Twenty-Seven Hours of Instruction

From Friday evening until mid-afternoon today, my parents and AgroForestry expert Mark Shepard visited us (though they slept elsewhere). My Dad had heard Mark at an agriculture conference in December and was impressed with his vision, so he invited Mark to share his insights with my Mom and the Lykosh two. (The boys were good as gold, happily playing most of the weekend without adult supervision, so Phil and I could focus on the land.)

Mark arrived shortly before my parents and said, "I loved that I had no question which was yours: here's a working farm." Since I had been concerned with the appearance of our farm, the thrown-together look of our unconventional dwelling, I was so thankful that his first comment was positive.

My Mom and I took pages of notes, and Phil and I came away feeling so pleased and excited about what we've already done, and eager to keep moving forward. For myself, I came away with specific things that I'm ready to implement.

• Mark suggested we dig up a few of our cherry trees and plant them in rows along the slope of the land, rather than in straight lines aligned with the fence. This made me want to weep for joy: I don't much like to photograph the cherry orchard, because it's just a bit more crooked, or misaligned than the apples, which march in straight rows across their straight slope. It doesn't quite feel right. The idea that I could take these small trees and simply dig them up, hose them off, and replant in a better spots really excites me.


• Phil and I had planned to put our metal building downslope, across from the market garden. Mark wondered why we didn't just put it in among the cherry trees, which aren't spaced very densely: it would be upslope, near the road and the top of the driveway, ready for easy access by customers and delivery men. It would also be close to the hydrant and electric lines. Our current house pad could continue as a house/RV pad. I like this idea so much.


• My apple trees would be well served with a ring of daffodils at the base, then comfrey outside that and a couple of irises between trees. The daffodils repel rodents (yay!) and provide pollen for pollinators three weeks before apple blossoms break; comfrey offers natural mulch, irises provide more beauty and, um, something else good.


• Between the apple tree rows, we want to plant peanuts and potatoes this year, then switch them for next year. These plants should complement the apples, and give us more yield for the area. No more sheep in the orchard, I hope: too much time, too much destruction.


• Rather than planting our garden in straight rows across the slope, Mark laid out the key line for our field. This is a level line, rather like a line of terracing.

Mark and the men laid out the line with flags, and Phil noticed one of the calves nibbling at the flag later in the afternoon. He thought, "I think I should go plow that first line right now," and, since the last time he had a thought like that ("Maybe I should block up the back of the truck so Buttercup can't get out") he ignored it to his sorrow, he went out and plowed the single line.

I was surprised to see how, even in that line, there was a great variation in soil. Red and yellow.

The distressingly hungry soil that looks like a burnished clay pot, next to proper, dark, dull soil.

• Our garden will imitate this line up and down the slope at a spacing suitable for our precise equipment (garden cart, tractor tire spacing). I had been planning my garden beds based on optimum book information, completely neglecting the actual size of the space between our tires. How could that have offered anything but perpetual aggravation?!


• We have a deep dip in the middle of our proposed garden. I had been planning to fill that in somehow, maybe with soil that needed to be moved from our metal building; maybe just hope it wasn't as bad a dip as it appeared. (As you can see below, though, it's about a four-foot dip, with the 18" stock tank at the top for reference.) Mark suggested we just make it a little "pocket pond," dig it out a bit and not use it. How delightful, to have a little pond in the middle of the garden!

• Mark talked a lot about swales, little ditches that serve to stop the rain water and allow it to seep in. Phil had read about them in many books, but now, with the recent acquisition of the plow (below), and the tractor, he can actually make them with ease.

• Pruning: Mark's opinion is that a tree grows branches as it grows roots: in equilibrium. If you trim the tops, you make the roots bottom heavy, so they send out a mass of growth in all directions, which requires the branches to need trimming every year. Mark prefers not to prune, only getting rid of suckers on the bottom and water sprouts (branches that grow straight up) and a few other problem bits. He trains his trees almost to espalier, and lets them be. "Without leaves, a bird should be able to pass through the branches, but you shouldn't be able to throw a cat through."

Now that Buttercup is finally off her little quarter acre, Mark suggested we try to plant maybe some seedling apple trees on the perimeter, and some hazelnut bushes below that. So inspiring!


Perhaps the single most helpful bit of advice was more philosophical for me. I have been struggling lately with how aesthetically ugly we've made the land. It was just a field and a forest before the Lykoshes came, and soon enough came construction trailers and a chintzy metal building, industrial-type debris spread across the land. While greenhouses used to be beautiful glass jewels, today they are aluminum fence frames with plastic on top. It's not sophisticated, but quite, well, ugly.

Mark said, "My wife really didn't want the rain barrels next to the house. But where she might see a large, plastic container, I see self-sufficiency, year-round water availability, using the God-given resource that came to my land. It's just about changing your perspective."

That was so helpful. My construction trailer compound is not trashy living: it's what allowed us to take home equity and dig a well and plant trees. It freed up home repair money for homestead building money. That's beautiful in its own way.

Other highlights: walking the land and seeing (and having Mark identify) trees: a couple black walnuts; the difference between jack pines, yellow pines, and red pines; beech trees; black cherry trees; oaks and maples, hemlock and beech. He taught Phil how to thin for better production, and how to look at the thin baby trees to free up space around the good ones. With almost 40 acres of trees to deal with, this was welcome indeed.

Phil went to bed at about 5pm, he was so wiped out.

What a great time.

And, just for fun: note the pig chasing the guineas. The guineas actually ran back and forth around the pen before they remembered they have wings and flew out. They're not the brightest birds on the roost.