food

What is A Community Supported Forest

~ Jean Wiedenheft ~ 1 Comment

A Community Supported Forest is a place in which the people actively and deliberately care for the light, the trees, the soil, and the plants to create a healthy system which provides sustenance in a myriad of ways.

Hazelnut

From wild strawberries and wild ramps (onions) in the summer, to linden blossoms and black raspberries in the summer, to hazelnuts and butternuts in the fall, the food from a well planted and cared for forest provides deliciously diverse and bountiful food.

There are other benefits as well. The wood can be made into walking sticks for hikes and charcoal for drawing. Firewood can be used to create the evening campfire, or boil sap down into maple syrup. Woodchips can be thrown in the smoker for succulent, flavorful meat dishes.

Sumac drupe

Maple syrup and honey can grace the breakfast table. Bluebirds can nest in the tree cavities and catch mosquitoes. It is a beautiful and intricate system, and what comes out of it is, like most things, proportional to what goes into it.

Humans have had a hand in Iowa’s woodlands for as long as Iowa has had woodlands. They have planted, gathered, cut, and burned. And how much of that we do today really determines how fruitful the forest will be for us. Dense stands of trees need to be thinned to improve sunlight. Honeysuckle bushes and other invasive species need to be grubbed out. Missing species need to be planted, fenced from deer, and watered the first few years. Every ten years or so, trees will need to be thinned. Community members support the forest.

Through that process, calories will be burned, muscles will be toned, and friendships will be formed. Knowledge will be learned and shared. Ultimately how productive the forest is for the community is a measure of how well the community cares for its Forest.

Creating the Compost Habit

~ Jean Wiedenheft ~ 1 Comment

I love the idea of compost. When I first started, years ago, it instantly reduced my trash output by 50 percent. Just like that, you can make great strides towards a zero-waste lifestyle. It also instantly creates healthy, rich soil in which to garden. I have two copies of the pamphlet, “…Make Compost in 14 Days,” on my bookshelf. Because that is knowledge too important to lose.

But…compost is smelly. It creates flies, gnats, and a host of flying insects I cannot begin to name. You have to trudge to the garden through the rain, and the snow, and the mud, and the mosquitoes. It takes time. Not a lot of time, but time all the same. You have to do it daily, or the flying insects and the smells begin to lose that indoor/outdoor boundary.

My garden, wedged in a narrow patch of sunlight among oak trees, was designed for growing veggies, not an ever-expanding pile of rotting veggies, so there were some boundary issues. There is nothing healthy about trying to find a fresh strawberry under an avocado husk. I quickly matured into a fair-weather composter when I felt inspired.

When the pandemic started two years ago, I lost access to basic services including trash, recycling and compost pickup, and suddenly composting became very high on my priority list. Why? There are only so many times you can beg your friends to let you put things in their trash, and only so much trash you feel like dragging around town to the houses of friends. Friends you aren’t supposed to be visiting because its a pandemic. “Um, hi. I didn’t come to visit you, just your trash can.” The friends I have are really, really good people.

A friend set me up with a two bin tumbler system, and that was awesome. It kept the scraps contained and kept the yard tidy. I used one bin primarily for high acidity things, including coffee grounds and lemons. This was for the blueberry bushes. I used the other bin for most everything else. While it still had to be done every day, the alternative idea of living amid ever increasing piles of waste is not a healthy way to even contemplate living.

Most bins and tumblers on the market don’t create enough heat to break down some things, like weed seeds. For compost to generate enough heat to start breaking things like that down with heat, it needs to be a 3’x3’x3′ pile. Since we all know piles are unstable as cubes, that’s actually a big pile. Huge. Compost shrinks as it composts, which means that’s a lot of compost. More than I can generate.

My solution: don’t put weeds that have seeded out in the compost bin. Throw them in the yard, where they will at least be mowed down after germination. A better solution would be to weed before the weeds set seed, but I am not always that sort of gardener. Mostly, I am the sort of gardener that solves the problem of not knowing what to do with pulled weeds by simply not weeding at all.

Eventually, my trash, recycling, and compost service resumed. Interestingly enough, I have kept composting, at least March-December. Keeping non-essential paths clear during the ice and snow of January and February are beyond my physical capacity.

Sap, a mideason report

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When does spring start? Does it start when the chickadees change their call? Does it start when the red-winged blackbirds return to the Lynch Wetland? Or does it start with the first harvest of the year?

A small snap of warm weather this year in mid February, combined with the enthusiasm of my colleagues Gabe and Syd, sent us into the forest. Vecny Woods has a ravine full of old sugar maples.

The blue tape on the drill bit takes the guesswork out of drilling to the right depth.

The sap started flowing immediately, which is both tasty and rewarding.

The sap from a sugar maple is usually 2%-3% percent sugar, and we set 26 taps in the Vecny Woods sugar maples. We will also be tapping silver maples in the floodplain (77) and box elders (a handful) in the former barnyard of the Penningroth Barn. While all three types of maple trees provide good sap, the silver maple sap has a sugar content of 1.5%-1.75% and the box elders have 1% sugar content. That sap requires longer boiling time, which in turn makes a darker syrup with a more robust flavor.

Reducing that sap to syrup requires a lot of firewood, a lot of boiling, and a lot of steam. It also requires a lot of patience. While the sap was flowing on February 11, our night time temperatures have been hovering around freezing, and the days have been cloudy. Those are not conducive to sap flow, and the trees have just been trickling. We might have enough to make three gallons of syrup. Fortunately, sap season has only just started, leaving us with a good month left for the weather to start cooperating. Next week is looking promising.

Creative Gardening

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I am under siege. The beautiful seed catalogs, glossy pages full of plump, brightly colored fruits and deep green vegetables, are in my mailbox. Burpee’s, Johnny’s, Gurney’s are the latest three. I want to eat those fruits. I want to grow those fruits. With everything around me brown, grey, and white, I want to impulse buy fresh flavorful colorful tasty beauty sooo badly.

This is a full color photo from February 23. This is Iowa right now. Beautiful, but needs some color.

Really, if impulse buying a three dollar seed packet is the worst of my vices, I am probably doing OK.

A red okra in full bloom from last summer. I used to not be a fan of okra, until I tried it fresh, straight off the plant. Delicious.

But last fall, when I was climbing 15 feet in the air to harvest cherry tomatoes, and I was getting scratched up trying to find sweet peppers that were totally hidden under a mass of invasive hops, I came up with a plan. I would not succumb to the assault of the seed catalogs. I would buy in the early fall, before the watermelon harvest. Before fresh became a thing of the past season.

Small heirloom watermelons, well mulched with straw to keep the weeds at bay.

I already focus my gardens on perennials. Blueberries and honeyberries are growing next to the kiwis. A goji bush accompanies the horseradish and the asparagus. If I am going to add an annual, it is going to be something that either 1) I can’t easily find in the grocery store, or 2) it is a leafy green that I eat in such quantity that it doesn’t make economic sense to buy it in the grocery store. Mostly, I buy from Seed Savers Exchange, which I respect for being local, sustainable, and not cutting a tree to send me a catalog I may or may not want.

What did I end up with for my 2022 annual vegetables? Red Burgundy okra, Red Kalibos cabbage, Backlund Bly Orach, Copenhagen Market Cabbage, Mammoth Sandwich Island Salsify, Premier Kale, Fordhook Giant Swiss Chard. In hindsight, I definitely don’t need two different kinds of cabbage…But if they give me the strength to ignore the seed catalogs, I am OK with that.

Solstice Lindens

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After spending three seasons missing the linden flower harvest, I finally got it right: summer solstice. The blossoms have a beautiful delicate scent, and make a lovely tea. As the elderberry flowers are also in full bloom, I’ve been enjoying the two together in the evenings.

We planted linden trees in and around the parking lot of Amazing Space. Not only will they grow quickly, to provide shade for the vehicles, but their blooms are popular with the bees (and me!). The leaf buds and young leaves are also edible.

It was difficult to pick the perfect tree for landscaping the parking lot. On a completely practical level, the criteria were straightforward: native, edible, and no messy fruits or large nuts to drop on cars. The linden gives us that. I hope, as they mature, the landscape will evoke the same feelings one has when visiting the Lindenhof in Zurich, Switzerland. It is a place rich in cultural history and a place people gather to share time with one another.

Picking Chicks

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The flock of roosters was initially unintentional. I thought they would all be in the stew pot by autumn. I was wrong. I have the setup, the routine, and lonely birds. It is time to add some ladies, and I spent a lot of time at the Hoover’s Hatchery website and the Murray McMurray Hatchery website. The new additions need to be the right birds.

The black star roosters don’t like the snow, but they do like to be outside.

The flock free ranges. No fence in sight. Except for the garden fence, which they go over, under and around freely. They established their own range and stay within 130 feet of the chicken house. That range overlaps with predators: the dog, the cats, the racoons, the mink, the fox, and yes, the hawks. I need birds that forage well, are rugged, friendly and independent. Just like me.

My current flock makes me smile, and any additions need to be just as eye-catching. The Sapphire Gems are a gorgeous blue-grey and lay 290 large brown eggs a year. That makes them one of the top layers on the market. They are also a bit on the big side, weighing in at 6 pounds, and that makes me nervous.

When guineas get scared, mad, or excited, they go…up. Which is great when they are being chased by a dog. Less great when it is dusk and time to go in the aviary, but the other birds are blocking the door.

Guineas are small, weighing about 3 pounds. That means my guineas could easily end up at the bottom of the pecking order. When guineas end up at the bottom of the pecking order, they end up in the tops of trees. I am trying two of the Sapphire Gems, which a neighbor will take if they become too dominate in the aviary. I am getting five Blue Andalusians. The heirloom Andalusians are smaller, and each feather is a dark laced grey, which means they will be exquisite looking birds. The Andalusians lay 280 medium eggs a year, so the production is significantly less than that of the Sapphire Gems.

Charles and Bess sitting in the dead oak tree, protesting snow.

If two of the seven hens survive to maturity in my yard, which is statistically what will happen, they will still produce more eggs than I can eat in a year. The trade off of smaller birds, smaller eggs and fewer eggs is worth it to me if it keeps my mixed flock content.

What Goes into a Food Forest Canopy

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One concern I have with the phrase “food forest” is that it implies that the rest of the forest is inedible. Nothing could be further from the truth, at least in Iowa. Upland forest canopies are dominated by oaks and hickories,  with a handful of butternuts mixed in. The midlands are full of mulberries, black cherries and black walnuts. Even the bottomlands, with their thick stands of silver maples and lindens, are full of edible life.

Linden blossoms are delicious in tea, and provide a valuable food source for pollinators.

In most landscapes, I focus on the natural history of the land, and ask what would be here, if we hadn’t cut the trees, grubbed out the roots, and planted corn in the heart of the forest? What is missing from both this particular plot, as well as the surrounding areas? What would increase the native diversity and resilience of the ecosystem?

In a food forest, I narrow that focus to species that 1) are native to the area, and 2) are fairly straightforward for humans to eat. A food forest has a greater concentration of native edible species than you might naturally find in a woodland. Done properly, a guest wouldn’t necessarily notice they were in a food forest; they would simply notice that they were in a beautiful woodland with abundant opportunities for them to forage as they walked. People are so far removed from what is and is not edible without a plastic wrap label and a price tag on it, I’ll probably need to put out signs. There isn’t much point, if people don’t know that the food in the forest is there for them.

A box elder tree comes down to make room for a new black maple tree. We have far more box elder trees on the land than we do black maples, so this will help create balanced diversity over time.

The pocket of sunlight we created this winter will be planted to maples this spring. I am locally sourcing Black Maple from Fleming Nursery and Sugar Maple from Hughes Nursery. Just downhill from the clearing is a large silver maple, well-suited to flooding. Mulberry and black cherry are already growing in the area, and we planted butternuts last year.

To the Sugar Bush We Go

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It was 20 F when we out to tap the maple trees this year, but the wind wasn’t blowing and the snow didn’t start falling until we were wrapping up. When it warms up in a few weeks, it will be too late-the sap will already be flowing.

Otter tracks on Indian Creek. You never know what you will find in the forest until you go into the forest.

We primarily set taps in silver maple trees. All of the native maples, including black, sugar, silver, and box elder, produce sap that can be boiled down into maple syrup. We just happen to have a large amount of floodplain, and a corresponding large amount of silver maple trees.

The small annual hole we bore in the tree does not siphon out enough sap to damage the tree.

We also tap, to a lesser extent, box elders and sugar maples in the uplands. What difference does it make? Silver maple sap typically has between 1.5%-1.75% sugar in it. Black or sugar maple sap typically has between 2-3% sugar. And box elder sap has 1% sugar.To make syrup, we need to boil the box elder sap twice as long as the the sugar maple sap, and the longer it boils, the darker and richer the caramelization. It boils a long time, because we have to take the sugar concentrations from 1.5% sugar (sap) to 66% sugar (maple syrup).

Maple syrup is the first crop I harvest every year, and tapping the trees for it is my own personal act of faith that spring is about to emerge, in the form of sweet flowing sap from the maple trees.

Kiwis in Iowa: a potentially awesome vine

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When I’m creating with the landscape, my top three criteria are usually local, organic, native. But I’ve been totally intrigued with the idea of adding kiwi vines to the yard. I repainted the windmill a few years back, only to have invasive hops run rampant over it. Hardy kiwis (Actinidia arguta) are native to China and Siberia, and produce lovely (I hope) little fuzzless kiwis. After doing enough research to determine that, having never actually tried a hardy kiwi, I completely lacked the knowledge to figure what varieties I really wanted, I opted to go with a variety pack from Stark Bro’s.

 

It included two Anna Hardy Kiwi’s, a male pollinator partner for them, and an Issai Hardy Kiwi. The Issai self pollinates. The plants are beautiful, and I managed to get them in the ground, mulched, and deer-fenced within a day of them arriving. They probably won’t produce fruit, even with the best of care, until 2019 or 2020. But it will good to see something with potential growing in the next few years, versus the hops.