The Food Forest

History

Eight hundred square feet at the north end of the west grove. Aspen cleared nothing — the mature grove trees were already the canopy, so she planted the three layers underneath them and waited. It was four years before it produced anything at all. Together with the greenhouse it is the entire food system; there are no vegetable beds anywhere on the estate.

Right now

The figs came in all at once again — nothing for weeks, then forty pounds in nine days. Aria has been preserving since Tuesday.

Objects

• The canopy

  The oldest trees on the property, planted by somebody four generations back for privacy and now doing a second job nobody asked them to.