ous greens such as collards and chard, plus tomatoes, and an abundance of strawberries and garlic.
Reproductive growth The second full growing season in 2013 provided an expanded array of harvestable items including sorrel, jostaberry, golden raspberry, apples, and pears. Chokeberry (aronia) was also very plentiful from two bushes planted central in the site and next to a couple of pallet-wood benches that volunteers constructed. Community gardeners from a neighboring street harvested the chokeberries, as we found to our delight, when I received a phone call asking how exactly to cook them. Sunchokes were also plentiful and a fun harvest to share and use in teaching about native and alternative food species. We hope that Year 3 will see even greater use by the surrounding neighborhood. We created a DIY zine that detailed the history of the project, a number of the plant species on site, and some sample recipes (as well as an explanation of permaculture, food forests, and a few other conservation and permaculturerelated topics). These were hand-delivered to each doorstep in the surrounding four streets of the block, and are also being sold on a sliding scale throughout the year as an educational and promotional tool.
Dispersal—Act Two Although we succeeded in “Bringing the Health Care Mission of the Clinic Outside its Doors,” we’ve not yet been able to establish “next-door leadership” at the Rahma Forest Snack Garden. If we are to transplant this idea of community food forests throughout the city, we’ll need more social capital than we currently have, and that’s always been the challenge. This will be a long road, but we feel the strategy of “build it and they will come,” combined with networking, networking, and more networking will find purchase.
The garden after two full growing seasons—white clover as ground cover, comfrey, Asian pear, golden raspberry, black-eyed susan, apple, sunchoke in the far distance, and much more! 34
PERMACULTURE ACTIVIST • #91
For now, we’re moving forward with plans for a few new forest garden plantings in the ‘Cuse that have built-in support from the owners of the locations. Thanks to a Salt City DISHES award, we will be establishing a small installation within a rightof-way strip between roadway and sidewalk, demonstrating productive use of these commonly underused spaces. And, we’ve been working with the Syracuse Real Food Coop to design and plant their backyard as a community and member-owner gathering and demonstration space (See how it grows! Pick some herbs for your deli sandwich!).
The idea of creating landscape-level food forests in an urban environment is taking hold and spreading... The idea of creating landscape-level food forests in an urban environment is taking hold and spreading. Beyond that, we now have a robust source of plant material—cuttings, scion wood, tubers, and seeds—to propagate in these new locations. We have approximately 70 different species now on site, including dwarf North Star cherry, Nectarest dwarf nectarine, dwarf hybrid Red Anjou pear, Shiro dwarf plum, plumcot, Reliance dwarf peach, beach plum, Regent saskatoon (a juneberry), Wine raspberry, medlar, Cornelian cherry, Manchurian viburnum, northern wild raisin, Fall Gold everbearing raspberries, seaberry (Hippophae spp), Chojuro dwarf asian, Hosui dwarf Asian pear, modern “4-on-1” apple, antique “4-on-1” apple, jostaberry, sunchoke, strawberry, blackberry, black raspberry, chokeberry, chives, serviceberry, golden currant, Missouri gooseberry, thimbleberry, pawpaw, and applemint, just to name a few (we can’t wait for our next intern to help us catalog and map the maturing food forest!). But even more importantly, we have a free and open source of these materials for people to take back to their own yards, as the bounty spreads. ∆ Frank Raymond Cetera is Co-founder and a project manager of The Alchemical Nursery Project, Inc, a 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to eco-social regenerative landscapes and lifestyles, and Owner/Operator of Thornpawed Ecological Consulting (member of the Northeast Permaculture Design Business Guild). Frank takes his personal mantra of “lion-hearted and thornpawed” and applies it to community across the board including as Board President of Cooperative Federal Credit Union, Volunteer Coordinator and Treasurer of the Onondaga County Green Party, and development of the Bitternut Housing Collective. He believes that lifestyle politics should exist alongside electoral politics and does not enjoy debating about the juxtaposition.