UNHIDE Agroforestry - A Knowledge Exchange Latvia- Sweden 2023-25 - Report - Page 16
Boat in the Forest: Forest garden & food forest, Sweden
“In the beginning we had a lot of spacing
ideas when planting trees. Now we trust our
gut feeling, and the fact that nature with time
will sort out what works best, at its own pace.”
AT BOAT IN THE FOREST - harbour for radical
nomads, Etta Säfve and Jona Elfdahl work with
processes of reconnection: restoring underground relationships built by fungal threads,
mycorrhizal exchange and microbial alliances,
and above ground reconnecting us—humans—to
these inherited relationships with microbes, with
each other, and with the invisible communities
that sustain life.
The homestead includes food forests, forest
gardens, nut cultivation, bio-pools with plants and
biochar purification. Each element, individually and together, forms the basis for exploratory
processes through social and land-based permaculture, “close-to-nature” nut cultivation courses,
workshops and artist residencies. Both Etta and
Jona make their living as artists, guest teachers,
process leaders, and through seed collecting for
an online ecological seed store.
The nut trees planted here include a wide mix of
walnuts, sweet chestnuts, hazelnuts and pine, with
many varieties of each, to create resilience and
resistance to disease. Thanks to the proximity of
the Baltic Sea and the southern location, autumns
are mild, and walnuts have long been grown in
the region.
THE SURVIVAL OF THE
MOST CONNECTED IN A
HUGE DIVERSITY
Etta Säfve & Jona Elfdahl.
In the future there will be a boat hidden
in a nut tree forest...
