Tree Commission to utilize grant to focus on project
The Mountain Lake Tree Commission hosted a meeting on the Lawcon Park Food Forest Project on Thursday evening, March 27, in Mountain Lake City Hall, with Nathan Harder of Mountain Lake spearheading the discussion. In essence, according to Harder, “Food + forest = community resilience.”
But . . . what is a food forest?
A food forest mimics a natural woodland ecosystem by substituting edible trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals. Fruit and nut trees make up the upper level, while berry shrubs, edible perennials and annuals make up the lower levels. It is also a “place for people to mingle with nature,” explains Harder, a 2001 graduate of Mountain Lake Public High School and manager of Jubilee Fruits & Vegetables of Mountain Lake.
What it is NOT is a monoculture (all of one type of crop), a growing area in which pests and diseases are killed with toxic chemicals and has bare soil.
Work is done not by machines, rather on a human scale, but yet is easy to maintain.
“A food forest is based on an ecological model of an actual forest,” shares Harder. “There are many plant layers.”
* The upper layer is canopy trees. Trees are planted that will grow large and provide fruit or nut produce, or something else for human use. These could apple or pear fruit trees or walnut trees. Perhaps even hybrid chestnut or hazelnut trees.
* The next layer is a variety of fruit trees; apple, plum, etc.
* Then there are the vines – like grapes – that would climb the trunk of the medium trees.
*Below the fruit trees would be edible shrubs, most notably berry shrubs, such as red and black currants, raspberries, gooseberries, chokecherries, seaberries, cranberries, strawberries. Selections would be made on the hardiness, the ruggedness of the variety, in order to weather Minnesota climate patterns.
* These are followed by grasses, or even flowering plants that could be herbal in nature or provide sources for pollinators, such as honey bees or maybe wild asparagus.
* The lowest level would be fungi. This is where you find edible mushrooms, such as shiitake mushrooms.
Harder went on to explain why the answer to the additional problem of food + forest is community resilience. “A food forest would unite the community through food security, building relationships, perhaps an alternative income source utilizing the wood or preserving the fruit and as an environmental service, filtering water and air.
The Lawcon Park Food Forest Project is seen as a long-term effort relying on a series of steps:
* Articulate goals – what plants should be planted, how big an area should be incorporated.
* Analyze and assess the site – is the food forest not getting in the way of any other public use, will it grow and not be a nuisance.
* Design of the site.
*Implementation by planting.
* Evaluating the project on a continual basis.
Harder revealed that such projects have already taken hold in the United States, as well as in Canada and England. “In this country, we can look at the Basalt County Community Food Forest in Basalt, Colorado; Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, located west of Boston; Madison, Wisconsin Fruits and Nuts and the seven-acre Beacon Forest in Seattle, Washington.”
The current site being eyed for the food forest is to the north of the storm sewer outlet by Lawcon Park, west of 9th Street and beyond the Mountain Lake Trail stretching towards Mountain Lake. Decisions on what will be planted will include ease of maintenance and harvest, as well as selection of varieties resistant to particular diseases.
“People already harvest mushrooms, chokecherries and high-level cranberries that grow wild in that area,” lays out Harder, “as well as wild gooseberries and raspberries on the ‘island’ – and even cattail roots and stalks.”
To help turn this dream into a reality, the Tree Commission has received a $4,500 grant from the Statewide Health Improvement Program (SHIP) to assist with planting and perhaps the posting of signage relating to food forest protocol.
“Even looking more long term,” Harder reflects,”there would be quite an educational aspect to the food forest.”
The Tree Commission is gathering interested people from all facets of the community to take part in the project, and plans are to schedule a June meeting in order to get down to the nitty gritty of design and planning.
The goal is to begin planting the food forest in spring 2015.