Food

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List of Fruit and Nuts Grown and/or Planted on Site

Growing food is one of the primary ideals and goals for this project. Its fun, its healthy, its strategic, it adds to safety and security. The posters I designed and produced describe multiple benefits related to growing food at home. Many suburban properties have space for a garden, certainly edible landscaping. There are enormous possibilities for taking care of more needs closer to home.

The Willamette Valley is one of the most blessed locations in the world. A mild climate, rain in the winter, sun in the summer. The Valley floor has excellent soil thanks to the ancient Missoula Floods, the McKenzie and Willamette Rivers and the odd volcanic ash fall. Its a prime location for deciduous fruits, brambles, vegetables, filberts and walnuts.

Home grown food connects us to the natural world and gives us an appreciation for what it takes to satisfy at least part of our most important needs - feeding ourselves.

Once the food is grown, learning how to store it adds even more to safety and security. Canning, drying, freezing. Some veggies keep in the ground all winter untill needed. Others, like winter squash, store for months if kept in a cool dry place. Seed saving is another important skill to learn - saving seeds that will reproduce the same plant and vegetable year after year.

New to my place is the food forest. This approach makes use of fruit and nut trees, vines, herbs, shrubs, ground covers that simulate a natural eco system. All the parts provide useful services, they are all perenial so don't have to be replanted year after year. Food forests are new to many of us but in different parts of the world, food forests have been providing health and well being for hundreds of years.

Yet another aspect of taking care of more needs closer to home is diet. Food choices have an enormous impact on our health, the environment and our own capacity to produce what we eat. A simpler, closer to vegetarian diet, offers many benefits. It takes far fewer resource inputs to satisfy - such as water, surface space, energy and time. That said, animals are a vital part of a food producing system but they can serve that useful function with only modest need to eat them.

The images below illustrate many aspects of food on my property.

Various foods, stored, dried, canned, frozen.	Apples and blackberries grow together.
Back yard garden.	Cutting up beans, tomatoes and apples to dry.
Seeds saved for replanting. Spinach, pole beans, favas.	3000 gallons of stored water for the garden.
Solar drying and solar cooking.	Fun with friends processing food.
Planting food, an English Walnut, where there was a driveway.	Food storage.
Figs.	New greenhouse will extend the growing season.
Diet For a New America. A wonderful book about food choices.	Potted Manderquat Tree
Eggs from on site chickens.	Veggies in the kitchen. Nice!

Archival Photos

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