Do you own your home in Vallejo? Are you interested in living a more sustainable life? We are inviting you to consider becoming a demonstration food forest keeper! With the help of the community, we’ll convert your lawn, if applicable, and install a permaculture food forest and a laundry-to- landscape greywater system that will feed all the trees and bushes in your new garden!
Why permaculture food forest?
A 2,000 sq. ft.-lawn requires about 90,000 gallons of water a year. A mature 2,000 sq. ft. food forest needs about 20,000 gallons of water per year and not all of this water needs to come from the municipal source. Of this amount of water, our goal is to utilize as much free (rain) and secondary water. Rain water from your roof and greywater from your laundry will be diverted to the specially prepared mulch basins and swales in your garden – a system of ditches filled with mulch that will slow down and absorb into the soil every drop of water finding its way to your garden.
In Benicia, we have already transformed seven yards from lawns into luscious, thriving food forests utilizing secondary water (rainwater and greywater). You can come meet the team and tour three of these gardens on February 25, March 25 and April 22! Visit our events calendar to register.
Sustainable Solano is beginning the next stage of our Sustainable Backyard Program. We are now expanding into Vallejo.
What we will do
Imagine a thriving, vibrant eco-system in your front-or backyard! A few fruit trees surrounded by native and Mediterranean plants, berries, perennial vegetables, flowers, with enough space for your annual favorites.
Birds, Bees and Beyond, one of the original Benicia Sustainable Backyard Demonstration Food Forest Installations, Winter 2016
The installation of this demonstration food forest is sponsored by the Solano County Water Agency and is free to Vallejo homeowners. Your new garden will become a community educational center! Your responsibility will be to maintain the food forest (a list of sustainable landscapers in your area will be provided, if you need extra help), to enjoy plentiful harvest, and participate in future annual tours of Sustainable Solano landscapes.
Application Process
The application process starts on February 20, 2017 and goes until March 27, 2017. The installation will happen on three Saturdays in April-May. The homeowner must be available for these dates: April 22, 29, May 6, 13. At least one of the homeowners is required to attend the volunteer training. While we are particularly interested in highly visible front-yard lawns to convert, other types of landscape (up to 2,000 sq.ft.) are welcome to participate. We will visit all the applying households to evaluate their suitability for a permaculture food forest and a laundry-to- landscape greywater system.
Sustainable Solano Board and the Permaculture Advisory Board will make the final selection based on the proposed sites’ characteristics.
As Sustainable Solano continues our work throughout the county, the question we often get is “What does sustainable mean?” We continue our exploration into our mission, our focus, and what it means to be sustainable with our third installation of the conversation: a United Nations perspective.
In 2015 the United Nations published their “Sustainable Development Goals”, a roadmap of 17 goals to focus on for the next 15 years. It was “a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity.” It sounded very close to our goal to “promote ecologically sustainable, economically and socially just communities, a world that works for everyone.”
Perhaps in naming their call to action, they meant the same thing as we did with “sustainable”. But one doesn’t have to guess, this is the United Nations, after all. They defined what they meant by sustainable development as “achieving economic, environmental, and social development that ‘meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.'” What does that look like? Delving deeper, we find that the goals focus on areas such as “climate change, economic inequality, innovation, sustainable consumption, peace and justice, among other priorities. The goals are interconnected – often the key to success on one will involve tackling issues more commonly associated with another.”
Sustainability is not just focused on climate change, not just focused on green energy, not just focused on social justice and peace, not just focused on the environment, not just on equality, not just on waste and sustainable consumption, but the also on the fundamental assertion that these goals are interconnected. In strengthening one area, you strengthen the other. We deeply agree with that, and want to submit another part of the definition: sustainable is a system that is not only ecologically, economically, and socially just, but one that is regenerative and self-renewing generation after generation. We don’t just meet our present needs without compromising future needs, but leave the world better than how we found it, for a next generation that can also hope to do the same. But we don’t have to go to the United Nations to do that. We are already here, where we want to be–in Solano County.
Maggie (center) Taking notes on peach tree pruning.
When we asked Community Orchard Program Manager Maggie Ingalls why she invited Ann Ralph to speak to Orchard members, she said, “I took Ann’s workshop on backyard fruit tree pruning soon after we had planted several fruit trees in our new yard here in Benicia. I wish I had taken the course before we planted those trees, but I jumped right in with summer pruning and have successfully kept the trees to a manageable size. I find Ann’s theory of pruning and her teaching style to be very helpful.”
Which is a plus, because pruning can seem quite intimidating, with talk about sizing, different cuts, pruning for growth, pruning for fruit, dwarf trees, semi-dwarf trees, two-year fruit vs four-year fruit. The ideal angle of branches. At times, avid orchardists can forget there is knowledge and terminology that the average (or novice) fruit tree owner doesn’t know. It can be quite dizzying. Ann will spend two full hours teaching and demonstrating the simple logic of pruning: how to prune for short stature and easy harvest, seasonal routines, and pest and disease control. Because unless you do care for an orchard as your main activity in the day, most backyard caretakers will only be able to do what works for them.
To that, Maggie added, “I came away from her workshop with the confidence to maintain my own trees at the size that is convenient for me.”
Have you registered for our upcoming winter fruit tree-pruning workshop taught by author and educator Ann Ralph? The February 11th workshop, which will be held at the Benicia Community Orchard, is a great opportunity to learn the basics of fruit tree pruning.
When: Feb. 11, 10:30am-12:30pm (potluck lunch to follow)
Where: Benicia Community Orchard, 1400 E 2nd St Benicia
David Shaw of Santa Cruz Permaculture’s talk and tour turned into an extended one when the official event ended. Due to enthusiasm the talk portion ran long and the tour ran out of time. Attendees still had many questions, so David graciously agreed to travel directly to the Community Orchard where he continued answering pruning-related questions. As one participant noted, “That was so killer. I think I’ll be taking David’s permaculture course.”
What he was referring to was David’s quick overview of permaculture principles. What was an hour talk with handouts quickly blossomed into a nearly 2-hour one, complete with poetry recitation, and an explanation of how permaculture was similar and different to academic-based agro-ecology (he teaches at UC Santa Cruz in agro-ecology as well), and Q&A. There were over two dozen attendees, with several steadily streaming in after the talk began, and space became so limited that attendees joked about huddling together on the “huddle corner” of the living room couch, attendees sat on the floor and on pillows, and many stood.
The tour portion of the day commenced with only 15 minutes left, but the hosts Kirsten and Nick were amenable, and curious to learn about pruning their lovely fruit trees, so they extended the tour by half an hour. Yet even running half an hour over, attendees were delighted when David agreed to continue the talk at the Community Orchard and expressed his wish to stay for lunch and see more of the town.
Permaculture isn’t just about plants and trees, the self-proclaimed tree nerd and orchardist said, it is about community, resilience, and re-energizing. When someone asked why he didn’t use the word sustainability, he countered with a brief anecdote: “Well, look, if someone asks you about your marriage, would you want to say, ‘It’s sustainable’ or would you want to say, ‘It’s renewing and re-generative?'” And it seemed that many of the people who attended the even found it very much so.
Please note: For those still interested in a more in-depth workshop on pruning, the Community Orchards is hosting Ann Ralph of Grow a Little Fruit Tree on February 11th. The workshop is free from orchard members, $40 for non-members. There is a 20 person limit. More information and registration can be found here.
Our next stop is February 25th, at “Greyhawk Grove”, another one of our original installation food forests, with Lydia Neilson of the Regenerative Institute. The event is FREE, but you must pre-register for the location. More information can be found here.
Sustainable Solano would like to share a video that a friend, Kristian, made! It certainly highlights the most meaningful moments and makes us reflect on how moving of an experience this was for us.
