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My goodness that is a whole lot of trees George! Sorry to hear about the cows, they can be hell on the trees when the trees are young. I'm going to try to get a photo up of how I've been using the electronet to keep the cows away from mine. So far, so good.

As for the apple, that's been my main smoke wood for this spring's meat smoking adventures, which have been many and varied. That's a big part of why I've been absent, it's just way too nice to sit around the fire watching the moon rise and smoking lamb ribs, or the like. Anyway, yeah, the fruit wood is great smoker fuel, as I'm sure a lot of the nut trees will be as well.

For me it's the lengthening of the days that gets me. My weight always goes down in the summer because, among other factors, my emphasis on cooking goes way down for I'd rather be outside doing something.

Not that I mind cooking. Actually, tis one of my favorite activities.

The armor plating of barbed wire seems to have done the trick. I don't think if lost a leaf since using it.

Also, I observed something interesting this year: there were some trees cows seemed to love while others they left completely alone.

The ones they eat:
• pecan
• oak
• apple
• pear

The ones they didn't touch
• figs
• plums
• peaches

My paradigm for this endeavor is to minimize off-farm inputs, as opposed to the elimination of off-farm inputs.

If I find supplemental trips to the feed store are required, so be it.

That said, I just received via UPS yesterday a 50 pound sack of pearl top millet seed which is to follow the hogs in rotation and to be used by them as it matures.

Then there is the blue Hubbard squash being trialed this year. I ordered ~200 seeds which are currently being germinated in peat cups. If each squash vine makes a 20 pound squash, that'll be 4000 pounds of feed that will potentially keep for several months. No where near as productive as fruit trees but still cheaper than paying retail at the feed store.

I think there is a formula for figuring out how to mix your own feed in Storey's Guide to Raising Pigs if you want to know how to be fairly precise in meeting the nutritional needs of your animals.

oh boy, do I have a lot to learn! Thanks for the education, George - I'd never heard of either of these permaculture concepts

With the hogs out of their little pasture and a freezer full of meat, that area will be in retirement for at least a year, possibly more. I've got another area that is overgrown and could use some work done on it... good job for pigs, goats, sheep.... we'll see.

The paddock the hogs worked over this summer is ready for some attention and I've put together a plan to plant it out for future foraging once it gets established. The idea is adding two rows of plants, on the contour where it is steeper and along the fencerow where flatter and with less canopy coverage.

Nut producing trees will be in one row (oak, hickory, pecan, chestnut when I can get them) 12 ft. apart, currants planted in between 2' apart, and one grape trelised to each nut tree.

The other row will be fruit trees (apple, pear, plum) 24' apart, hazelnuts in between 4' apart, and a grape vine trelised to each fruit tree. Rasperries will be planted 2 ft. apart outside of this row. I might swing the row of fruit trees to align with the contour if I can find time to open the canopy there and assess what trees already exist beneficially (for forage or for fire). I like having the bigger alley in between, sort of triangle shaped, to string a moveable hot wire in between to manage foraging. It's such a small paddock, though, I don't know if it matters.

Any thoughts?

Good plan manny. Will you try and protect the young trees so the hogs can't root them up? Or will you plant larger trees that will survive after a year?

Hey PA,

I don't plan to put any livestock in there until things are well established- it will get a good rest for a couple of years. Even after that, I might exclude livestock from the plantings with an electric fence. We'll see what happens.

After posting my picture up above I learned that currants aren't native plants, carry a disease that attacks white pines, and planting is banned in many states. I'm going to go with blueberries and high-bush cranberries instead.

Manny, for your vining plants you might also consider kiwi fruit and goji berries. There are two types of kiwi, depending on how cold the winters get where you are. The northern variety will very work well here at the 40th parallel, according to my reading. The goji berry is a cold weather plant as well. It is quite high in vitamin C, and that is something hard to obtain sustainably in Zones 5 and north.

Thanks, Lolly! That is good information. I have heard of kiwi and goji berries but I don't know anything about them. I just assumed they were tropical. I'll definately look into them. I already have a few grapes that are more than enough for my usage. I wouldn't mind adding a couple more but not really excited about 15 more! Maybe I can do something like 7 kiwi, 7 goji, and 2 more grapes.