Pan’s Harvest understands itself to be a community that is not located only in it’s human members but also in the ecology of the land and the land itself. To this end, our human members participate with community by upbuilding the ecology, restoring the soil, and strengthening the relationships between earth, microbial, fungal, plants, and animals.
The centerpiece of work focuses on a 2 acre multi-level, hyper-polyculture food forest which will be home to dozens of perennial food plant species as well as supporting increased wildlife populations. We currently have over 200 trees establishing. Major tree species include chestnuts, hazelnuts, pear, plum, fig, feijoa, mulberry, jujube, and carob, as well as a variety of support species.
The garden: In addition to growing many of the usual annual garden vegetables, we focus on perennial vegetables such as tree collards, lovage, skirrett, mashua, potato onions, good king henry, caucasian mountain spinach, and air potato. Perennial vegetables have many advantages including reduced need for watering and improved mineral content (due to having deeper roots), as well as suitability for integrating into assemblages with fruit and nut trees and berry bushes.
Our land includes a seasonal creek and several wetlands. These areas were cleared and degraded by previous owners. We are in an on-going project of planting willow and alder through these areas. These trees, when established, will improve the water holding capacity of the land, helping the water sink deeper into the ground, and will improve the fertility of the soil – the alder through it’s nitrogen fixing and the willow through their hormonal impact on the soil.
