The first Permsteading project of 2013 is proceeding steadily. This year's project is a two-tiered system designed to work together and will, hopefully, ultimately achieve a whole, continuous system. The two tiers are:
1. A dehesa
2. A streuobstwiese
These two agrosylvopastoral systems are being planted in a ten acre pasture that already contains a few mature, mast producing trees with the intent of raising hogs with as little off-farm inputs as possible. While there are areas of the pasture where the two systems are dintinct, there are also areas where the lines blur.
For the Streuobstwiese, which is located on the Southern and western aspects of a hillside, so far we have planted:
A row of ~15 apple trees spaced 45-50' apart with about 10-15 left to go.
A row of ~ 15 pear trees spaced 40' apart
Two rows of peaches, plums, mulberries and fuyu persimmons spaced 40' apart.
About 15 figs scattered about the pasture
The distance between rows is 40'.
In other parts of the pasture, we're planting something I'm calling an "Apple Square." It consists of four apple trees planted in a square, the sides of which are 50'. In the exact center of the square, we are planting a crabapple. A few of these will butt up to the northwestern corner of the pasture and extend Southward down a hill.
For the dehesa, we are relying on only two types of oaks: live oaks and sawtooth oaks. These are all being grown from seeds that came from our top producing specimens of each type of tree. The live oaks were planted on 50' centers. Each 50' span has been bisected by a sawtooth oak. The love oaks will one day, many, many years from now, achieve canopy closure. Since that time is so many years away, the sawtooths, which are very precocious, will accelerate productivity in the relative near-term but are ultimately destined to be firewood. I haven't counted them but my off-the-cuff guess is that we have about 20 lives oaks and double that of sawtooth oaks.
This is in the same pasture where we have ~1/2 acre of black walnuts, 12 Dunstan Chestnuts, ~20 producing live oaks, a few mature white oaks and beeches, and some hickories and swamp chestnut oaks planted.
Also, in some of the more in-assessable areas, we've planted pawpaws.
The grand design is to have a few of those types of trees that drop in April and May (mulberries), a few more that drop in May and June (peaches and plums), a few more that drop in July (primarily figs), etc. I'm attempting to approximate the nutritional needs of a group of hogs that are farrowed in April, weaned in May or June and then fattened over the course of the year. Ultimately, they will be finishing on acorns, pecans and hickories for a slaughter date sometime in December/January. That is the reason for the heavy reliance on live oaks - they are very productive, never miss and have a late and protracted drop time.
Outside the pasture, we've also planted several pears and will likely plant several apples that can be used to supplement the fruits and mast dropped inside the pasture if needs be.