I always love getting up early in the morning. It’s a magic time of day with the birds singing and the hum of the bees already getting louder. The sky is always different but usually always beautiful.
This morning while enjoying breakfast my phone sent me a memory, as phones do, of a picture of my mulberry tree sitting up on my swale overlooking the dam. I thought I would share a then and now shot. You can see the growth of the support species in my young food forest really eclipse that of my productive tree and that is exactly why they are chosen. Soon those trees will be cut down and used as a woody mulch to support my fruit and nut trees. Slowly taking my soil from a bacterial dominated one to more fungal which supports forests much better! The cut down trees will quickly regrow to provide shade for the following summer and a future mulch crop again next year.
Growing your own food means not only the growing of it but also the harvesting, cooking and preserving of it. It takes a bit of time. I usually find that in the afternoon on a hot summers day my house is pretty cool and it’s a good time to get a bit of this produce processed and tucked away. Today I made kombucha, started a batch of honey mead (using up the crystallised remains of last years harvest), dehydrated cinnamon apples, and some delicious blackberry jam. It’s very satisfying when you’ve made the effort and you know you’ll be rewarded with this bounty down the track.
Ahh, another great day on the homestead!
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