Your Food Forest – Mission, Vision & Values

To give you an example of how to answer these questions, here are our answers to the same 7 questions from the week after we purchased our land in Tenerife, almost 7 years ago:

1. Our Food Forest Values

Sustainability, biodiversity, abundance, Garden of Eden, connection to nature, co-creation with nature, role model for holistic, sustainable living, joy, harmony, beauty, silence, love, sensuality, health and wellness…

2. What Do We Want and Need from Our Food Forest

• A place of beauty, tranquility, inspiration, energizing.
  A place to connect to something bigger, older and wiser.
  A meeting place between plants, animals & humans.
• Providing 80% of our fruits, vegetables, berries, nuts, herbs and honey – year round.
• Throughout the year the land will be covered with the flowers and flowering trees and bushes for honey bees, butterflies and other pollinators.
• Medicinal herbs garden.
• Edible mushroom garden.
• Tropical garden filled with ferns and orchids – a habitat for birds, insects and amphibians
• Privacy from south and north neighbors.
• 2 new ponds to collect rainwater and create humid microclimates as habitat for birds, insects, reptiles, amphibians and  fish.
• Wetlands to collect greywater.
• Greenhouse for sensitive vegetables, sprouting seeds and growing cuts.
• A sauna.
• Storage place for firewood.
• Flat playground.
• Meditation/sanctuary.
• Hammock(s) between shade trees.
• Benches under shade trees.
• Aviary for small seed-eating birds, with jungle-like feeling.
• Beehives producing honey, wax, propolis and pollen.

What do the landscape and area need?

• The soil everywhere needs rejuvenation, using either compost, deep mulching or preferably green manure cover.
• Some trees are dying & need to be healed.
• The barranco (ravine) needs to come back to its glory days of running water (during the rainy season) and green, shady, cool, wet microclimate.
• The west barranco side should become a fire-barrier.
• The north garden could benefit from a few tall, shade giving trees.
• The original pond needs shade to reduce the rate of water evaporation.
• The pond needs water movement and filtering, so the water contains more oxygen and are clearer.
• The very south patch in between the wooden fence and the neighbors needs to become alive again.
• Everywhere we could use more humidity in the soil.

How should the new landscape feel?

A combination of a forest feeling and a subtropical Garden of Eden, with several small special microclimates and sanctuaries (even a bench will do)

What will we do there?

• We see the place as a place where we work, meditate, relax, enjoy chilling out with friends, learn from nature, get inspired…
• We love the visioning and strategic planning part.
• We love the DAILY strolling down the patches and checking on the growth of everything.
• We like pruning and grafting (need to learn how to do those correctly).
• We love sprouting seeds and propagating plants from cuts.
• We like harvesting the fruits and vegetables.
• We like taking care of small animals (birds in the aviary, fish in the ponds, turtles, guinea-pigs, chickens, etc…)
• We see ourselves working in the garden for 1-2 hours a day.
• We love sitting in different corners and enjoy the peace and sounds and smells, meditating and reflecting… allowing creativity, imagination and dreaming to take place.
• We love falling asleep on warm days on hammocks between shade trees.
• We love having friends coming for outdoor meals and enjoying sunsets and star gazing over a good bottle of wine warmed up by outside fire.
• We don’t plan to do the more demanding physical work ourselves (earthworks, digging, heavy lifting, etc…), but we plan to have a small team doing these jobs once or twice a month.

What kind of produce would we like to have?

• Fruits (local, citrus, tropical)
• Berries
• Nuts
• Perennial and annual vegetables
• Edible and medicinal herbs
• Medicinal trees and plants
• Edible mushrooms
• Honey

What will be the overall theme or function?

• Self-reliant living
• Sanctuary
• Playground
• Healing space