Over the past twenty years The Land has become a wonderful place for wildlife and recreation. During this time, we have spent significant time building access roads and trails, ponds, doing forest improvement thinning, and improving mast production. These improvements have increased recreational opportunities like swimming and hiking and have created access to all areas of the property for work and observation.  While I don’t have any hard data to give you, the result has been that wildlife populations and diversity have increased over the last 20 years. Plantings, specific clearings, and edge creation have caused bird populations to increase, small mammals, like squirrels, are now regularly seen, ruffed grouse and turkey sightings are not uncommon, and deer are ubiquitous.

My next hope for The Land is to make it more productive in terms of quality human food for myself, my family and my friends, and less importantly yield products that will be income producing in the future.  With that in mind, the next big project on The Land will be to create a Food Forest on an approximately one half acre field created about five years ago when we dug a second pond.

The Land is located in the northern temperate zone, growing zone 4 to 5, at an average elevation of 1900 feet. The field is approximately 300 feet long and varies from 60 to 100 feet in width.  It has an uneven elevation gain of 19 feet from the

Pond and Field, south is at the bottom.

northern tip of the pond to the top of the field.  The field is oriented almost due north/south. The field is in Permaculture zone 2, about 500 feet from the house. The pond is stocked with a variety of minnows and shiners, Koi, Catfish and Blue Gills, with plans to add either Perch or Walleye in the future. The four small red maples, shown in the picture, in a line from south to north are no longer there.  I cut them down for firewood because they were in the way of the field design and were not healthy, having not taken the clearing of the field well.

The soil in the field is shallow, rocky with clay beneath.  The soil tends toward acidity and the current grasses and ground cover are acid loving.    Over the past 5 years we have planted about 10 fruit trees in the field.  Of those 7 remain: 2 Elberta Peach, and 5 apple; 2 Cortland and 1 each Yellow Delicious, Lodi, and Red Jonathan.  The Cortland started fruiting this season. There is one “structure” in the field, a Peace Pole set in a 10 foot diameter rock garden.

The field and pond are completely surrounded by young woods (60 to 80 years of old field succession) with Black Cherry, Red Maple, Beech, Birch, Pin Cherry and Aspen being the predominant species.  The specific edges of the field are: on the south the pond, one the north a road I would like to keep open, on the west there is a partial “hedge” of Blackberry bushes, and on the east woods.

I believe this is a good description of the field where the Food Forest will be planted.  Next post will be about earthworks and planting.