3 Year Update at The Land - Our Northeast Florida Food Forest

The Land has become our very own playground. After having raised our four older children in the city, it is a treat to expose our youngest son and his siblings to this piece of nature that is all ours.

Inflation and the current building climate have delayed our building plans, but we know that patience pays off, and while we wait for things to change, we prepare, research and gain as much knowledge, experience and connections as possible.

Until we build, we still want to enjoy our piece of nature, especially as hundreds of homes are on the planning board in our small community.

We received two hammocks from a friend after putting up a request at the local Buy Nothing group, and what a treat it is to be able to relax in the hammocks after working hard.

Another member of the group gave us a very solid hammock stand for when these trees need to be taken down to make room for the house.

The hammocks are at the back if the land, where there is plenty of privacy to relax in peace and quiet.

The vegetable garden at the land

Half of our vegetable garden still flooded this year despite our attempt to raise and protect it, so we have now raised it even higher. Thankfully, we had the fruit trees in pots, so we just had to move them to safety until the water subsided.

The potato and sweet potato bed in the middle did great, and our onion bed at the back also survived.

Our son's sandy play area got flooded,  so we moved it and raised it higher as well. 

Our fruit tree collection has increased a lot since last year, and we used the Covid EBT cards to buy fruit trees such as plums, blueberries and blackberries at Walmart and ALDI. 

We also took advantage of the double your EBT bucks at the local farmers market. The maximum is $40 per day, so we bought produce for $40 and used our bonus $40 to buy two red plum trees.

We protect the fruit trees and the garden with palmetto sticks and bamboo, and the kids are excited when they get to pick fruit from the trees and bushes.

Any time one of our trees or plants at the house get to a size, where it does not need much looking after, we transfer it to the Land.

We have two goals for the plants:

The first goal is to create a permaculture food forest that will provide ample fresh, pesticide-free food for our family. We have grown lots of plants and trees from seeds or cuttings: mulberry, citrus of all kinds, figs, persimmons, chaya, perennial edible plants and more, and of course we already had loquats, elderberry and native blueberries at the land. We have apple trees, banana trees and nut trees. We also trade a lot, we have been gifted many plants and pots from neighbors and other plant lovers, and we buy small plants and grow them bigger.

The second goal is to have all our plants ready for landscaping by the time our home is built, so that we do not have to spend much on landscaping, and so that we will have plenty of mature plants ready for the garden to help provide privacy and the tropical look we love.

We're getting better at growing from cuttings, and so far fire bush, bougainvilleas, hibiscus, umbrella plants and much more have already been moved to the land, we also have palm trees, magnolias and more grown from seed. These flowering bushes will also help with pollination of our fruiting trees and bushes, and it will help keep some of the pollinators there despite us taking down many of the palmettos. 

Plants and trees waiting for a permanent home.

The palmetto fight has entered a new chapter. We are almost done removing palmettos and palmetto roots in the area, where we are planning to build our home, and now we aim to work smarter and not harder. 

Removing palmettos by covering them

It has been a long tedious process, so now whenever we are able to get a load of wood chips, we cut an area down, and then we cover it with vegetation, leaves and wood chips. We need to raise a great part of the land about a yard, and so we choke out the palmettos and brush and raise the land at the same time as this composts and turn into soil. 

We still leave some palmettos for privacy, and we still have plenty of palmettos in the wetland areas, which will not be touched.

Our Troy Built woodchipper gave out more than a year ago, and we just put a new motor on this spring, so now it is back up and running, as we chip away at the long pile of brush that we have collected over the past year.

Food forest water collection

We created this water collecting area with two rain barrels, a piece of tarp and a pallet.

We go weeks and sometimes months without rain here in Northeast Florida during dry season, so it is necessary to collect as much water as we can to help the food forest and the vegetable garden make it through the dryspells. We still have to bring water over, whenever the dryspells stretch out too far, but the rain barrels help a lot 

The kids' play area has expanded from the sole basketball hoop, which means our two-year-old son has plenty to do, while we work in the garden.

We collect free treasures for our garden, wherever we can, and we have saved many things from the landfill, which will one day fit perfectly into our tropical garden.

The Land is magical, and working at the Land is a great way to de-stress from the craziness of everyday life.

You can read more about the land and our story below.

 

The Land - Our Story - Part I - Dreaming of Potential

The Land- Our Story - Part II - The Island

The Land - Our Story - Part III - The Video

The Land - The 2020 Flood  

The Land - The 2 Year Update- The Woodland Garden

And for future updates on our dreams, you can always look under The Land tab in the top navigation bar.