“Edible Forest Gardens: an Invitation to Adventure” – a useful text by northeast permaculture wizards Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier:
http://www.cepta.sk/attachments/article/467/Food%20and%20Democracy.pdf#page=109
Spanning the gamut of forest garden examples and giving an overview of opportunities, applications, and implementations.
Forestry, specifically the forest operations (e.g. logging) and forest products (e.g. milling) side of things, is both beautiful and gross. It can be a celebration and harvest of an honorable, mutually beneficial relation. It is also filled with death and disturbance.
Decay and succession; life lowering entropy as the universe increases it. Peaces with
LVX
Summertime we gotta stay moving, away from mosquitoes. Check yourself for ticks. Give attention to your body.
Winter time the buggers die down. Slow down, don’t stay out so long, better go inside. Go in mind.
Walking quietly in the forest at twilight, one step consciously at a time. Forest parkour. Bushwacking and orienteering. This spectrum feels like a blend between qi’gong and skateboard, two of my other favorite ranges of activity.
Short article introducing it:
New Agroforestry Report Offers Flexible Solutions for Farmers
https://www.fs.fed.us/rmrs/news-releases/new-agroforestry-report-offers-flexible-solutions-farmers
The document itself:
Agroforestry: Enhancing Resiliency in U.S. Agricultural Landscapes Under Changing Conditions
https://www.fs.fed.us/research/publications/gtr/gtr_wo96.pdf
It’s a great situation to be in to always have a need for more trees in an area. Imagine a farmer or forester, happy to enhance and be enhanced by more trees in their life system. Life in mutual benefit with life itself: net primary productivity, biodiversity, etc. (e.g. Biodiversity promotes primary productivity and growing season lengthening at the landscape scale – Oehri et al. 2017).
Akiva Silver of Twisted Tree Farm – a regenerative tree nursery near Ithaca, NY – once said how despite growing thousands of trees, he feels bad to find himself turning down customers when sold out of trees. It’s a wonderful problem to have, wanting to grow more trees! So long as they’re able to grow – sadly worth noting considering environmental and economic degradation and deforestation.
Thankfully, trees beget trees in many ways! Supporting the propagation of future generations of trees; providing material for the propagation & other operations; regulating the environment to facilitate life; and facilitating regenerative culture in all our lives.
How can you integrate the right tree in the right place for the right reason in your life? Think beyond the tree itself. What end-goals can (and do) sustainable, regenerative tree systems satisfy? Some ideas from the 6 F’s forests offer: Food, Fiber, Fodder, Fuel, Farmaceuticals, and Fun.