Food forest floor - how we got started

Spring did finally arrive here too. The snow melted in no time and thats partly why I havent posted anything in a while. Well, doing a bit much kind of made my chronic pain real bad too.
If you have a look at my husbands post https://steemit.com/asparagus/@brockolopolis/utilizing-the-gifts-the-land-already-has-for-us-this-time-asparagus you can see what the food forest looked like when we started.
This post has pictures of how it looked next https://steemit.com/permaculture/@brockolopolis/a-little-chop-chop-in-the-food-forest

And the picture at the top of this post is a panorama of what it looks like right now. We noticed that the tall gras already had started peeking through the layer of leaves and dead grass from last year so we figured since we dont need the straw bales to protect the ceptic tank lid from freezing any more - we could go ahead and use those. The idea is to suffocate the tall gras. This is just the first layer, on top of the straw we will put a good 6" layer of wood chips.

The floor of the forest - where it starts

Nature is our best teacher and if you ever had a look at the ground in a forest you might have noticed that the leaves, branches and any organic matter is decomposing. All the nutrients that once was drawn out of the soil as the trees and plants grew is added back in to the soil as the organic matter decomposes. This is the fundamental cycle we want to mimic when building a food forest. This is what is going to make it selfsustaining. It will create its own soil and nutrients are being put back into the ground.

A lot of the guides I´ve read about how to start a food forest stated that you should first add either cardboard boxes or painters paper (depending on what you are building your food forest on). This will work as a shield to suffocate anything underneath. Then compost should be added on top, a couple of inches thick. And lastly wood chips - atleast 6" thick. All of this should be done in the fall so that it can decompose over winter and give you some soil to put the plants in the following spring.

We didnt know about food forests until the snow was already on the ground last year so thats why we are kind of improvising a bit. The straw we added have been outside in the rain and snow all year so it have started decomposing. One of the bales was quite warm inside, one sure sign things are happening - it creates heat. It will decompose fast and add to the layer of soil already in place. Its also not too expensive since we got quite the area to cover. (this is one of the reasons we split the food forest up into 3 stages, its a very large area). On top we will add wood chips. We will plant some food plants throughout this area but our main focus this year was to get the tree branches cleared out and the ground covered to get rid of the tall gras. So that we next year have good quality soil to plant in.

So the pictures are of nr 2. We measured the garden the other day and its 90 feet long and 42 feet wide. So the food forest is a bit longer than those 90 feet but not as wide, perhaps 25 feet.

Yeah, so thats what we done so far. We have a bunch more straw bales coming in. We will rake the soil in the garden in to beds, add wood chips in the pathways and use some of the straw as mulch for the plants there. But the main part of the straw will be used as a first layer in our food forest.