From the Field: Spring in the forest garden

Lemony Quince: in bloom; understory in South Field

From the Field: Spring in the forest garden

Photos and reflections of the farm in spring

* Our “From the Field” Series features projects, production, and reflections derived from our work at home on our two farm sites in near Frenchtown, New Jersey.*

Homestead pear in bloom; April

Earth day arrives just as I’m beginning to feel love drunk on a new spring. A few days ago, standing under an old pear tree, alive and buzzing, radiant in sun gold full bloom, I abandoned my farm chores. The day’s work receded into the background and I was overcome with an urge to grab my camera, and capture some minor facsimile of this beauty I could not shake myself away from.

I remember that this is what falling in love feels like. The feeling arrives reliably with the first blooms, and they are made all the more sweeter in spring because of their absence in winter. One enormously vast and complex continuum.

I don’t know if I’m falling in love with the flowers, or the bees, or the warming sun… and in the sweetly scented air, sparkling in golden hues, and vibrating, I’m not sure where one ends and one begins. Or how any of it would make sense out of context.

Out of context, we’re all incomplete organisms. Together, one enormously vast and complex continuum.

Daffodil in bloom in the understory

Daffodils in the understory of our forest garden are the first blooms to break dormancy. Like all spring bulbs, they help capture and infiltrate early season rains and snow melt, and provide the first pollinator forage. They keep the grass at bay underneath shrubs and trees, and when they fade, their former patch of earth is handed over to another herb or flower’s momentary flourish. They are a low maintenance crop (someday?), and true to their namesake, absolutely mesmerizing in their splendor (everyday).

First nettle harvest of the season

The nettle harvest stretches over the season. First harvest of tender tops goes to the pot for nutrient dense soups, and stocks, and pestos. Second harvest, when the stems have hardened enough to easily separate the leaf, are dried, garbled, and jarred for nourishing tea. Third harvest, just before flower, is fermented in a mineral rich herbal fertility spray for the garden. Fourth harvest, is a medicinal tincture of the green seeds as they begin to pearl. Every plant has a rhythm and a rhyme told over time.

Foreground, Redbud; Mid-ground, Cottonwood; Background, Regrowth woods

Successional dynamics are a powerful process we play with in the herbaceous realm, but also within the context of trees. Introducing fast growing trees accelerates the evolution of soil health by altering light, air, wind, and fungal dynamics. The cottonwood (yellow flowering tree) in this photo was planted seven years ago, and is already nearly as tall as the fifty year old wood that borders the farm. As a full sun germinating, fast growing tree it (and others like it) has a catalyzing role to play in ecosystem repair and evolution.

There was a time, years back, when our approach to farm and landscape design and management was heavily weighted toward outcomes. But, over time it’s become much more balanced toward process. Trees can be planted, grow, and be cut down for a new tree to grow in its place when the time (and ecological dynamics) is right, just as easily as herbaceous plants. There’s no reason to be overly precious or heavy handed about it. It’s more about aligning to the rhythm of succession.

Successional establishment has a role in all contexts, but it has wide reaching effect in transitioning broad acreage sites, and can be utilized as a powerful tool to transition degraded ecosystems, and strategize regenerative agriculture crop plans and schematics. As I’m fond of saying to myself and others regularly, “ride the tide, baby.”

Violets, early spring

Plants hold the temperament of the season.

So many of the fragrant herbs that we enjoy in tea are at their peak during the summer solstice. Their aromatic oils are elevated and brought forth by a waxing sun. They are exuberant, delightful, and energetically drying. But, all good things in good company… A balanced blend of tea is like a balanced and rhythmic nature, spring supports summer and so on.

Violets peak and bloom in the sog and fog and sometimes sun of spring. They are filled with the energy of water; smooth, demulcent, delicate, and transient. They retain their moistening qualities when dried, and are great company in a balanced tea blend of fragrant herbs to come.

In the understory they arrive before most, tufting over the soil as some of the first emergent green leaves. They catch the water, blanket the earth, and then melt into the background as summer grasses and wild flowers come into bloom.

Ground nest in the understory, early June

Stumbled upon a songbird ground nest mid-hatch while walking the fields.

I’ve been moving between our two farm sites slowly this season. Loosening my grip on the day-to-day at the old farm, which we refer to as “BIRD” for short. It grows wilder everyday, thick with life in new crevices. I learn the wildlife the same way I learned plants, first by shape, color, sound, behavior, and finally by name.

The tractor mower broke, the rains came, and the herbaceous layer of the forest garden flourished heavy and fecund in a manner of days. I was thinking we were falling behind, that we really needed a mow, until I cam upon this clutch... and reconsidered that perhaps all was perfectly timed.

*Foreground: Pawpaw, blackberry / Background: beach plum, elderberry , mid June

Alabaster elderflower bloom in the fields.

Pink Champagne Currants in the understory

Yellow Blackcap Raspberries in the understory

Gooseberries in the understory

Bumper berry crop in the understory this season!

Often hear concern over production potential of semi shaded berry crops... A lot of berry species are naturally emergent in “edge ecology” habitats, and do quite well in the understory of our forest garden farm (multistrata agroforestry). The overstory of taller shrubs and trees create dappled sun conditions that reflect the “natural” environment for these short stature berries, limit stress on the plants, and have also enabled us to farm for a seven year run now without irrigation, even in drought years.

Johann & Andrew planting Aronia around one of the Center Field ponds

In our ninth year of forest garden farming and still planting! Also cutting down trees, making room for new trees, seeding, chopping and dropping, harvesting, transplanting, and growing. Perennial systems are not static systems, they are dynamic and evolving. They grow and transform with each new season, indeed like the farmers and stewards that tend them… It becomes a self-reflexive process, you shape the landscape, while simultaneously in turn, the landscape shapes you.

Photos & Writing by Lindsay Napolitano