Hickory Nut Gap Farm — The family that owns and operates our farm has history on this land that dates back to the 19th century. A wealth of agricultural enterprises have been born here, including the Farmers Federation by James G.K. McClure in 1920. This land once hosted a dairy, and it was the long time home place of former North Carolina Senator James McClure Clarke, who worked passionately in his life to establish a number of orchards around his home. In it’s current state, Hickory Nut Gap Farm is a very diverse family farm that produces everything from grass-fed beef and pastured pork to a successful agri-tourism business, and most recently we have ventured into producing certified organic fruit such as blueberries, blackberries, and apples. Organic orchard management poses a great challenge, especially in the south where disease and insects are more prevalent than the northern climates particularly well known for growing apples. Organic orcharding has even been called “the last frontier in organic agriculture” by Michael Phillips, an experienced holistic apple grower out of New England.
In navigating the challenges that we face in managing our organic orchards, we also must circumvent concerns related to the family history of our farm. The oldest apples trees growing in our orchards are 60 years old, and some could even be older. The productive maturity of an apple tree is said to be upwards of 20 years, so the age of these oldest trees provides yet another road block to maintaining not only a healthy but also an economically viable organic orchard system. The problem though is that the oldest trees were planted and cared for by a beloved man, Senator Clarke. Family and community members alike have expressed misgivings about the removal of these old trees. In the first few years of organic management we incorporated the existing trees into our management plan. Though, with the best interest of our business in mind, we have decided to move forward at a slow pace, removing only the most unproductive trees. These will be replaced with newly planted young trees. In the coming years we’ll be able to get a good grip on the true value of the remaining old trees, while caring for new saplings that will be the future of the apple production on our farm. In this process we have come to another hurdle in orchard management.
An organic orchard system is very sensitive to cultural practices. One such example is the intensified need to remove all dead fruit, prunings, and dead wood from the orchard. Dead apple wood harbors insects and disease, so its removal is critical. One is presented with the opportunity to turn prunings into mulch and use them to your benefit on the orchard floor, but that is a conversation for another day. In addition, the volume of wood and size of the trees we are taking down in the orchards isn’t ideal for using in a wood chipper. We are now at the point where we have a bunch of trees lying on the ground, and although there is a lot of emotional attachment to them, they are of seemingly little worth. In other words, we’ll have to put a lot of labor into getting them out of the way, and they don’t provide much use value other than firewood that’s hard to split.
I am a budding permaculturist, so I often like to challenge the work that we are currently engaged in, hoping to increase efficiency or to decrease waste. If anything, those challenges sometimes lead to an interesting conversation. The permaculture mentality provides a framework for coming up with solutions that work harmoniously with the system in which they are employed. How can we better serve ourselves with the work we are doing to remove these old apple trees? So, just the other day I had a moment of inspiration when I realized that we could use the apple trees that we cut down as the hosts for our next round of mushroom log inoculation.
We happen to have a small side project growing mushrooms on logs under the canopy of a hemlock forest between two of our pastures. Early in 2011 we inoculated our first shiitake and oyster mushrooms on oak and poplar logs respectively. We spent countless hours cutting wood for the sole purpose of using it to propagate mushrooms. During that process our whole crew identified that we were spending a lot of time to get wood for a project that constitutes a negligible part of our operation. By using the currently available apple trees as our source of mushroom logs we are performing multiple tasks in one: cleaning the downed trees out of the orchard and cutting logs sized perfectly for use in growing mushrooms. Growing mushrooms is quickly gaining interest as an agricultural pursuit because it is so easy and inexpensive to begin. In addition to producing a great food, there is potential for amazing economic returns in this perennial system.
The satisfaction that came from our new focus on this project was visible. The work crew was feeding on the excitement of expanding our mushroom growing while performing what could have been viewed as a mundane task, cutting up old trees. Albeit a small one, this opportunity to instill a creative spark in our farm work proved invaluable. Also, we will be benefitting the bottom line of our business, diversifying our local food supply, and learning about the cultivation of different varieties of mushrooms using apple wood as the growing medium. Along the way we’ve come up with another way extend the use of the old apple trees in yet another dimension. I briefly spoke of organic and holistic orchard management, and this final side note is of that accord. The smallest branches from the apple trees that are too small for mushroom logs or firewood will still be put to use. We will have a lot of trim piles in the orchard that need to be dealt with. While we will remove most of this old dead wood, we aim to experiment with using some of these piles as a pest control measure. In the summer, when certain apple insect pests are at their height, we will have a number of small evening bonfires in the orchard, burning the old scraps. One of our most formidable orchard insect pests is the coddling moth. Like most moths, they are attracted to light when it’s dark outside. These bonfires should attract a large number of our resident coddling moths and eliminate at least some of them from our orchard when they reach the flames.
I relish the fact that this application of systems thinking comes from only a few days’ work on the farm. Each and every project that we undertake is yet another opportunity for creative diversification. Again, this mentality compounds the value of our labor. Specifically, the renovation of an old orchard should prove to be a boon to our business. Maybe even more importantly, it has provided an opportunity to reignite our passion for working as farmers of a new age.
Essay by Ryan Sitler
A budding permaculturalist, well put. It’s great to think outside the daily task list where motivation and excitement lay. New efficiencies and fun projects are just around the corner.
Thanks for this summary Ryan. Some great dilemmas (transitioning from conventional orchard, to organic, to permaculture) but there-in lie the opportunities.
Two things jump out at me as I read your essay.
First… if we attempt to keep an apple orchard together and going, we are then bound to continue on with the challenges related to a monoculture like pests and fungal diseases. Having all apple trees with little else spells long-term, on-going challenges. Is there a way you can transition the orchard into more of a food forest and replace the old apple trees with a variety of nuts and other fruits?
Also, I’m wondering how effective burying the prunings and trimmings (and old apple trees) in the ground right in the orchard by making them into productive hugelkultur beds might be. The question is (and I don’t really know the answer) will burying the wood and planting a variety of annuals and perennial plants above them (for gardening and other food/fiber/fuel production) minimize or prevent the pest and fungal problems typically experienced in a mono-cultural orchard?
We are beginning to work on the orchard here in Stelle, IL, Ryan that you are familiar with. Let’s keep sharing our notes to see what we all come up with.
Great regards for what you all are up to there… Bill
Amy and Bill,
Thanks for your commentary.
@Bill – I totally identify with your concerns related to an apple orchard existing as a monoculture. I still struggle with that issue while I also have come to terms with it in other respects. From a horticultural standpoint, we are managing a monoculture. In other words, our end goal is to produce a productive apple crop. Along the way though I have taken note of a few complimentary “cultures” that also exist within our orchard system that make it difficult to call the orchard a strict monoculture.
1st – Unlike modern day conventional orchards, our organic orchard has a diverse set of ground cover species that exist including perennial and annual grass, broadleaf, and flowering species. There are some plants whose presence might be unexpected on our orchard floors but have potential to serve as valuable food crops too: day lillies, asparagus, lamb’s quarter, comfrey, and this past year we experienced a healthy fruiting of morel mushrooms. I’m sure too that there are countless other species of plants living on within the orchard that could provide us with food, medicine, and utility.
2nd – We periodically graze horses in our well established orchards. I cannot speak to grazing horses where there are young trees, but in our older orchards we have good luck pasturing our horses in the orchards from about harvest until early spring when the pastures resume growth. The understory stockpile provides a great winter food source for the horses. This model of grazing horses in the orchard has potential to be adjusted to accommodate grazing other species in the orchard as well.
3rd – Our small orchards are bordered on all sides by forests. It can be argued that this presents another challenge in management, and I would also contend that in some instances an orchard growing in close relation to the forest will benefit from the biological diversity associated with the nearby forest. Either way, this proximity to forested land allows for greater integration of the orchard into the surrounding landscape. This will include affects from both pests and beneficials that are inevitably greater in an ecologically managed system.
I am very excited for my first opportunity to delve into hugelkultur. At this point, and particularly in this instance, I’m not in a position to pursue experiments with that style of planting. Beyond providing a long term nutrient supply it seems like hugelkultur has some great potential to help us combat fungal diseases by creating a fungally dominated compost situation in the soil directly below the orchard trees. This has been reported to benefit the grower by providing natural fungal competition with the diseases that often plague orchards type situations. This goes without mentioning the endless possibilities for the addition of annual crops, edible and medicinal mushroom inoculation, etc.
I’m also very eager to pursue raising poultry – whether for meat or eggs – in an orchard using an egg mobile or rotation pasture situation. Talk about great potential for insect control!
Man I could go on all night, but I’d better put it to rest. We’ll definitely continue to share ideas and more.
Hi there,
I see that this thread is over a year old so I am not sure if i will get a response but its worth a try…I want to innoculate apple wood with mushroom plugs and was wondering what lessons you have learned from your experiments with apple wood. What kind of mushrooms did you innoculate? did you have any success?
Michael phillips is amazing! I’m glad that you are reading his books as they are an invaluable resource for a permaculture orchardist.
Ariel
Thanks for your interest here, and I apologize for the delayed response. I had limited success with producing mushrooms on the wood from this orchard. However, I do not think that this lack of success is a true indicator that it is not possible to inoculate apple wood to grow culinary mushrooms. Below I list some of the reasons that I speculate that our experiments did not work
1 – we waited a few months after cutting the trees to inoculate them with the mushroom spores, and it is more ideal to inoculate more quickly than this
2 – we did not work hard to maintain the moisture content of the logs in the incubation period
3 – we inoculated in February, not necessarily the best time of year in North America to inoculate because it still gets cold enough to damage the inoculated fungus prior to fully colonizing the logs.
4 – we didn’t use wax on the ends of the logs to retain moisture (we ran out of wax and this led us to be frugal)
5 – we did not experiment with a wide variety of mushrooms to see what type worked best on apple wood.
6 – this apple wood came from an orchard that was previously managed conventionally – using harsh fungicidal chemicals. over a period of about 10 years this orchard was transitioned to and maintained using organic techniques. this bring up two points – one that the use of these fungicides could have resulted in inhibited growth of our desired species of mushrooms due to possible residual fungicides – and two is that i have a concern about the possible uptake of heavy metals or other dangerous constituents if you were to use wood from a conventionally managed orchard to grow culinary mushrooms. in hindsight, i would caution against using wood from orchards or woodlots that have been managed conventionally for this reason. luckily for us we didn’t produce or sell any potentially contaminated products to consumers because no mushrooms grew on these logs.
Hopefully I was helpful here. Please let me know if you have any further questions.
hello. We have 1,000 very too overgrown Bramley trees and also a wood with Birch
we just got interested in growing shitake, what else have you heard since your incomplete experiment about using either species apple or birch? Birch sounds right except it rots awae so fast. Online I am finding rumours about apple not being ideal.
Due to the age and untended state of the apple trees there is currently no apple crop to speak of and pruning the trees back into production obviously a massive task and relatively not a commercial undertaking- but growing something else in the environment as per your scheme a cool idea. We are registered organic not long since and also receive grant aid for that as a biodiversity thing so the orchard could be here to stay.