Hi I’m Yuta.
During our trip around south island, we participated in the food forest tour, which we wanted to visit.
We were so impressed to the place so I will introduce about it this time!
Where is it??
Here is the place. At Riverton, close to Invercargill, the southern end of the south island.
The tour is run by the South Coast Environment Society. You can book this tour from this link; Food Forest Tours.
The forest has been created by Mr and Ms Guyton over 25 years. It is 2acres (about 8,093m2) wide. Their house is in this forest.
The place is forest.
Ms Guyton was the guide of the tour and she took us to their food forest.
The place we arrived does not looks like ordinary house but forest.
We went in and the place was completely forest.
Of course we booked food FOREST tour and expect that but it was beyond our expectation!
The photo below is the place.
Do nothing
The place looks like conducting natural farming of Masanobu Fukuoka.
The photo below is orchard area as apple trees, and cherry trees.
It really looks like forest, don’t you think?? This is Food Forest!
There are herbs like cow parsley and comfrey as ground cover.
There are no passes in this area so we need to step on these grasses.
They planted seeds and seedlings from the local area continuously over 25years.
When they bought this place, it was just grassland. Now the place became completely forest!
These trees are used as fire woods and timber for themselves.
The photos below shows their house and vegetable garden.
There are edible plants all over the place.
There are plants which need to be planted every year but there are also plants which were self seeded and became wild vegetables.
Do you know what it is? This is placed in the middle of the food forest.
This is the house for bugs.
This leads to an increase in the variety of wildlife in this area.
For example, grasshoppers. If there are no predators, the number of those surges and eat all vegetables up.
However, bees eat grasshoppers. And birds will come because of bees and grasshoppers.
Birds will give nutriants to the soil by their droppings and also help to pollination.
Like this, biodiversity keep the balance of nature, which is so complicated that human beings cannot control. Therefore, there is no need for us to put any effort in it.
This area, 25 years ago, was just a grassland, or worse, many garbages were damped.
Now there are many trees growing in this area but for the first few years, they had a hard time creating food forest.
For example, weeds.
They were fighting with weeds about 20 years. Cut and grow, cut and grow..
And suddenly they thought “this is endless and meaningless.”.
Since then, they stopped cutting weeds and start planting herbs around. What happens?? The herbs take over the weeds and no need to dig up them anymore!
Although they were breed, vegetables and fruits are a part of nature.
If you leave growing vegetables to the power of nature, you can make safety food more and more simply! Maybe..hopefully..Lol
I would like to implement this way!
This is the end for today.
Thank you for reading!
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