A little chop chop in the food forest
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Good morning, afternoon and evening to you Steemits!
It's definitely been a beautiful couple of days that we've had here in our part of Alberta, and looks like it will be for the rest of the week too!
Yesterday my darling wife and I spent some of the morning and a good portion of the afternoon chipping away at the future food forest. We cleared out a lot of the brush (some of this to my dismay now that I look back on it today) and trimmed the branches that weren't useful to us, or to the lighting of the forest.
I noticed a lot of action running around on the ground underneath me. Tons of spiders and the lovely lady bugs like the one at the top of the post. It's not just us that's "hard" at work here.
At the end of the day, this is all we have:
We kept the odd low hanging branch that we can use to support some of the fruits and vegetables that will grow and need something to lean on. @elfmyselfandi had these daydreams and spoke about how some of the branches could be a bench for us to sit on. I keep scouting out for where I can plug a hammock. It's becoming more and more inviting each day.
On a side note, yesterday we spotted two of the field bunnies that have been leaving tracks around the property. I considered shooting them with the bow, but thought I might let them reproduce some first. My dog definitely thought that I should shoot them. Rex hates rabbit! It was nice to see the edible kind around though, much better than the jack rabbit that used to be all over in the city we used to reside. We get some pretty incredible raptors and owls around, and plenty of coyotes. But this year it seems some of the smaller game might be more plentiful. It will be nice to observe over time as we live here. I do hope this doesn't mean more deer. We don't need any more of those in the yard, just more in the freezer.
Hope you're having a stellar day Steem pals.
Yay for springtime progress! Really looking forward to seeing how y'all set it up. It's good to know that pruning existing trees is okay. I've got a few that may need some work when it's time.
Yeah: i think timing can be important for pruning. (I actually know very little about that stuff)
Googling. I just cut a giant limb off one of our pine trees the other day. Hope I didn't kill it lol
Hmm interesting. Id like to know what you find out. Is there a temperature range for pruning pine there? I believe you need to do it in spring here to prevent the tree from bleeding.
I was supposed to do it in late winter for full domancy... Not mid spring.
Whoops.
AH, yeah reading about it here says that we ought to do it winter to early spring. But it's a fair bit warmer there than here.
On a brighter note: I noticed that historically people have used the sap to heal wounds.
-also - in Sweden I spoke with a cook (actually spelled and pronounced kock, which made for an interesting time when he told me what he did for work!) he told me that they make a jam from the baby needles. that's an acquired taste, but amazing once it is. I dunno - I hope that some of this might be useful to ya.
Yeah, it's late spring weather here. Frost danger is gone and the trees are finishing up pollen season. I'm going o plant the rest of everything else this weekend.
I doubt the tree will die, but it's good to know there's a right season for pruning. That season is shortly after the season to start laying down a food forest bed :)