The concept of a food forest is central to the idea of permaculture. But building a permaculture food forest is only learning what a natural forest is in an ecological sense. Many of the food forest definitions in the permaculture literature are modeled after tropical forests.

Being a "Yank", I protest. Here is the natural Maple-Beech food forest I grew up with in the Northern Michigan woods. And its Maple Syrup season back home! After that come the morels!

I wrote this article several years ago, so please be patient if some of the links are not working. Most of them are the last time I checked.

http://www.wildlifegardeners.o...

Wonder what happened to the diagrams in the article and if they're relevant?

If you scroll down to the bottom of the article, Chris, those three tiny images might be the Figures that are missing. I'm not sure but I do recognize the one of the forest as the woods that Hazelnut grew up in. I've read her article before, some years ago. It was her article that drew me into the world of permaculture.

Thanks Sharon> Milkmood. When I originally wrote this article it had more than 16 photographs of the native plants and animals to our woods back home in Northern Michigan.

I wanted to feature this diagram by Graham Burnett: Work With Nature, Not Against.

http://www.spiralseed.co.uk/pe...

Frankly, I had a falling out with the original website because they wanted to change the content of the article. WildlifeGardeners wanted to publish it, but they didn't have the sophisticated editing program to publish the pictures. So this is what I wound up with. I changed the original photographs to links within the article. So you can still see black bear, white tailed deer, wolverine etc. but you have to follow the links. Yes the main photographs are in the boxes down below the article, as Sharon said. I try to include a relevant rabbit photograph in every article I write.

This article was part of my own experience learning about permaculture and relating permaculture to the woods where I grew up. I definitely was a "woods rat" growing up. Also permaculture has had a derth of information on the northern temperate forest.

So I am grateful to be able to link to the article here. And I hope your participants will find it useful in planning their own permaculture projects.

gloria

We will indeed.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesa...

And it will be interesting to watch what happens with this.

I love the idea of "hey everybody, lets meet in the woods". I remember the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden was sort of like that. Various groups would have their annual or quarterly meetings there, and watch the birds while they were discussing their group's business.

I ran across this nice description of food forest -ing written by a Florida orchardist:

http://www.justfruitsandexotic...

I found this interesting video on YouTube about low chill backyard apples. The location is Riverside California.
Watch for the neat espalier fence grown with crab apples.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...