Well, now I believe that there may be a good use for all those acorns — free food! Here is a great link to learn how to process the acorn meats and to make acorn bread — http://www.jackmountainbushcraft.com/acornbread.html

Hopefully, next fall I will be harvesting a pile of these little gems and storing them up for the winter, just like my furry, four-legged competitors!

Hemp Hemp Hooray!

why not hemp?

large biomass per acre and fast growing too. take it from one who knows.

;>)

Under the local walnut orchards in the summer it’s practically night. The trees grow so thick the sun doesn’t hit the ground and the swept soil is dead. Almond, walnut and stone fruit orchards are monocropped right up to the farmers houses and you will rarely see a vegetable garden next to a farm-house. They have to buy their food at Winco in town. Vast sums are spent to laser-level huge fields so that irrigation waters don’t have a chance to make it back to the river they came from. Just to top the fun off the prunings and stumps are thrown into piles 30 feet high, frequently with household garbage included, and burned in the winter.

Planting trees simply isn’t enough to guarantee a thriving ecosystem. Making diversity happen on small farms is slowly gaining a foothold and several family farms are planting new crops in order to have year-round crops for farmers markets and smaller shocks should one tree crop fail. I even know a family that is raising chickens in mobile coops under the trees and selling both the eggs and meat. Along with oranges, peaches and plums.

As far as urban harvest goes. In some parts of town you can feed yourself a meal in three blocks just eating what you can reach from the sidewalk. That’s not every day but late fall nobody starves in this town. You might get tired of cracking nuts but there’s no lack of food. Right now it’s grapefruit; all the grapefruit you can eat and people glad to have you remove it so they don’t have to pick it off their lawns.

It’s still dormant season. Prune what you have in and plant some more!!

I think the gist of the answer is that modern agribusiness is about business, not growing food from the land. The USDA and equipment manufactures, then chemical manufacturers, have defined “modern farming” as credit intensive, geared to overproduction of the land, artificial pesticide and fertilizer use.

Farming trees just doesn’t do it. You don’t have the immediate cash flow from the bank loans for planting and harvesting. You don’t have the government subsidies and string pulling to manage crop prices and out-of-production acres.

No Congressman gets a vote because he acted to “save” tree farmers with the “new farm bill”.

As I understand the WWII “Victory Gardens”, the intent was not to feed people, but to provide a (higher quality) portion of their diet. Maybe 10% of their diet might come from the garden – counting planted rooftops and window boxes, almost any concerted effort to offload the food distribution network has to help. And don’t overlook the emotional and social benefits of getting your hands in the dirt, of watching and supporting growing plants.

The Small Farmers Journal some years ago wrote about two families, one in the Pacific Northwest, one in New England (I think!) that lived on sustained woods. Using selective harvesting and actively nurturing their woods, the number and variety of trees has been preserved (in the NW, I think they were on the third generation). One can use draft horses or oxen to remove harvested trees without having to clearcut or even create logging roads. Gail Damerow (Rural Heritage Magazine back 10 years ago) claimed oxen were preferred in Jackson County, TN, for hillsides – they were more sure footed and pulled better. Horses are just quicker.

As for trees providing food – I read that the hazelnut tree can produce more food per acre than any other crop. I am not sure that includes 250 bushel-to-the-acre corn, but the costs of the crop would be considerably less.

This coming growing season may be a real revelation. I understand the crash of crop prices after the ethanol balloon burst last fall, means that the expectation is that much of agribusiness is looking at spending more to put in crops this spring than can be expected from this fall’s harvest. Ruin the “business” part of agri-business, and things could come unglued quickly.

Apple Jack Creek,

I grew up in NW Iowa, a surprisingly cold climate. Spencer, IA (8 miles away), Butte, MT, and International Falls, MN were regularly the cold spots in the nation. We had apple trees, and plums, crab apple, walnut trees, raspberry and blackberries. There had used to be grapes around, until herbicides like 2,4D Ester gassed them all. If you check around, there may still be herbicide threats to what will survive for you. A local garden center may be able to help identify candidate varieties, too. Luck!