pkile Hatfield

Jay,
I am about 20 miles from Edmunston. Definitely north, being zone 3. Planted some apple root stock, clematis vines and Hazelnut/filbert today. Will be getting a survey on the property this summer in anticipation of planting special hybrid chestnuts from the Connecticut Agriculture Experiment station. The trees will be ready to go into the ground by June 2014. This week, plan on counting maples and cataloging the varieties growing to get a better idea of the microclimates and what I will substitute with polyculture in those areas. Next spring will begin the vitis (grape vines)propagation for rootstock using a beta cold-tolerant grape variety. It is surprising how many varieties of cold-tolerant grape there is.

This fall will collect apples from various cultivars here in the St John Valley to grow my rootstock. In 1 year will plant them out below the swales and in 2 years start grafting multiple cold-tolerant apple varieties. The local town of Fort Kent is getting a farmer's CO-Op started here on Market street that I will be able to sell fruit, maple syrup, honey, nuts, and intercropped grains.

This fall I plan on starting my seed beds for the apple rootstock, Siberian, Himalayan and Korean pine nuts, blueberries, elderberries and bilberries. Next spring will be the stone fruit, peaches, nectarines and apricots. The Manchurian Apricot should do well here. Will slowly add in the Nanking cherry, hardy pears. Once I get all the rootstock I am going to use multiple global hardy varieties for grafting.
Looking at getting some Osage orange and use these to graft some che fruit to see if it will grow here. It is not unusual to hit minus 40 F here in the winter. I will have to plant a lot of each to have plenty for the marauding bears, moose and deer to have their share and not destroy all my crop.

Let me know how the wild rice comes out. Where do you get the seed?
Don't forget highbush cranberries too but they don't do well in the swamp.

Where in New Brunswick are you? I am in Fort Kent, Maine just across the border. The property is near North Perley Brook.
PKile

Jay,
Save the maple trees for your already mature over story, and make maple syrup in the spring using the fuel from some of the pines you take down to evaporate it.
PKile

Go here and look up hardy varieties of almost anything you want to grow. My 5 yr old food forest in One 5b (Rhode Island) is growing a large variety of fruit and nut trees, bushes and the hugelkulture beds are awesome. I literally eat something from my forest every day.

http://www.ars-grin.gov/npgs/acc/acc_queries.html

I also grow 15 varieties of cold tolerant rice here from 6 different countries.

I am developing an agro food forest in zone 3 on the Canadian border on 90+ acres including bog. You can grow elderberry, blueberry, bilberry, lingonberry and many other varieties in the bog area. If the bog area is large you can use a chinampa system.

Good luck.

Kathryn,
Thank you for this story of Qinsi Yu growing rice in canada. From his video, looks like he used a bucket method of growing rice. Just harvested mine and plan on planting the seed Fukuoka style over the heads of my winter wheat crop that just went in Fukuoka clay ball method to help prepare the soil.
Paul

I found a nice alternative that is ancient. I installed a simple unheated bidet on my toilet, significantly decreasing toilet tissue usage and improving hygiene.
PKile

I am using rice varieties of hayayuki, yukihikari and matsumae. If you have only a few seeds of Happy Hill it is possible to amplify them using the technique of bucket growing as explained in the rice growing manual of Linda and Takeshi Akaogi: I started with just 10 seeds each and germinated 5 seeds. The plants are producing hundreds of grains each.

http://www.sare.org/MySare/ProjectReport.aspx?do=viewRept&pn=FNE08-624&y=2009&t=1

Would love to get just a few seeds of Happy Hill to try them in the Bluegrass Sustainable Agriculture Project in Rhode Island, USA. Would be happy to trade some rice seed.

PKile