Edible hedges
All
this talk of rotational grazing makes Mark cringe because he knows it
means lots of fences. Is there a way to delete the fences and
instead add in more multi-purpose trees?
When I was in Great
Britain, I loved their tradition of using hedgerows to
separate fields. The hedgerows consisted of closely planted trees
and shrubs, many of which produced fruits or nuts that could feed
livestock (or humans.)
Since our livestock
dreams are a few years in the future, we have time
to plant some hedges now in preparation. So far, the most
interesting edible hedge species I've read about include crab apples,
wild plums, Nanking cherry, trifoliate orange, blackberry, elder,
hazel, and rose. The goal is to plant them close enough together
that they create an impenetrable thicket and keep animals from breaking
through, but not so thickly that they drown each other out. I've
got a lot more reading to do on hedges, though, before I put anything
in the ground!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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