The Food Forest area of the farm is a large-scale permaculture orchard for sale and processing. It is not part of the Pick-your-own Zone. Under/between the fruit and nut trees, small berry shrubs and other perennial plants grow. It is not groupings of monocultures, more like a semi-organized forest. Hugelkultur high beds with annual crops for production harvest may also be part of the planning of this zone.
Food that falls on the ground in the food forest will feed wildlife and possibly managed pigs, chickens or other animals will have rotations onto it as needed for cleanup.
The trees are kept short enough for hand harvesting from the ground wherever possible. The pruning methods are modeled after those of Paul Gautschi’s Back to Eden orchard, where the trees grow about 8-10 feet tall, but the weight of the fruit brings the branches down into easy picking range.
The location of this area should be somewhere relatively close to home base, but also where it can easily be expanded according to production needs.
My Homestead Odyssey 