you know that place where we went that one time... with the guy who had that thing? yeah. that's the place.

Some friends of mine have recently bought property in New York and are working on transforming into what can be described as, for lack of a better term, an ecovillage.

My personal goal, then (or one of many, but an important one) is to supply their land with the plants they'll need to not only sustain themselves but also enough to turn a profit rather quickly. With things like tomatoes and peppers, this is easy enough, but the real challenge lies in the quantities of small fruit trees needed to start an orchard.

As all my fruit comes from local farmers' markets and is all organic and non-GMO seed, I figure that the seeds coming from my nectarines, peaches, plums, and cherries over the next few months (and Sharon's apricots, once she's back) would likely do nicely to start. Because of the manner in which fruit trees hybridize and pollinate, this also ensures a number of various cultivars, even beyond the expectation from saving several different varieties of each fruit.

Even preparing fruit tree seeds for planting can take upwards of six months, however, so here begins the long, long, long process of trying to save fruit seeds. First they have to be cleaned up. Then they have to be dried. Then they have to be temperature treated for several months, and then they can, at long last, be planted, where they will then take another several years before they produce fruit.

This, mind you, will present us with good rootstock, from which other varieties can be grafted-- and while the whole process is painfully complicated, it will, in the long run, be far less expensive than buying the trees further down the road.

So far, we're one plum and about 30 Golden Ranier cherries towards an orchard. I suppose now I have an excuse to buy those 50 lb. boxes of organic nectarines that I've had my eye on. :D