Our food forest is taking off!

Starting a food forest is a thrilling, but daunting undertaking. We had just spent hours creating brick walls around our garden areas the year before when Ricky excitedly shared his plan to remove the bricks, fill in the entire area with compost, and create a food forest. I was excited at the idea too, but what about all of the time spent setting up the garden that we had? What about the hours it would take to haul the compost and spread it out? What about the cost of seeds, berry bushes, and trees to fill in the food forest? And the time, oh, the time required! And, most importantly, would we EVER finish our home remodel???

When we told people what we were planning, most people would pause before saying, "Wow...that's...a pretty big undertaking..." (which is pretty much what we heard in response to our property in general, to be honest.) And it was. We bought a piece of property that was covered in old growth Scotch broom and blackberry brambles, with a double wide mobile home that had been absolutely trashed by renters as it's crowning glory. Oh, and did I mention that our soil is basically just sand? Our hidden gem was indeed very, very deeply hidden in some respects. But there was the beautiful view and huckleberries in great abundance, and that was what stole our hearts.

So, we bought the place and lived in a fifth wheel while we cleared some of the land in a way that would make it usable, got our animals situated, and made the house at least livable. Ricky and his brother put together a greenhouse, we planted a small garden, and so the obvious next step was to put in a whole food forest, right...? Well, for us, it was. We like to eat as clean as possible, which has the potential to get expensive in a hurry. Besides that, we had already experienced a few small successes in our gardening efforts, which was enough to prove that the payoffs of the harvest are well worth the investment required to make it happen. Our gardening experiences have been fraught with problems of many kinds, but there were enough positive results to urge us to persevere. The food forest keeps on creeping over more and more of our 1.2 acres. We keep on adding just one more tree...or fifteen. One more propagated start. And, oh, so many seeds! But now, when the ground begins to warm up, we are blessed with so many options without any prompting from us. The miner's lettuce, kale, and German chamomile are welcome friends after the winter months. The early sprouting purple broccoli feels like an old friend now, too. Basically we just keep on planting and planting, and the plants that do well in our climate make themselves at home, and we are ever so happy to have them.