Yesterday I finished the first two rows of the food forest. I’m officially in maintenance mode until late fall, which is a great feeling. It’s not perfect, and not everything rooted, but the system is established and, most importantly, there are roots in the ground. There are still a few small projects left—building borders, weed eating, and continuing to move mulch to create a thick layer that suppresses weeds and feeds the soil. If I end up with a surplus of wood chips, I’ll start laying out future beds now to give them a head start for fall and spring planting. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is to start with a manageable plan. It’s far easier to successfully establish a few beds than to spread yourself across ten. Another lesson: grass pressure is no joke. The sooner you address it, the less maintenance you’ll have down the road. Progress in a food forest isn’t measured by perfection. It’s measured by roots in the ground, soil being built, and systems becoming more established each year. 🌱

We have discussed protected growing environment issues, like water , mulch, ventilation and area, here is some figures from the end of a hot day , mid June at 18h in the evening. Last watering 20 hours ago and under the grass mulch it's still moist.(Total area 100sqm). Amount of water given 220l by watering can. Daytime temperature 30 degrees Celsius. Temperature now inside the tunnel 28 degrees. Temperature outside only two or three degrees less. Conditions of tomato plants, slightly wilting. Soil temperature 23 degrees . I would consider this to be adverage in all aspects, and the performance of the environment, to me , seems good. No disease, or pests and steady uniform growth, could be a little more advanced in growth, but the plants were small when planted and it was quite late (21 days ago)up to the last frost date.

How many of you use cattle/livestock panels to build your greenhouses? Do you have any pics/examples? Do you have a lot of wind where you are? We've had so many other projects come up this year that we haven't started building ours yet, so I'd still love to look at the way other people have theirs set up.

Today I cut up the big stalk of Mullein that I found yesterday. I cut all the individual leaves off of it and laid them down in a single layer inside of my herb dryer. Then I cut off the seed pods and I'm drying those too, so I can collect the seeds to plant next year. Once I was done, I threw the stalk into the compost pile. We'll see if anything comes along and eats it, haha. Then, I checked on my yarrow flowers I had drying from a few days ago. They were finally done. I thought for sure I'd have enough for a couple jars, one for tea and one for infusing. Nope. Just one for tea it is! I'll pick some more to make a salve out of later. So now I've got a canning jar full of dried yarrow and tomorrow I think I'll pick some mint and some raspberry leaves to dry so I can make a good tea blend with it.

Recently we looked at the home as a working system. Food, water, first aid, light, tools, and family need all work better when the family as a whole understands how the household actually runs. The next step is to practice with the pantry. A pantry is not just extra food on a shelf. A useful pantry is food the family typically eats and knows how to cook. One simple way to learn your pantry is to make preparing meals from the pantry a game. Look through the cabinets, refrigerator, freezer, and garden if you have one. Then ask, “How many meals could we make before we had to go to the store?” Not fancy meals, but life-giving, wholesome meals. Beans and rice, soup and bread, pasta and sauce, oats, tacos, eggs, tuna salad, fried potatoes, pancakes, or whatever your family already eats. As you do this, observe the shelf life and whether something could be bought in a larger quantity at a better price. For example, I like Ro-Tel. I found that the large can is considerably cheaper, although I used to buy the smaller cans because I did not want waste. Now I buy the large can, use what I need, and put the rest in a clean quart jar in the refrigerator to use in the next week or so. This is a simple example although the goal is not to make this complicated. The goal is to save food cost and set the household up to eat for a period without constantly running to the grocery store. These observations will show what foods you really use and what comes up missing frequently. Do we have enough salt, oil, seasoning, stock, sauce, flour, eggs, or other common items that turn stored food into normal meals? Then start noticing the small grocery runs. Did we go for milk, bread, eggs, coffee, butter, pet food, toilet paper, dish soap, onions, snacks, or something for lunches? Repeated runs are clues. Preparedness does not need to begin with special emergency food supplies. Sometimes it begins by keeping more of the normal things the household reaches for every week. If we use pasta sauce every week, one jar is fragile. Four or six jars give the home more breathing room. If we use rice, oats, coffee, peanut butter, canned tomatoes, beans, broth, or animal feed all the time, those are not random storage items. They are part of the household rhythm.