Monthly Archives: March 2018

2403, 2018

The Scandinavian Berry Quartet

debs/ March 24, 2018

If you thought being in Norway would give me the space to have deep thoughts etc., you would have overestimated me.  If you caught me zoning out, 9 times out of 10, I would be thinking about berries. The 10th time, I’d be thinking about ice cream.

So I’m not sure why the bears in Canada didn’t get the memo, but there are tons of wild berries in Scandinavia. Basically, free food everywhere. Yet foraging is a special kind of free food.  For one, its free food without mark-ups for being package-free, local, AND fair-trade. It’s free food without anyone trying to sell my anything (ie. samples at Costco).  It’s free food without someone trying to bribe me to do something (ie. to be social at a lunch hosted by church). And, not to mention, it would actually go to waste if it weren’t in my belly. This is free food I don’t have to feel guilty about. In fact, I can make a moral case for eating berries.

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0203, 2018

Food Forestry in Gjøvik

debs/ March 2, 2018

Our first expansion project in Gjøvik was to help expand the Food Forest.

The idea of the Food Forest (or Forest Garden) is to look to a naturally occurring forest as inspiration for how vegetation should be organized in a garden. Notice all the diversity and connections that exist in a forest:  multiple levels of shrubbery, thick hummus that keeps water in the soil, animal life, perennials that grow deep roots in a forest.

Our permaculture peeps see the connections and positive feedback loops between all the aforementioned components and are inspired to replicate this system using edible plants. By intentionally planting layers of mutually beneficial, edible and non-invasive perennials, they hope to improve soil quality and create a resilient food system that requires less manual inputs over time. “Harvesting” would be more akin to “foraging” in a forest of food like this!

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