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.

I used the sheet mulching method of creating these garden beds. That means I did not dig into the soil. Instead, I knocked back any growth that was coming up through the soil. Next, I laid down large sheets of cardboard. Then I piled on an inch or two of composted manure. Finally, I added a heavy layer of straw.

I made a giant suntrap-style keyhole garden bed on the back half of my warren. The beds form a “U” shape and faces the direction of the sun (south). Keyhole beds are a space-saving technique, and they’re more visually appealing than straight garden beds. I think my design looks like the underside of a leaf with the veins being the walking space.

There are two apple trees to the north of this U, and two peach rootstocks to the west. Eventually I’ll get another couple of trees planted to the west, and fill in the space between trees with shrubs like hazelnuts and raspberries. The U will eventually be planted with perennial vegetables.

The front garden beds (pictured below) will be planted with annual vegetables. I hope to fill these beds with seedlings that folks give away. There are usually plenty of extras to go around. I can’t say for sure what will end up in these beds, but so far I have some onions, walking onions, early cabbage, and broccoli, all of which I got for free.

They are easy to build and cost next to nothing. You can make a very simple three-sided design or get fancy with a gate that opens and closes.

Here’s how you can build your own recycled pallet compost bin for $15.

I have just barely begun with gardening. Today I hauled three wheelbarrows full of manure from our neighbor’s land to add to a new garden bed I am making. (It’s a long haul from the next door pasture… I can’t do many more than three runs like that.)

I plan on doing extensive sheet mulching. For this first bed (which will be more like three keyhole beds, side by side), I laid down one layer of cardboard directly on top of the ground, and soaked the cardboard before I laid down the manure. The manure is actually a tiny bit frozen still, so tomorrow I will break up the bigger pieces, and lay down a foot of straw. After that, I’ll add some topsoil, and then a dash more of straw.

I’m not sure what I’ll be planting in this bed yet. I haven’t bought any seeds, in hopes that I will be able to score free seeds and starts from folks around here. (Usually people end up giving away lots of extra seedlings when the time comes.)

This bed and the other two in the front of my house will be devoted to annuals — eventually, I will plant perennial vegetables in the rear garden.

I am toying with the idea of starting a gardening/permaculture blog to document my food-growing exploits. I think as soon as I have a name for it I’ll be more inspired to start it. My gardening experience is limited, so this blog would detail my experiences learning to grow food.

On Thursday and Friday, Tamar and I inoculated fifty logs with shiitake mushroom spawn. Shiitake logs generally fruit within six to nine months of being inoculated, so I’m expecting we’ll be swamped with delicious fungus come this fall if all goes well in the mycorealm. Mm, I love me some mushrooms. I hope to do some further mushroom inoculating this spring. Shiitakes are totally worth the effort, because the logs will continue to produce food for years to come (up to eight years or so), without any continuing labor required. The initial work investment is pretty significant, but again, totally worth it, I think.

We had some amazing weather before the current storminess, and I was able to get some plastering work done on my house. I’ve also cleaned up my warren in preparation for making some sheet-mulched garden beds. I’ve acquired a boatload of cardboard that I’ll lay down to help smother the grass.

Earlier in the week, I visited the Possibility Alliance and hung out with their goats, and got the mental gears going in envisioning a goat operation here at Dancing Rabbit. Thomas is pretty sold on the venture, so if all goes well, we’ll have two little does in late spring.

Life’s pretty good right now. I’m excited to continue work on my cob house and move in, and continue on some of the other projects I have in mind.

First, there’s the cob house, which takes up 360 of those square feet or so, positioned in the middle of the (vaguely) rectangular space. My ultimately goal is to be surrounded by food, or more specifically, to have a bustling food forest to the north of my home, with other food plants scattered about. The food forest will eventually feature up to half a dozen fruit trees, a variety of shrubs (hazelnuts, berries), perennial vegetables, and mushrooms.

Then there’s the three annual garden beds I want to plant at the front of my warren, and the herb spiral I want to stick in somewhere. And then there’s the pepper bed I want to plant in front of my house (the peppers should like the extra heat that bounces off the south wall).

Did I mention I need storage space for firewood and building materials, hang out space, and I want to build to an outdoor oven somewhere nearby? And have potential outdoor cooking space?

Well, you get the idea. These days, I’ll often walk around my warren and try to visualize everything I want to do, and how to fit it all in, without being crowded or disorderly. I want to talk a permacultural approach to designing my living space so that everything flows well.

I’m already toying with the idea of getting additional space and how that could play into the overall scheme.

Whatever becomes of the space, I’m excited to see how the space will continue to change throughout the upcoming year.