Food Forests

Check out these 3 videos.  A 30 year old food forest from Australia, a 300 year old forest in Vietnam and a 2,000 year old food forest in Morocco. Why not take some design tips from Mother Nature?   

Let's be honest.  The Western approach to agriculture is egocentric and superfluous. This gardening system requires plants to be almost completely dependant on human and mechanical activity.  It's extremely labour intensive with a dependency on chemical fertilizers and irrigation. Basically it's drug pushing.  And, the plants are annuals so this process needs to be repeated from beginning to end EVERY year. 

30 year food forest

In many of the other countries around the world, food crops become naturalized and develop into there own ecosystem, requiring very little human aid to keep this structure functioning.  Medicinal plants grow throughout this system and ultimately these "food forest" floors become something similar to a first aid kit.  These plots of valuable land are passed on from generation to generation.  Each generation is taught how to handle the plants on the property and learn their purpose.  Chickens and livestock also become part of this matrix and run freely fertilizing the soil. 

300 year old food forest

2,000 year old food forest

A Rose So Sweet

The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying:

And this same flower that smiles today

To-morrow will be dying

by Robert Herrick

My good friend Sarah was kind enough to make me this beautiful cream coloured shopping tote with a rose print. I sat outside on my patio yesterday admiring the shock of pink of the climbing rose bush that just recently budded out.  I can see why roses have been the inspiration for music, poetry and art work for centuries.