Here is How You Make a Living From a 4 acre Permaculture Orchard

What if I told you that it is possible to make a living from a 4-acre orchard and you can even do this with less work, more yield and more fun.
What if I told you that the secret to doing this is already known, but the information about how to go about it has not reached you?
I wrote about Stefan previously, but his model deserves in-depth explanation. His orchard took 22 years to establish and to be honest it wasn’t always rosy for Stefan.
He is a pioneer of permaculture orchards, and now he shares his knowledge so you do not need to go through 20 years of trial and error like him. You can learn from his experiences so that you don’t make the same mistakes he did. Learning from his experiences means you can save time and money.
But before we go any further here are few things to consider about Stefan:

• He bought his 5-hectare block and 4000 trees for $42000 – he had no debt, no mortgage and no money left to do anything
• He had very little farming experience when he started his farm – he did however, have a formal education that helped him
• Stefan does not live on his farm – he actually lives in the city and commutes to his farm from home.
• He had many setbacks along the way that would make most people quit, but he persisted, and now his farm is successful.
• Stefan Sobkowiak is an educator, biologist and master of landscape architecture. He has taught fruit production, landscape plants and design, and the natural history of vertebrates at Montreal’s McGill University. This experience helped a lot when he decided to focus on Permaculture Design and his ‘Miracle Farms’.
  The farm that he bought was originally developed as a commercial monoculture apple orchard, making the transition to becoming an organic farm upon purchase in 1993, and was certified organic in 1996. Eventually, Stefan understood the limitations of the organic model originating from monoculture. Since 2007, four acres were converted to a permaculture inspired “u-pick” orchard.
  Miracle Farms is the largest and the most developed example of a commercial permaculture orchard in Eastern North America. Production from the farm is sold to 30-80 member families with the short term goal of reaching 100 families.
  Recently with film maker Olivier Asselin, Stefan released a DVD called The Permaculture Orchard: Beyond Organic. This is a feature-length educational film that teaches how to set up your own permaculture orchard on any scale. Stefan has this to say about the film – “It will really save you 10 years at least of trial and error and thousands of dollars. Don’t reinvent the wheel, take what I learned and build on it .”
• Les Fermes Miracle Farms is about one hour southwest of Montreal, roughly 100km away, in Cazaville, Quebec, Canada. It’s Canada’s warmest climate zone -Agriculture Canada Zone 5b: USDA zone 4. The property is 12-acres in size with approximately 4 acres planted in a Permaculture style orchard.
  The location of the farm is very important. As with many models I have described before, Miracle Farm is located relatively close to the target market, in this case close to the million-and-a-half people living in the city of Montreal.
  Although the original idea was 30 minutes away from Montreal, which is an ideal distance for clientele membership club according to Booker T. Whatley’s Handbook on How to Make $100,000 Farming 25 Acres, after many years of searching Stefan settled for a farm twice that distance from Montreal but still managed to make his farm a success.
  
  What Stefan learned was this: If you are close to city there is not such a need to diversify but if people invest their time and visit your farm that is further away, you need to offer them something more that is worth the visit. That is exactly what Stefan did.
• Stefan needed a lot of trees for his new orchard, although there were 4000 apple trees in the orchard already, in the first two years of owning the farm he sadly lost 1000 of them. The cost of the trees accounts for more than 50% of the costs of an orchard so to decrease his expenditure Stefan set up nursery project so that he could grow his own trees.
  While teaching at McGill University Stefan partnered with one of his students who wanted hands-on experience and started a tree nursery on the farm. In return for his help, Stefan agreed to split the trees they produced between them 50:50. They tilled a 12x23m area (276m squared), made 3 rows and planted rootstock to be grafted later.
  So think about it, if you want to start a permaculture orchard, you could plant a nursery ahead of time by using 10ftx10ft (3mx3m) spot in your back yard. Plan now, gather your mother plants from which you will be able to take cuttings or scions for grafting, contact people in your area that are doing similar projects and learn from them. You could grow just below 1000 trees in that small area (If you have trees in each of the pots you should yield 900 trees).
  
  As Stefan said: “There is a tremendous motivating force to find a piece of property once you have a nursery full of plants that will soon need to be transplanted.”
• What’s unique about Stefan’s orchard is that it is planted in Trios (originally called NAP – nitrogen fixer, apple, and plum/ pear), One nitrogen fixer, 2 crop trees. This is very similar to David Holmgren’s European style permaculture orchard where he interplants with tagasaste (tree lucerne), also a N – fixer. One characteristic of this pattern is that no fruit or nut tree is next to its own species in the row or in between the rows. Therefore, if any tree gets infested with pests, it is much less likely to pass the problem on to another tree of its kind.
  Although 1/3 of the orchard aren’t fruiting trees, mixing in nitrogen fixing trees among fruit trees is essential because it helps to create fertility and eliminates the need for external inputs of fertilisers, resulting in a circular ecosystem that virtually takes care of itself. Amazingly, there was no fertiliser used on Stefan’s orchard since 2007 and the fruit trees keep on giving as much yield as conventionally grown trees. N – fixers in Stefan’s case are Honey Locusts and they also act as trellising for vines, kiwi and grapes.
  The primary goal is to increase diversity whilst providing a diversity of crops and to reduce or eliminate the use of fertilisers and pest and disease control products. This orchard now offers over 80 cultivars of apples, in addition to several types of plums, pears, cherries, and countless other fruits and vegetables. There are also trios in shrubs: red, black currants, honeysuckle, gooseberry, raspberry, and rhubarb; as well as over 100 different types of ground cover such as annual vegetables, herbs and grasses.
  
  With this hugely diverse amount of crops, trees, bushes, shrubs and plants, you might wonder how Stefan makes sense of the countless plants growing. There is one more ingredient to this design.
• While trios (NAP) design is 3D pattern in Stefan’s orchard there is also the fourth dimension that is simply: Time.
  In permaculture orchard everything is organised by following what Stefan calls a ‘grocery aisle’ concept, whereby everything in one row will be ripe and ready to harvest within a 10-day window.
  Despite the huge diversity of species, this allows for efficient harvesting, customers can walk down the row and easily gather the majority of the fruits and vegetables they require in one go, just like they would in the grocery store.
  This also helps bring order to the high diversity madness of 100 cultivars of fruit & nut trees, dozens of small fruit shrub cultivars and over 100 species of companion plants. Stefan also aims for a complete season of harvest without any spaces when there will be nothing to harvest. Harvest dates are key to a successful ‘grocery aisle’ planting- Ideally you need to aim for 3 periods of 10-day harvests per month.
  
  While conventional orchards also use the idea of multiple harvest dates because labour is one of their biggest expenses, Stefan is able to keep his labour costs even lower. How? All the lower parts of the tree fruit picking is done by his customers! Leaving the tops of trees to be picked with ladders.