Sprouting

Sunday night I was reading Harvey Ussery's most excellent book about chickens. I had reached the part about feeding chickens from homestead produced feeds, and he mentioned that he is playing with a permanent boundary hedge of Goumi, Goji, and Siberian Pea Shrub, all of which are useful for animal feed. (He has other ideas that fit with permaculture: planting mulberries, pawpaw, and using the extra fruits for chicken feed; using acorns or beechnuts as feed.)

He also settled a little concern I had about the hazelnuts I've interplanted with a few of the apple trees. When I ordered my hazelnuts, the photo looked like a nice, perhaps three-foot shrub, very cute. I came across a photo in a nut-grower book, though, which showed massive, 15 foot, multi-trunked shrub-trees. There was no way those enormous plants would fit in my dwarf apple orchard.

Harvey cleared up my issue. Somehow I didn't know this, but there are Corylus americana, which I have, and Corylus avellana. My type produce nuts only about a half inch, and are small bushes. The dessert-type, grape-sized hazelnut is the other version (and, certainly, the type in the book.) This is good to know. It will not ever be worth my while to harvest by hand little nuts the size of peas. They shouldn't go in my orchard. They are certainly useful for chicken feed (or pig, or cow, I expect), so they will be just great as part of a hedge or a forest garden.

I had even ordered 500 hazelnuts last fall, but was able to cancel that order when the workload compounded around here. Makes me quite thankful.

Anyway, the vision of the productive privacy hedge must have captured my mind, as I awoke in the middle of the night, ready to get to work researching what trees to plant at what spacing; what trees can grow from seed, since I'm not in a desperate hurry (I had read about goji sprouting).

Many hours later, I had a list of 43 trees, bushes, and vines, and the approximate height they would reach, from the 100 foot tall pecan, to the three foot tall huckleberry. Inspiring, if not immediately actionable.

I love the winter hibernation: so many interesting thought paths to pursue.

The boys and I have been entranced with the growth of the sprouts. After soaking the clover and daikon overnight on Sunday, we saw tiny white sprouts on a few seeds already on Monday morning. By this evening, the clover has taken off!

Phil has spent many hours lately in the office, designing something unique to him. We feel like this is a building year, and it was interesting, then, to have our sermon on Sunday be out of Joshua 17. At one point, Joshua says to some of Joseph's descendants, "[G]et thee up to the wood country, and cut down for thyself there in the land." Basically, clear the land and build your house.

It feels like a time of sprouting all over: ideas, plans, seeds. Latent excitement building.