Seven and a half minute run-time.
Pretty land. No big political messages. This guy is growing food in a tough climate/soil. From what I heard in this video, he seems to have his head screwed on straight. I could quibble about a few things he says but on-the-whole I like where he is coming from.
I'm convinced that you need to live on a property for about 20 years to really understand what will work best. It's all experimental until then.
ReplyDeleteWhen I moved to my farm 30 years ago, I marveled that my neighbor would never get too 'worked up' when extreme weather or circumstances came. Not that he wasn't concerned, but just that he didn't get too 'worked up'. After 20 years I finally understood why. He had already seen it all and knew how to get through it.
I whole-heartedly agree with the twenty-year time-frame.
DeleteMuch of the first ten years is "wasted" learning what you like as a fruit grower and what your family will eat.
Two notable mistakes I made starting out was to plant far too any varieties that ripened during the heat of the summer. The fruit tends to have very short time windows when it can be picked and I was fighting wasps and yellow-jackets. Sucks to be picking fruit when it is 90F outside.
The other mistake was to plant fruit that is "small".
A cherry might weigh three-to-the-ounce. A plum might weigh an ounce-and-a-half. A cluster of eastern grapes might weigh four-to-eight ounces. The typical apple or pear might run seven ounces and larger varieties will run 10 ounces each.
Picking one, 10 ounce apple is not that much more work than picking one, 0.3 ounce cherry. The bang-for the-buck is 30:1 in favor of the apple. Said another way, you might be able to pick 60 pounds of apples in ten minutes. Are you willing to spend hours to pick the same weight in cherries (especially since cherry trees tend to be large trees and picking is "ladder" work)? I am not. I draw the line at plums and persimmons at 1.5 ounces per fruit. The exception involves everybearing raspberries because they are kid-friendly.
But that is what you will be figuring out in your first ten years...what do YOU like/value and what kinds of aggravations are YOU willing to deal with.
While I hear you a few thoughts after seeing the video.
DeleteIf your blessed with deep rich soil you can plant many things. If you live on marginal stony New England lands you have to get creative.
Yes, we grow apples here. But they are planted in the deeper soil areas. When I planted mine, I had to do the proverbial 100 dollar hole for a 20 dollar apple tree. Plenty of organic materials and support for wind-snow as well as protection from deer.
Even then a few after struggling for a couple of year up and died. Thanks to you I learned to plant something else there instead of another apple.
Things like seaberries can grow almost in gravel. And they are fodder for chickens, sheep and eve humans (although pretty tart, nice nutrition-calorie stats).
And they provide windbreaks, as well as help prevent erosion so you can build up the soil with cover crops and such.
Permaculture tries to work without sprays and such. Our "wild Apples" (actually old ones forgotten over the decades) produce smaller, nearly inedible apples for the most part.
I've rehabbed one and it does well enough but unless I'm going to use clay sprays or toxics my apples will be less than store beautiful.
Volume is nice, ability to produce even in unprotected plantings is very nice.
Wow! Thanks for the first-hand experience comment.
DeleteI actually had a chance to try some seaberry-pear juice last spring. It was almost as good as orange-juice. That is not a slam.
Seaberry can also fix nitrogen, which is almost reason enough to grow a plant.
Domesticating a species is a long and fussy process. Humans are very demanding. Seaberry is a stone-cold-bastard to harvest. Cutting twigs and crushing off-site is not a bad option. It saves a lot of puncture wounds to the hands. In a weird-times period, that could be the source of a fatal infection.
Places blessed with Garden-of-Eden climates are also blessed with population densities of NYC, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Challenging climates and soils buys you time if things get spicy. Hopefully, most of the goblins will have extincted each other by the time they think to visit B.F. NH or VT or ND.
Bookmarked for later.
ReplyDeleteTo Anon's point above, that is why family farms were and are such a vast wealth of knowledge. Having multiple generations going back up to 100 years can really give perspective and knowledge on the land and its conditions.