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Cold Climate Food Forest

This food forest system is well established and has a number of mature trees that are well over 30 year’s old. It also has a number of younger trees planted below the tree canopy. It is a food forest system that is growing wild with minimal maintenance and has been in the one family for over 40 years. It is a wild mix of nuts, berries, and fruit trees where natural rampancy created a glorious backdrop to a natural bubbling spring feeding crystal clear water into a pond.


A pond fed by a natural spring line at the base of the food forest

In the video below, Geoff notices a 30-year-old Hardy Kiwifruit vine, with a trunk as thick as your thigh, now growing untamed under the undergrowth. Its vine snakes up into the top canopy as the fruit covers and smothers the neighboring trees.

The amazing thing is how nature can grow so abundantly in so short a summer cycle before the deep snows settle in and transform the site into a Winter wonderland.

Walnuts, peaches, plums, chestnuts, pecans, persimmons all tower high above our heads. Geoff’s neck was craning up into the heavens to spot and name all the varieties of plants.

High above this system in the gentle slopes above was the original old growth forest covered in fallen leaves and wild mushrooms.

Geoff peeled back the top layer of mulch to reveal the hyphae net — the internet of the soil — a spidery white film of fungi connecting plants, trees and other organisms. It’s all shown in this video.

The video shows how beautiful a natural system can be — with a little permaculture love to keep it all working forever.

Further reading

10 Comments

  1. Well this one made the tears well up. Not just the visuals but the emotion in Geoff’s voice and how he and his speech slowed down as he went through the video where his trust in humanity and reverence for nature came together at that little spring.
    Moving stuff.
    Many thanks
    Bill

    1. Yes Bill, Nothing comes close to the GRANDEUR of the human element in the ecosystem admiring and respecting the exuberance of other elements.

    2. :) I wiped away the tears in this one as well. When I see what could be, and hear the heart yearning in Geoff’s voice, contrasted with what I see in the world today, the sheer egomania and destructive zeal, I can’t help but weep.

      The planes are now actively conducting aerial geoengineering spraying to block the sun and stop “global warming” in my NE part of North America. This winter, 2022-2023, we have barely seen the sun. When we do it’s behind a misty, milky veil, just like Bill Gates said he wanted to do. Who is going to stop these fiends from destroying the world and everything in it? I believe in miracles, and I believe they will be stopped. But the contrast is just so stark between Geoff Lawton and someone like Bill Gates, or the U.S. Dept. of Defense (who are running the weather manipulation operations), that it’s like two different species of human. One is sane, the others are more like zombies.

  2. I can’t help but think about how the majority of us are working so frantically at achieving nothing when we could be lovingly working at transforming the landscape. 40 years! How quickly we buggared the landscape, yet how quickly we can restore it.

  3. So grateful for your inspiring videos. The phrase, “Seeing is Believing,” brings home so powerfully and so convincingly, and helps renew my commitment to moving forward to self-sufficiency despite my current sever physical challenge. Viewing your regular supply of videos is like receiving a shot of energy, and at the same time it’s a reminder that a proper care of land heals our environments naturally. It’s a strong metaphor for my case that with a proper care we can heal our body naturally without an intervention of numerous chemicals. It’s beautiful to see the nature seeks its own healing if we let our break pedal go free. With faith! Hope there would be many videos to come our way. Thank you very much for your efforts.

  4. Hi Geoff. Great video, really enjoyed it and it was interesting to see where kiwi fruit vines can go!

    It was interesting that you mentioned that sticks burn hotter than logs because it is often the fine fuels that provide the energy to the wildfires in my corner of SE Australia. Hope you get a chance to produce one of these videos for a Mediterranean climate. Thanks for the excellent work and ideas. Chris

  5. I love all of these videos you’ve come out with. Thank you for creating them. I’ve been on board with this movement since learning about permaculture and food forests through Oregon State University last year. It’s insane that we all haven’t incorporated these forests in all neighborhoods around the world. No more hunger, no more needless habitat loss through massive agricultural farming, save energy and money… I’ll keep spreading the good word of food forests as long as I live. Peace, much love friend.

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