Pear tree before pruning Pear tree after pruning Apple tree before pruning Apple tree after pruning Peach tree before we harvested the peaches Peach tree after pruning Gary the master pruner Brennah putting tree salve on the cuts Brennah putting tree salve on the cuts ...
Sunday, September 14th at Gateway Farm Just a reminder that I will be making a presentation at Gateway Farm in Plymouth on Sunday along with other local folks in the permaculture community. The organizers have now made it a FREE event, by donation only! So if that was a concern for you, you do not have to miss out! Here is a summary of the talk I will be giving. ✨ It's All Connected Do ...
Peach tree before we harvested the peaches Saturday, August 30th - Noon to 4pm Would you like to learn how to prune fruit trees? Our friend, Gary Turner is going to come work with us on our apple, pear, and peach trees to get them in better shape for being able to produce fruit better. You are invited to come hang out, help carry the pruned branches away, and learn about pruning from Gary! ...
Food Forest Guild Part 2 https://youtube.com/shorts/B8-CbCzNysw?feature=share * The word “guild” in this usage is a group of plants that can thrive together as you would find in a forest habitat. It has the layers found in a forest - tree, shrub, herbaceous, ground cover, and sometimes even vines. The different plants all serve various purposes… edible, pollinator friendly, medicinal, windbreak, etc. This weekend we are celebrating Christ's resurrection. It’s lovely how the plants ...
This is Part 3 of my Food Forest series. Please feel free to post any questions you might have! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNQJMB21LUc
Hi everyone! Thank you all so much for your patience as I’ve been away taking care of family matters. ❤️ I took this video yesterday and thought you might enjoy seeing how things are looking here this spring. I’d like to do more of these to post here if you enjoy them. https://youtube.com/shorts/SB71VqEKPnY?feature=share I’m looking forward to getting back into the swing of things with you all, scheduling more events hopefully starting in mid May or ...
rainbow in the fire circle Do you consider your body and spirit a natural system mirroring the world around you? As you picture sunshine, fresh air, and pure water nourishing and stabilizing the land, can you see it doing the same for you? Come join us as we explore the element of Earth and connect with our own inner healers. We will begin with a meditation and a song. There will then be a ...
Spring is in full swing at the Farm and Sanctuary! So I wanted to give you a small tour of the current beauty and abundance! As most of you know, we specialize in perennial food crops at Crossing Hedgerows, and have planted a food forest nearby the house. We used permaculture design to create this food forest, which I love to talk about when we have folks out for walks. Every year it becomes more and more ...
Honeyberry Flowers with Bumblebee by Brennah Cavanaugh Photography LLC taken on 5/2/22I'm sure I could feature a different plant each day of the year and still not cover all of the various ones at the farm and sanctuary. And the same goes for the pollinators and various wildlife. So I'll share a little about Honeyberries (Lonicera caerulea) today, and hopefully you will enjoy it. :)The honeyberries, which are a type of honeysuckle with edible berries, are flowering ...
Unopened catkins, a dried leaf, and buds on a speckled alder branch - January 2019Dried flower "cones" and dried leaves on an alder branch - January 2019Back in 2015, several years before the nonprofit was started, the Cavanaughs were planting quite a few different kinds of trees. We moved to the property in 2013 after having lived in South Florida for 14 years. Many of those years we were learning permaculture design techniques and growing tropical edible ...
In my last post, I talked about the construction plans for the Sanctuary. I want to make clear that this is part of a larger plan that allows for many wild spaces, much of which will not be touched by the construction at all. The area where we are creating the pond, along with the future building site and food forest, includes about five acres. It was all a cultivated farm field with very degraded and compacted ...
Ok, I won't go into all the health benefits of aronia berries, but this is another of the perennials we planted that has been incredibly productive. As you can see in the photos, the aronia bushes were only a couple of inches tall when we planted them in 2014, and are now five or six feet tall. Even the very first year, they had started producing berries. Over the years, we've made lots of aronia crumble to share ...
Continuing from my previous post about food forest crops, sunchokes are one of the perennials we've planted around the farmstead area. As you can see, they have a gorgeous flower which blossoms in late summer. They're a type of sunflower with an edible tuber root which can be used similarly to potatoes, though they have perhaps more of a water chestnut consistency. Also they can be eaten raw, sliced up on a salad with a bit of ...
I'd like to highlight in my coming posts some of the many forest crops we have at the Sanctuary. Many we have planted around the Cavanaugh homestead. Others have been planted by birds, wind, and the ways of Mother Nature and we have allowed them to flourish. And some were on the land already when we arrived. The Shagbark Hickory is one in the last category. Hickory trees do not produce nuts every year, so one has to ...
It was another good community work day on Thursday. We started with a little walk around the farm... in which I apparently made at least one funny face! The honey berry bushes are blossoming and the lilacs are getting close. Honey berries produce edible, sweet, oblong shaped blue berries. They're in the honeysuckle family and another of our beloved perennials.Next we planted up many seed trays - one of my favorites being nasturtiums. I can't wait to ...