What's The Big Idea?

Lately there has been a lot of visibility given to articles about the future of our food system-if it can be called that.  I suppose even a dysfunctional system is a system nonetheless.  Kind of like the stack of papers on my desk being called a "filing system". As time goes by I find myself less confident about what someone else will do for me and more concerned with taking care of myself.  I want to know that if the world's agriculture market collapses I have a back-up plan for myself and those in my little tribe.  I have been making increasingly fewer trips to the grocery store, instead scoping out every possible means of procuring food as close to home as possible.  I live walking distance to the market, and of course, have a vegetable garden.  I'm convinced that in a world where every person's system for living is as different as people on the planet, it is virtually impossible for everyone to have their food needs met in the same way.  So I've come up with a big idea that will work for me: to transform my entire property into an edible landscape.

Not my Potager.
A great example, courtesy of Mr. Brown Thumb.

However lofty that sounds, the change will not be a demonstration of shock-and-awe, but a slow unfurling, like a new spring fiddlehead. This year I will devote a conservative 30% of my property into space for growing food.  So far the closest thing to a blitz was yesterday's removal of a very beautiful-but sadly inedible-patch of lily-of-the-valley in preparation for a shady bed to grow kale to feed the chickens and cilantro and parsley for a year's supply of pesto.  This past weekend with the help of my partner-in-crime, we built two very nice looking raised beds which will hold cherry trees in their centre and strawberries (I think) underneath, along with a new side-by-side composter.  Things are coming together, even if the weather here in Southern Ontario has been less than spring-like.  When it does finally arrive my little wannabe urban farm will be ready.

When the snow flies again in November, there will be enough food to feed ourselves until next spring.  There. Having said it in print makes more likely to be so! Eventually, the whole yard will be used to grow food, my dream being an artfully composed potager* (pronounced po-ta-zhay) where vegetables, herbs, lettuces, tree fruit, soft fruits, and edible flowers weave themselves into a gloriously beautiful and productive tapestry-so I'm afraid the resource-sapping perennials will have to go.  If all goes according to plan, the dream will be accomplished by 2013, and my little patch of paradise will fill the freezer, root-cellar, and canning jars for a full 6 months.  My yard is not large-just 50x110 feet, and a good part of it shady.  I'm anticipating a bumper-crop of trial-and-error as I get to know the growing potential of my yard better.  Stay tuned!

*What is a Potager?  Find out here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_garden