HABITATS for Inhumanity, if you build it they will come..

Habitats for Inhumanity can be many types of things, here is an example of two brushpiles that I've built (today) to clear my trail in my front yard. The small pile on the left by the lattice fence will eventually be covered with fox grapes which are growing nearby, the trees beyond the piles are dead and wil be added to the piles as they fall down. The pile on the right ahead is built over a honeysuckle bush that succumbed to the shade, and formed an arch, so I've added brush and logpiles to the pile to form a larger pile (I have another view below). The arch forms the doorway into the pile and there is about a 20 x 20 pile about 7 to 8 feet high around the doorway arch. Many critters will use this brush pile, birds, animals, snakes and lizards, etc.

This is the backside of the above brush pile along my trail which you can see right here.....
This hides the archway and provides smaller branches to catch the snow when it falls so that critters can overwinter inside the pile, you can't see it but there is a pile of bear poo in the path just to the right of the pile..There is also a little HOUSE that I built many years ago and it's kinda falling apart tot he right of the pile by some dead pine trees that the small animals use. You can see a lot of small trees, these are quaking aspen that are growing up in the area and will make it a woods, there are also baby ash, oak and hemlock trees growing in the open areas among the ground covers and daylillies.

This is another animal and bird habitat in my front yard, this is just north of the ones shown above by the lattice fence which encloses my front yard. To the left above you can see what is left of a large stump that small animals love, and you can see that t he plants have been beaten down by critters.

Rocks are a wonerful habitat for small critters, especially those that love to warm themselves on them, snakes and lizards especially. This is actually a waterfall that flows into the pond but I have the pump turned off right now because the pond is nearly dry as we have been having a drought here, which is normal in July and August for us.

Here are several views of a pond that we have only for wildlife, we allow natural weed and plant growth for the animals, I have seen deer give birth in this pond shortly after we first built it in 2002.

You can't see the water lilies or other flowering plants growing in the pond right now as the flowers are done with for the summer except a few stragglers.

Above are several brush piles and woodpiles that we have throughout the property North of our Pond. Animals and birds really love these piles, the birds are darting in and out all the time looking for bugs and amphibians.  These are very close to the pond so that the animals and birds that are living in the brush piles and wood piles can hunt in the pond for fish and insects and be close to cover should they be alarmed.

Brush piles are great for small animals like woodchucks, rabbits, skunks, squirrels, chipmunks, mink, weasels, bobcat, fox and maybe an occasional bear. I'm not sure what animals are living in my many brushpiles as I try not to disturb them unless I'm adding a new layer of brush to them, which you do have to do from time to time, as the brush will deteriorate after a few years and compact.

One of the brushpiles above you can see a woodbine vine growing over it, eventually vines that grow wild around here like grape, woodbine, nightshade, honeysuckle and others will take over the woodpiles and provide even more food and cover for the critters and birds.

A lot of people will haul off their brush, or burn it, but it is a very valuable habitat to have on your property to provide food and shelter to wildlife and it is always better to keep as much of your carbon on your property as possible. We always will have trees dying or branches blowing off, you can always put them in a deserted corner of your property or behind a bush or shed..and if you have it within sight (which ours are not from our house) you can watch the comings and the goings. I have thought of placing game cameras near the larger piles to see what comes and goes, but that will have to wait until I have the extra money for the game camera. In the meantime I'll just make the habitat available for all of the inhumanity on our property. And you can too.

Mid summer in the food forest..

We have dozens of grapevines on our property as well as wild grapes growing along the ditches. The ones above are from our 100 year old seeded concord grapevines that were planted here by the Triplett ancestors before we lived here.Below is an arbor that I built in our backyard with  several varieties of seedless and seeded grapes This is one of 2 arbors in this garden that also has apples, asparagus, cherries, plums, hazelnuts, rhubarb, raspberries, jerusalem artichokes, and chestnut. Below  that is an arbor that I built that has a dozen varieties of seedles grapes as well as kiwi, thornless blackberries, Medlar and strawberries. This arbor is east of our house. We also have 3 other grape arbors on the property with other varieties of seedless grapes.

The photograph above and below shows also a new addition to our garden this year, north Georgia Candy Roaster Pumpkins. There are 3 or 4 baby pumpkins on each of the 3 vines so they are growing well.

We also have a  variety of winter squash growing in a forested patch by our north woods, the packet was of several different heirloom winter squash, and there are a few baby squash setting now.

The fun thing about food forest gardens is growing trees, shrubs, vines, bulbs and herbaceous plants all together.

This bed has baby blueberry plants among wild strawberry plants. We are gettng some huge blueberries off of the baby plants this year and the wild strawberries, although they are small berries, they give us berries all summer long. Behind it you can see a medlar tree with perennial wildflowers growing around it for pollination.

We have a number of pear trees, many are dwarfs. By the red crocosmia is a 5 on one pear tree, it bloomed this year for the first time but haven't seen any baby pears on it. The small tree to the left of it is the Moonglow pear also shown below, and it has a lot of small pear trees on it. Beyond it is a red plum tree which I've shown in several pictures, loaded with plums.

The pear tree below is the Ayres Pear tree that was so loaded last year, it has some pears on it but a lot of the blossoms froze this year so it isn't as loaded down as last year. Below it on either side are 2 baby peach trees, so small that they aren't showing up in the photo.

This tree below is a baby Bartlett pear tree, it also had a few blossoms on it for the first time this year, but I don't see any pears on it, we did have a late June freeze that killed off a lot of blossoms.

This one below is a fruit on the Moonglow pear tree, There are a lot of baby fruits on this tree.

This corner of the back garden is where the hazelnuts are growing, but the corner is American Wild Plums. There were none on when this photograph was taken earlier this spring, but they are all loaded now with small red plums. We grow these wild plums in a florest setting mixed with 2 kinds of nut trees as well as maple, cherry, aspen trees and gooseberry bushes, Jerusalem artichokes and apple trees.

We have a dozen or so apple trees, several of the small ones were damaged by wildlife over the winter but all but one have grown back, obviously no apples on those, but we have several larger apple trees as well, one is loaded with apples but the blossoms frozen in the June freeze on all the rest. The crabapples mostly survived the frosts. All the berries are doing fantastic, we have black and red and gold raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, gooseberries, service berries, wintergreen berries, blackberries (which haven't bloomed yet), and elderberries and other wild berries yet to come.

Soon we will be overwhelmed with fruit to can and freeze and make jams and jellies with. As well as tomatoes and vegetables which we also grow. Kinda glad to have a bit of a slow fruit year this year as last year everything was so loaded we couldn't give it all away..maybe we'll have another bumper year again next year.

The hazelnuts are still not quite ready to pick, when they are it will be a race with the forest creatures to get them first, last year they won, year before we won..anyone want to put bets on it this year??