Food Forests, Pizza Ovens, and Rooftop Strawberries

Here’s a recent article (well, I wrote it several months ago) that I wrote that was featured in the newest March Hare, Dancing Rabbit’s quarterly newsletter. It touches upon my plans and hopes and dreams of my food future at Dancing Rabbit, and how I’d like to see food culture grow and develop. Here ya go:

Food Forests, Pizza Ovens, and Rooftop Strawberries

2009 marks the year I start to seriously think about food. If 2008 was the Year of Mud, let 2009 be the first Year of Food. I’ll start off with saying that I adore food. Not only do I love the flavors and sensations associated with a good meal, but the act of eating, and how food is grown, and food culture are all of major interest to me.

Although I will be devoting at least a couple of months to finishing up work on my cob house, I want to take some preliminary steps towards growing and producing some of my own food this 2009. Currently, I eat with the lovely folks of Bobolink, Skyhouse’s all-vegan food co-op. I thoroughly enjoy eating with Bobolink, but I want to start to venture towards growing my own food and crafting a more intensive local foods diet (including dairy, which I do miss being part of Bobolink).

Thus I will embark on a (potentially lifetime) quest to start growing my own food. (There is some talk of starting a new subcommunity / food co-op, but let’s keep that aside for now). Additionally, I’m also thinking more about how and where I will be cooking this food. There are several key components in this grand mission, some of which are in the very beginning stages.

The start of a Food Forest

After reading Toby Hemenway’s Gaia’s Garden, I feel a more confident grasp on the practicalities of permaculture, and I can more clearly envision planting a mini food forest to the north of my house, featuring up to half a dozen fruit trees, berry and nut shrubs, and perennial vegetables. This year, I expect to get all of my desired fruit trees in the ground, and perhaps a few shrubs, and beyond that I will sheet mulch the heck out of the warren and seed the beds with a variety of cover crops. The perennial vegetables will have to wait until at least next year.

To the south of my house, I have some space for a few annual vegetable beds, which I’ll probably fill with tomatoes, peppers, and a few other grab bag items. I hope to fill up much of the space with extra seedlings that folks give away.

Edible rooftop and an herb spiral

When my living roof is finished being built, I will seed it not only with native grasses, but hopefully a decent little patch of strawberries above the doorway. I love the idea of the strawberries eventually spreading out across the roof, and climbing a ladder to pick a handful whenever I want a little snack.

Once I gather enough bricks, I’ll begin laying out an herb spiral (which is effectively a spiraling, space-saving, and microclimate-promoting garden bed), planting it with some of my favorite food seasonings. (I like the idea of taking advantage of as many space-saving techniques as possible, since it’s a definitely a finite amount of land I have to work with.) At the very least, basil, dill, oregano, thyme, parsley, and rosemary will all be featured. I’m leaning heavily towards pizza-appropriate herbs, because one of the bigger projects I plan to take on this year will be building an outdoor cob oven…

Pizza in the outdoors

One of my favorite foods is brick oven pizza. (Growing up in northern New Jersey is good for at least that sort of thing. Consider me a bit spoiled, even.) I’ve told other folks that I plan to be making pizza regularly by mid-summer, and I hope to stick to my word. That’s where the outdoor cob oven comes in. What could be better than an outdoor oven for making piping hot pizzas and bread, and baking other goodies, not to mention slow-cooking stews and soups, and drying herbs? This oven might fit into an outdoor kitchen arrangement, which I’ve yet to put serious thought towards.

The bigger picture

It’s my belief that, overall, America is lacking a healthy and thriving food culture. We eat foods from all over the world, and there are questions about whether or not something is “good for us”. Without going into too much depth on this issue, I will say that it’s a long term goal (again, perhaps lifetime goal) to help craft a local foods diet and culture, based largely on grains, legumes, and vegetables that all grow in this bioregion, preferably grown by the sweat of our own brow. As a now-frighteningly globalized, industrialized, and consumerized society, Americans are largely clueless about how to produce their own food, or what we are even capable of growing on our land.

Who in this country is growing the entirety of their food? People eat processed breakfast cereal, order sushi for lunch, and tear open some plastic packages and heat up dinner in a microwave. I applaud any effort made to subvert this trend, but more important to me is going back to earlier roots: growing and gathering all of our own food, and cooking and preserving it year-round. Whatever we can’t grow should be traded for with neighbors in our local communities.

I think that permaculture plays a major role in my wish for a local food culture. Permaculture presents appealing methods and techniques for growing food in a more balanced, efficient, sustainable, and, for lack of a better word, more “natural” way, requiring less labor and outside energy inputs than other food production practices. Thus I will try my hand at putting ideas into action and hopefully work towards my ultimate wish of completely localized food production through permacultural strategies. (Let’s not forget about wild food foraging either, of course.)

Every less grain of wheat, black bean, or tomato that comes from land outside of Dancing Rabbit is a movement towards establishing a stronger local food culture. This first Year of Food and what I have outlined above is but a small step towards that delicious horizon.