Hello Folks,
I am in the process of making an offer on an 12 acre property. It’s roughly square. Perhaps 1/4 of it was cleared a century ago and has very rich soil – about thirty years ago the owners at the time were growing an extensive garden along with a small orchard and heritage fruit trees, which had fed the family for a generation. The remaining 8-ish acres is old-growth temperate forest (cedar, hemlock, fir). It’s bounded on three sides by a salmon bearing stream, and the conditions within the forest itself are quite damp – lots of horsetails.
It sits in zone 8b/9a.
This is a valley bottom property in a very wet and extremely steep sided coastal valley, mountains running east-west, with an alluvial fan underneath the property which means a lot of water moving underneath it. The property is thus seasonally very wet, soggy saturated ground in the fall, winter and spring. Neighboring properties say they have seen a foot of standing water on their land during heavy rain seasons, but this is becoming less common in recent years as the climate dries. A fellow who lived on this property for a few years mentioned needing boardwalks in the grassy areas in the wet season, as it was so wet and waterlogged. The existing house was destroyed in an atmospheric river flood event about 15 years ago which put the entire valley under 10′ of water, has been abandoned since, and needs to be demolished.
I think it has a lot of potential for “creative food gardening” due to the quality of the soil and climate, however the boggy / waterlogged conditions are giving me pause and I am unsure what the best path forwards would be to pursue a permaculture food-forest model if I did purchase it.
As a potential concept I envisioned a series of long raised beds running north to south, following the profile which water is draining beneath the soil, with interlinked “trench ponds” between the raised beds. The water temperature would be suitable for small fish and act as duck ponds. Azolla and duckweed could be grown in the trench ponds to feed the ducks or other animals and to actively fertilize the garden beds above them. There are several types of hardy wild rice from northern Japan which could grow along the margins of the ponds, in sort of long and narrow paddies. I’d like to grow a small selection of nut trees, and a variety of outdoor fruit such as mulberry, kiwi, and grapes. Long term I had intentions for a secondary greenhouse food forest biome, similar to what Jane Squire has done on Saltspring Island, where she is growing a wide variety of tropical citrus – including passionfruit(!!) – year round north of the 49th parallel.
I’m hoping folks could chime in as to whether I am out to lunch, trying to talk myself into buying swamp, or if there are ways I could alleviate the waterlogging sufficiently (without breaking the bank or completely chewing up the soil biome) to get a sustainable food garden going here with enough time and effort? Any input would be deeply appreciated!
