This is just one tiny quarter of my food forest!!

Hey everyone, welcome back to the food forest. Do appreciate everyone's patience. Um, like I said earlier in the season, this year we're starting a new pickle ball facility and getting that up and running has been a pretty busy time of year. Uh, so I I haven't really been able to make too many videos. I've been kind of busy just um yeah getting business stuff going and then keeping on top of the food forest and the harvest and everything like that. We haven't really done any work in the food forest. So, one thing that I can kind of show you is is the value of building resilient food systems because, you know, I put in zero work into this and you just can't do that with an annual garden, but when you build in a perennial fashion, uh, stuff just kind of keeps making food. So, we've got some peaches. We've already probably pulled, I don't know, a couple hundred peaches at least off of uh this tree here on the on the corner here. And we've got a bunch of other ones in production. Uh this one is all done. And another nice thing about having different peaches, the varieties, for example, is that uh they are all ready in a different time. So those ones that I just showed you that are really big, they look ripe, but they're still hard actually. So, they uh they're probably about a good month behind some of the other trees. We've got another peach tree in there. Um that one's got a couple left on it. The Reliance peach. We've been eating those for about at least a month. At least a month now. These ones here are still hard as well. So, these ones got another couple weeks. These ones we can actually start eating some of them. That one was pretty good. And you just kind of squeeze them. See if they give a little bit. And then we've got another peach back in there if you can see it. And then we've got uh tons of seab buckthorns, different varieties. Chicksaya. Um I think this is a Chicksiah here. Those are getting loaded up. This is a wild variety. in there, the darker berry. Then look at this one. This one is just totally loaded up. This one actually has so much fruit on it that it's bending over. Look at that. So, it's kind of a really neat little plant actually. you know, the the bright orange fruit of that, the bright orange peaches. It's um it's a really colorful addition into a cold hearty food forest. We've actually got a couple peaches on the ground there. So, is this tree open? This is a veteran peach. Some of them, this one might be ready. It doesn't look that ready, but It kind of tastes like an apple. Say crunchy like an apple, but peach flavor. Probably about two weeks left on that. And you can just see the density of food that we have planted here. Some asparagus. So, some stuff we've been eating. Some pears in the background. And we always interlace wildflower trees. So, these aren't trees of heaven. These are stagghorn sumac. And we've let those kind of um attain a canopy as well. We've got some um apples coming as well. We've got our little swale here. You can see I just kind of stomp through here. So, it it's really a fun time of year. This is a Russian pear and it's like a Bartlett. We've got more apples here. So, you can just see the absolute density of our fruit. Very good. And then I like things like um birch trees as well. It's a great insect tree. So don't don't forget and don't neglect the insects. The insects are kind of what keep your pests at bay. So, when you do plant densely like this and you design in, you know, walking paths and you're trying to create a forest of food, not just an orchard, your pest defense is going to be your insects. So, don't neglect them. Make sure that you plant lots of flowers, um, lots of things like this lynen tree here. And this is all food for the insects. And the insect food, you know, even if it's not a predator insect, as long as it's a natural native insect that feeds off of a natural native plant, then it will What is she doing? Then uh it'll be a food source for other insects. So if you if you have native insects, you know, landing on your food forest trees, then that'll be food that will attract the predators. Those predators will not just eat those insects, the native ones. They'll eat a lot of the invasive insects as well, a lot of the pest insects that take your food away. And uh you know, and then you're not spraying herbicides all over your food. And as well, the solution is just more thorough. Um, you know, imagine me having to individually spray all of these fruit trees. It would just be impossible to keep track of. Um, individually bag all these pears, all the apples. It would just be impossible. I I couldn't stay ahead of that. Um, however, if I design a system where I've got golden rod growing underneath my pears, then I've got the insects kind of taking care of the job for me. And I'll lose the odd tree to uh overgrowth or I'll lose the odd tree to insects. Uh, but overall, the hardy ones will survive. It's kind of like the stun method from Mark Shepard. She sure total utter neglect. you know, the hardy stuff will survive and it'll outlast and uh I'll be rewarded with a very low maintenance, loweffort food system that you don't have to do anything. And I'm just pulling in thousands of dollars worth of food every single year with no effort anymore. All the effort was in the planting after that. It's just uh it's just free food. Sometimes loaded up so much that branches snap. So, this one actually broke because there was so much uh fruit on this branch and I thinned it quite a bit actually. So, the tree is just naturally pruning itself. I'll clean that up um in the end of the year. This tree's only got a couple years left and we've already got its successors planted in underneath it. You can see some of the protectors. Got a pawpa here. We've got a peach uh seedling growing out underneath that. So, when this tree dies, it'll give more room for some of these other peaches to expand into its open uh territory. And we're just constantly weaving in um new new plants like that. So, super super fun little hobby. Oh, and I think maybe the dogs pulled another peach off here. Grab this. Grab that and eat that, too. There's food everywhere. And we've also got a bunch of Asian pears. So, we don't just plant uh natives. I do plant the odd fruit that I do enjoy from, you know, other areas. So, some Asian pears and then we do also make sure that we spread seeds for stuff. Yeah. So, every fruit that I eat, the peach pits get planted, the apple seeds get thrown into ditches, uh, thrown into blank spots in my food forest, and that way we make sure that there's always something new growing. Uh, this right here actually is a a pear tree that was planted from uh, just throwing pear seeds in the ground and then letting it grow. So, probably next year we'll trim back some of this maple. We were using this maple as kind of a shelter for the tree. So, if I stand back, it's under this giant maple. It's under the drip edge of the maple. So, this is where rains will kind of come down and instead of missing the trees, now it's hitting this maple and dripping straight down. So, this edge, the drip edge of this large maple is kind of a a water concentration zone. Um, it's also, you know, dust that's landing on the leaves. The rain then grabs it and draws it down. That's actually fertility as well. There's microbiology that's sitting on those uh maple leaves as well that's getting drawn down. So, the edges of forest, the edges of trees are water, nutrient, microbiology concentration areas. So, we tend to plant a lot around those around those edges. we play in the edges. And then um we were allowing this to kind of nurse it with some shade. And then now that this tree is getting a little bit bigger, we'll cut this back a little bit, open up some light to that tree, and really let it thrive. These are some cutings of elderberry that we've allowed uh that we planted to grow. Um this is actually a box elder. I'll probably pull this out at some point or relocate it. We've got pawpa um seeds that we planted and we're just using this as a little nursery area as well. So, this we might pull it out in the winter time and move it to somewhere else, somewhere more productive. But for now, we're letting the shade of this maple kind of nurse this tree into into uh early health. And like I said, I've been snacking as we do the video. Mind my uh manners for eating while talking. Um, but yeah, we take this peach pit and we just throw it there. It'll possibly uh seed into something, grow into something later on. This is a lilac seabbuckthorn grape gild. So, the lilac uh we're using as a scaffold essentially, and it's holding up the grapes. And then we've got seabbuckthorn as a nitrogen fixer and healthy berry. And then it's also a thorny tree that prevents um any kind of pest pressure. And we've got grapes. Actually, we've got some grapes down in there. Let's just walk around. I'll show you these wonderful grapes that we've got. Make sure I don't step on some of the cherries that we're growing in there. Yeah, we've got these grapes growing right in there. So, little snack table grapes. Very, very delicious. So, everywhere you look in here, you know, you don't know what you're looking at. It looks like a bit of a wild mess, but there's food growing in there, and it's growing in a healthy way, in a way that nature uh tends to grow. Just uh yeah, a wild mess that I actually find beautiful. And because of that density, you know, we we actually have insects and life that we support. And we don't have to water everything because there's nice shading down in the ground layer. Our soil life is robust because we're allowing water to get down and stay down into the soils. There's a lot of really great benefits to planting in that wild crazy way. I'll tell you something. These grapes are so sweet. Oh, just like unbelievable. So tasty. And I do think it's because, you know, the the soil is just so healthy here. We're just allowing that natural forest soil to grow and really thrive in the in the way that we're in the way that we're growing our food. Even where you see like something that doesn't look like food, doesn't look, you know, you don't see pears and peaches here or anything. There is an apple there. Uh, but this whole patch is actually drew some artichokes. So, worst comes to worst, I can just dig down here and I've got essentially like uh perennial potatoes is what they're kind of taste like. Got tons of food here, more than I could ever want. And if times ever got tough, you know, I know exactly where to go to get free food if there there's nothing in the grocery store. And I always make sure I don't eat the last one. I always take it and I throw one or two or 10 somewhere where it'll spread. Yeah. And you wouldn't know this used to just be a grass lawn right up to an open road. You wouldn't know it. So, it's also this wonderful privacy sound barrier as well. Um, and I can kind of sit inside my forest that I've created and I'm literally right next to the road. probably heard a couple of the cars going by. Um, and then I'm snacking on fruit and everything in here. Every single thing is edible. So, I know I know that I can eat everything in here and I'm kind of just existing in this little hidden playground of a food forest. So, thanks for watching. Do something like this on your own property. I know it looks wild and crazy. Um, this used to be just open grass lawn, but now it's just food. Food. Peaches, pears, apples, plums, nectarine, seab buckthorn, elderberry, currants, blackberry, raspberry, blueberry, ucaps, so many different fruit, uh, nuts as well. Heartnut, bartnut, walnut, hazelnut, you know, just food everywhere. So, I hope you enjoyed this. Hope you consider doing something like this on your own property. Uh, getting access to some of the healthiest food on the planet, living healthy and happy and like a caveman in 2025. Thanks for watching.