next year. So when you're thinking of designing a space think about what of which of those elements are going to be permanent. Which ones are going to stay. That could be a hill, it could be rocks, it could be a house, a shed. Think about what stuff is going to stay and design around those. So down in this lower area the key elements that I want to design around are these gorgeous massive cedars, a huge maple over there, and these wild apple trees. Obviously the food forest strips that I've started, the wild apple trees here and here, and the cluster in the back. I'm going to use these as part of the anchoring design and I'll show you how I go about tying it together. Right now if you look at this space it's basically mowed. This used to be a wild jungle you couldn't even walk down here and I wanted to open it up. Now I'm actually thinking of closing it back in which is kind of ironic. But I spend too much time running a gas powered lawnmower in this area and I'm not getting a lot of value out of it other than just a nice place to look. I can kind of do better than that and close it in with more food and bushes and have the walking paths only one lawnmower thick. So let's talk about how I'm going to do that. Okay so what I actually did is I actually pulled it up in Google Satellite and kind of sketched on roughly where I think I can put paths and then based on where those paths are where I would use food forest strips to block the walker myself when I'm older. Block the walker and force them along those paths. It ends up giving you an idea of kind of these islands, these food forest strips and food forest islands that you need to create inside of it. Okay so let's talk about this area here. Let's situate ourselves. The cedar forest is there. This goes to the back 40 of my property and it also kind of curls back up and comes to the wetland. So this is where the entrance into this lower area is. We've got my kind of compost set up over there which I might move. We've got a nice clear open sunny spot. So this is going to be prime time real estate for plants. Then we've got some permanent elements. We've got these apple trees here. We've got the apple trees there and then the pawpaw guilds. We've got the big cedars like I said and up here we've got the pond and the house. So we're going to tie all this together and let's show how that's going to happen. So what I wanted to do is because this is a design aspect that's set in stone. This is the entrance or exit into this area. I know there's going to be a path coming out through here. So what I want to do is have it where the path meanders and wanders as much as possible and the user's kind of stuck forced to walk through the path instead of here where they can kind of walk wherever they want. So it's going to come out here along the side of this wood chip path and then along the back side of these apples and then you're going to circle around the apple and be forced to come right back through the middle of this area here. So what that means or through the outside. So what that means basically is in order to do that I take this design point here and I extend this with a food forest strip as fat as possible to allow the mower to get right down until it basically comes right in to the cedar exit. So the user is basically walking this way. So it'll join right into these sumacs and then connect into this side of those woods. So then the user is walking out this way and they're surrounded by food forests on both sides. So in terms of my functional design what I need to do is add a strip from these apple trees connecting in to the entrance of this just to the one side of it so that we're walking on the other side of it. Okay so back up here because we're walking around the apples and coming back this way what that means is on this side of the path I need trees. So what we're going to do here is talk about this lower area. So this lower area the permanent feature is the cedar trees. So what we're going to do is same idea we're going to connect this cedar tree to the maple in a food forest strip and then we're going to connect a food forest strip right across this sunny area. A big band that's going to follow right in and hit the cedar trees there and what that's going and it'll kind of fan out like this. When we're pulling across this strip what we're actually going to do instead of just having it be a strip we're going to fan it out and we're going to run it into these trees here and what that's going to do so we're going to kind of connect all this and we'll do a huge food forest in here. So it'll be a very wide food forest strip and what that'll do is when we're coming around this apple here we're going to come around the apple we're going hit the food forest that I'm standing on and we're going to be forced to come this way through this walking path. So I've never really taken you down here so let's go walk down here and show where this goes. Okay so this turns around and this is just sumac area that I basically just mow. What do we have here just fallen bark I thought it was an animal and this goes up to the bramble hedge raspberries of one of my swales where I have the cherry trees. This is where the deer come in so in this area here we've got sumac and we've got apples and it's these apple trees that I graft the late season apples for food for the deer. So I actually kind of know that I'll have some deer walking through here and I want to feed them because if they're eating my grafted apples on the wild apple trees they're going to leave my actual trees alone. If they have apples to eat they're not going to chew on an actual tree and you know eat the wood and take it right down. Now they might because you know animals are stupider than you think but especially if I have a late season grafted apple that you know late in the season there's still an apple on that tree it'll probably choose to eat the apples instead of the trees. Okay so this area here we're going to walk up and we're going to cut into these woods here and we're going to use some of this space. So we'll cut in here this is just completely wild space with sumac apple and cedar and then wild grapevines growing up it. So we'll tie this in and connect it into the the pond area as well we'll pull a path down here to circle around these apple trees. These are very tall wonderful apple trees here actually that put on a ton of apples and they're massive wild. So we'll come out around here so we can get in and use this space and then we'll circle around this apple tree that again wild and currently not being used very much. We'll circle around and then we can kind of do a loop and we can go back out. All right so re-situating ourselves around here we're going to walk on this side and we're going to go around that apple tree if you remember and we're doing that because we're going to put a wall food forest strip right here blocking. It's really important that you block a long a long view of the person so you have these curving paths and the path disappears around a curve. It really really makes you feel like you're lost inside something special. So we're going to do that and because of that something interesting happens with these pawpaws an apple little sub guild. They're going to turn from strips into this really really nice s-shape. So let's kind of walk that. Okay that one strip that I'd said we're going to connect in when we're coming up this way we're going to come up around we're going to go under that tree around and then we're going to come back this way and now we're on the other side of this strip. We've leaped over to the other side so we're going to be walking along this and we'll extend this out so then kind of tie it in so that we're forced to kind of walk in an s-shape. So we're going to walk the side of these pawpaws and come out over here around these briar thorns that I can graft pears to. I've got a serviceberry tree that I've planted in here that will one day become you know replace these ashes that are dying. So we'll walk around here and then now we are coming back in through the middle of the pawpaws and we're going to walk and we're going to wrap ourselves around the apple now. So now we're on the other side of this apple where we're curling around it coming out of the cedar forest. We've added that long strip in so now when we're walking through here we're actually going to hit a wall of food forest trees right around here and we're going to force the person to walk, the person being me again, to walk around these apple trees and come back this way through the other side of this pawpaw area and as this fills in and as these pawpaws get bigger and as they runner and sucker and the new ones come up and as I add in more bush layers this will kind of close in and hopefully ideally you won't be able to see through that much into this other area. Some of my other videos like where I have the Jerusalem artichoke swales you really get that feeling like you're inside a little tunnel and I really want more of that. So then we come out on the other side of the pawpaw and we'll use this tree here to kind of wrap ourselves around and make our way into this other garden or maybe wrap around it and connect into this element. So let's talk about this area. Okay so the objects of permanence that I'm keeping here are the pawpaw tree, this I believe it's an ash tree that's healthy but I need to double check it but this is a fairly healthy tree here and then you know the cedars up here that will have the food forest strip coming out of them. So what we'll actually do here is connect in a food forest area here that will join into this pawpaw and make a wall so you have to walk around the tree and then it will continue out in a strip all along this where that barrel is and connect in to the other side of the exit point this path here. So similar to that cedar path where we're connecting into the opposite side of it the food forest strip will come here it'll come right around and it'll connect into the far side of it so when someone's walking down this path they're hitting a food forest strip they're forced to turn and walk walk under these wild apple trees walk around this forage food forest trees here and then come in the back side of that pawpaw snake their way through it around here through the other side and then around and like that we'll kind of walk around and use this space and we'll be using the sunny areas of this grass much better. So the sunniest areas of this lower area will turn into food forest and food production trees and the shadier spots kind of turn into paths and will wind the person through this so this whole area is maybe only a quarter of an acre but it'll feel because you're winding around and you're surrounded by these trees it'll feel huge you'll be able to walk through this area and through this land foraging you know just with a morning coffee and just going for a walk when I'm 70 years old I'll be able to walk and wind my way through this area it's a quarter acre but it might take me 30 minutes to walk it. All right so that is a lot of cardboard and a lot of wood chips that I need a lot of time so we're actually going to try something interesting with this one right now as you know from my previous video it's leaf season one thing that leaf season is actually also good for is that the leaves come in bags those bags can be layered on top of each other to form the cardboard smothering layer and then also the leaves if left unshredded can actually smother the grass out very well as well so just dumping leaf bags on a place that you maybe don't need for say two years or maybe three years until you plant into it can be a really quick dirty easy way to sheet mulch a large area very fast low effort and there's tons of free material right now that I'm going to go get so when I say I'm going to join this cedar to this maple and we're going to do a food forest strip right down connecting into where this ash tree is and it's got some oaks planted at its base connecting in and driving right in down there and then we're going to take another one connect these apple trees with a food forest strip down there when I'm talking about those strips I'm going to go make them now in a quick and easy way by basically just bringing tons of leaf bags in so we're going to dump the leaves out put the leaf bags on take the next bag dump the leaves on top of the bag put the next bag there take the next bag dump the leaves out on that bag put that next bag there and we'll quickly sheet mulch this whole area and by quickly I mean over a weekend or several weekends but I'm growing a quarter acre future food forest in this area so it's a ton I'm probably going to almost add another 50 percent to my food forest strip areas that I have right now so it's an absolute monster undertaking but I'll spread it out over a couple years of decomposing but I'll do the sheet mulching now and I'll set it up now I've got the design kind of in my head now and we'll just basically cover these areas with leaves let the leaves in the bag strangle the grass out turn into soil you've seen in my leaf video the kind of rich fungal soil that that will make and then we'll look for deals for plants and we'll just as we get a deal like Grimo Nut Nursery had on right now I got some pecan trees some cold hardy pecan that I'm going to put up into the garden area there turn that into permanent place not annual beds and I'll move the annual beds up closer to the house so we're going to look for those kind of deals get nice cheap trees and then we're also going to propagate our own plants and fill in the area so I can kind of tinker and tweak with this area over the next decade or so it doesn't all have to happen right away and if I ever get any deals or someone ever drops by my house and says hey do you want this bush I got extras or I dug something up to put a patio in I got that bush you know I have somewhere that's already transitioning to fungal dominated soil that I can just plug it in so that's the idea here we're going to set these beds up because they're leaves and because they might mat a bit they're not going to go as quick as say a compost cardboard wood chip area which is maybe about a three month to six month process the leaf bags they might not be a great place to plant for maybe at least say two years but I can do all the work in a couple weekends and then I can do the planting maybe a year or two years from now and it'll be wonderful and we'll tie in the pond this lower area the upper food forest strip and we'll tie it all together so it's one continuous walk and you're never outside of a little food forest tunnel okay so maybe that was a bit of glimpse into madness and you know the way that I think when I'm designing a space so you can kind of get down there and look at the space and another thing that's really handy about this area is that I've observed it over several spring and winters and I know where the water collects so I know where walking paths should be I know where wet loving species like elderberries should go I know where dry loving species or well-drained species like many herbs that are you know typical Mediterranean where they get really wet winters but then dry summers so I know where different micro areas for water are on this property and I can use that in my design so think about when you're designing your space think about what are the permanent elements that are in your system that you want to keep where do you want to walk where do you want to force your eyes to look while you're walking around wall-off areas I know it sounds weird but wall-off areas with a food forest strip and that gets the person when you're walking around there to focus on what's around them they're looking at the trees that are two feet in front of them instead of looking way down 80 foot yards straight as an arrow strip of trees it really changes the aesthetics from a man-made aesthetic to something that existed in a human cut their way through it in order to forage off their land that's the aesthetic I want I don't really want like an orchard aesthetic I don't want trees at exactly 30 foot spacings where I'm walking down a straight arrow it just doesn't feel the same to me as something that winds and turns and really restricts your vision to what's right in front of you so think about what you like design that in think about the permanent elements that are in your design and then tie it all together sketch it up walk the land figure out if that's what you want to do and then just get going dump leaf bags where the food forest is going to go get that soil turning over for like a year or two and just expand your time scale you don't have to get it all done today but you should get started today so go get started leaves are everywhere stop watching this video and go collect some thanks for watching and I'll see you on the next one so today is going to be about grabbing leaves so there's 72 bags from earlier or 52 I believe that was 52 we've got 72 there and we've got and we got another 72 back there so we're going to go out I think I'm probably going to need about 500 to 1000 bags so enough video let's go get busy again see on the next one I always say that and add a little bit extra see on the next one guys