Fingerlakespermaculture mailing list

[Micheal Wheeler <mmw5 AT cornell.edu>]

Some more things:
-- it might not be too late to look for the fruits as soon as the snow melts enough to see the ground.  
-- there used to be one on Tower road at Cornell, but I don't think it's there anymore because haven't seen those distinctive fruits in a while (my office mate calls them "monkey balls".  Says there were lots of Maclura fences in Delaware where she grew up).  





-- I remember an article (¿in Coevolution Quarterly?) about living fences, and remember figures about weaving the stems together to make a cordon.  The military was so impressed that Belgian fences could stop a WWI tank that they took the word into their own lexicon. [proof-reading that last sentence it sure sounds like an urban legend] Grown in that way it doesn't seem they would make harvestible fence posts, though.





-- the article mentions Siberian peashrub.  There is or was one growing next to Gamefarm road, near the end of the foot path.  
-- Black Locust at first seems like another fence candidate, until I remember how it suckers from the roots to beyond the dripline.  Would it need constant mowing to keep in check?





-- the illustrations on making an Osage orange fence in the article doesn't seem particularly rabbit proof.  Are there any rabbit proof living fences, or will they just make warrens in the roots?

On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 7:51 AM, Micheal Wheeler <mmw5 AT cornell.edu> wrote:

Hi Eric

There are or were some on the west hill, near the Lehman Alternative Community School.  At least that's what someone who grew up there told me; I haven't seen them myself. 

Mike W

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"The diligent farmer plants trees, of which he himself will never see the fruit." — Cicero