My husband and I started building our food forest 7 years ago. It started with two raised beds and two people who didn't know what we were doing. We did not start gardening with a vision of building a food forest. We took out time observing the land. I ordered a bunch of gardening books and started reading them. We also visited farms and homesteads around us to learn everything we could possibly learn.
We live in a small town where lots of tourists visit each year. We often have visiting guests who ask to tour our food forest. It's sad to realize there are so many adults and kids who do not know how food grows. It makes me happy to see the excitement on their faces when they spot cucumbers or melons growing in the food forest. It is also wonderful to see the smiles on people's faces when they taste a homegrown tomato for the first time.
Fast forward to today. We decided to build a small guest cottage on our property that we can rent out nightly to guests who want to visit the area and also see our food forest. I will also be sharing what I have learned so far with our guests who are interested in growing food themselves. We are also planning on digging a pond right in front of the cottage and stocking it with fish for our future guests. I know the frog music will be insanely loud and peaceful bouncing off the surface of the fresh water.
We broke ground on May 15th, 2019. The concrete truck came the next day to pour the footing. It was so weird to see this tall orange thing in the background sticking up above the orchard area. It was massive.
We are excited about this project. I will be documenting the entire building process here on Steemit. Stay tuned. We will be doing the block work next.