Today I want to write briefly about an idea that will come up again and again over the next few years, and hopefully for the next forty. I’m talking about the Flying Cloud Forest Garden.
What is a “Forest Garden”?
Good question. Basically, a forest garden is just a small area that produces a lot of useful stuff. Stuff like edible wild plants, and wood that’s good for fire, shelter and crafts. It’s also an area where animals can thrive, from rabbits to birds to foxes to deer to moose or even bears. It’s also a garden, just like one you might have at home. It’s a place that we take care of, and one that takes care of us.
You can read more about Forest Gardens, and its big brother Permaculture on Wikipedia.
But, doesn’t FC already have a garden?
We do. We have a very nice little garden on the way up to the Meeting circle, where every year we grow a little bit of food. Sadly, it doesn’t get a whole lot of sunshine, so it grows pretty slowly. Also, since we’re only there for a few months, we can’t grown some of the extra tasty garden veggies that ripen later in the summer.
So what’s the difference? What would be in this “Forest Garden”?
A forest garden is just like a regular garden, but a little easier. We’ll still plant certain things that we want to grow, we’ll still harvest food during the summer, and there will still be weeding and playing in the dirt. The only difference is that we’ll be gardening all over camp, and even out into the woods! Remember all that mint that grows at the top of the garden? We’re going to let that grow wherever it wants. And the blueberry bushes we planted on the edge of the pond? Well we’ll be adding lots more soon! And what about the secret fort we dug a few years ago? Well this summer, we’re going to add the final touches to its camouflage by planting the top with strawberries!
Do you like apples? I hope so, because over the next few years, we’re also going to be planting some species of apple trees that we can harvest during second half and turn into pies and sauce and fruit leather.
And what about vegetables? We’ll still have the original garden, for things like spinach, but we’ll also be able to make some delicious wood-nettle stew if we take the time to cultivate a few wild edibles like dandelions, violets, cattails, ground nuts and burdock. The current garden will also have enough room to allow us to start planting some plants with powerful healing qualities, like comfrey or echinacea.
Of course, there’s one more thing we could grow in our garden, and that’s meat! If we wanted to, it would be an option to raise chickens or rabbits each summer, to help make our food source even more local. Of course this is something we’d have to talk about, but it’s an option.
Well that sounds like a lot of work. Why bother?
First, I want everyone to live in camp with the feeling that nature provides. At the most basic level, everything we have comes from the earth, and without her, we couldn’t live. Sometimes in my daily life I forget that, just because the lettuce in my salad came from California and I don’t even know where they grow sneakers! I want every member of the Flying Cloud community to have a day-to-day relationship with the food we eat, and the world we live in.
The second major reason is that Flying Cloud is an amazing and special place. Everyone who’s ever walked into the clearing has felt the energy of being in camp, and I hope we can pass that feeling on to thousands more people over the next forty years. Right now though, the woods around camp are sick. Over the last decade I’ve begun to notice that there are a lot of trees around camp with bird holes, bug holes or broken limbs. Of course, that’s just what happens in forests, but I think it’s happening more around camp than anywhere else. Probably the most pronounced impact we have at camp is that we collect a whole lot of firewood from within a pretty small area. The advantage of that is nice open woods where we can run around and play. The down side though is that we’re not leaving any food for the critters, plants and trees to use. Normally, a piece of wood breaks down very slowly over time, with the help of water and lots of different bugs. Those bugs take the energy out of the wood and make it useable to the plants and the trees, but when we pick up all the wood, there’s nothing for the bugs to eat, and so the trees go hungry too. Without energy, the trees get stressed out, and when they’re stressed, they’re more likely to be hurt by climbing campers, pecking birds or blowing winds.
To address this, I think it’s time we start giving back to the Cloud. We can think about how we collect wood, and about what we use it for, but we can also start adding nutrients back into the environment with special plants that collect hard-to-find ingredients and by generally trying to treat the entire area as a garden, to be nurtured and supported.
That’s all for now! Look back soon to hear about some of the first steps we’ll be taking in this journey.
