Trees, fruit trees, nut trees, berry trees, acorn trees. Then when you do that go back and plant some more. A single mulberry tree will give you a mountain of mulberries.
You can contact your local agricultural center for information about what varieties grow best in your area and very often you can get trees for free.
Chickens love mulberries, if your place has a mulberry tree then that is were your chicken run should go. Free food for about 6 weeks every year.
Plant trees lots of trees and then when your done plant some more. Look for native varieties. We live in the Florida panhandle, the local brown pears gown like weeds around here, they are hardy disease resistant, handle drought and freezes with no problem. The fruit is a bit ugly and more like an apple then a pear but they are great for canning. Fyi we had one tree last year that gave us over 500 pears. Don't go for the pretty fruit trees, find out what grows in your area. We planted 4 new brown pear trees and 8 other pear trees at the same time. The brown pears trees 3 years later are doing great and we had 50+ pears from each tree last year, the other pears trees had barely a handful of pears between them. I thank the old lady that lived here many times in our prayers. The pear, persimmon and mulberry trees she planted 30 years ago are a huge blessing. She also planted oak trees down the driveway, we now have several dozen oak trees that are 30+ years old and we can harvest barrels of acorns every year. There are plenty of videos that show how you can make flour from acorns.
So very true! Get your perennials in order, before or in between moving and setting up your living area. Every little homestead we've owned so far still should have fruit trees etc. We planted. On this property we actually started planting fruit trees about a year before we moved here. We threw them in the ground, said a prayer and drove straight back to our last place(we called those 16 hour trips turn and burns for a good reason). By God's grace over half of those trees survived. Productivity as well as bearing age is a lot of times determined by variety and rootstock but also care. Pairs are one of those that take mighty long to produce, but once they produce they are unstoppable. Mulberries are wonderful and produce a very sustainable harvest pretty much in their first year (if bought as tree, not whip). If you are not picky, perennials can be picked up fairly cheap at the end of season big box store sales for 50-75% off. Yes, your local extension office may have a yearly tree sale, where you can swoop up local varieties (sometimes fruit trees) for a very decent price around here that would be anywhere between 1.50-8 dollars per tree or plant. As to the local agricultural center, some of them seem to be more knowledgable than others. Also we have yet to spot any trees for free (and even if they would be free, taxpayers still paid for them). However, if you have friends with land they probably wouldn't mind letting you dig up some local varieties like maple, acorns etc. . One big mistake we made, is not keeping records and recipes, for returns or money back guarantees (we could've saved Many hundreds of dollars). Another good point, in all those years people always said to treat big box store plants with fire and spend all your money on expensive nursery stock because they are the only once that grow and bear fruit. Well that may be true if one is looking for particular plants/trees and certain rootstocks however we've had very good success with big box store plants but struggled at times with nursery stock. Also when in season (we are zone 7 so that's us right now) nurseries do have sometimes fairly reasonable options on bare root trees (around here that would be 10-25$ depending on variety, apples are usually cheap and cherries are expensive). At the end for those with only a tiny backyard or patio, don't let space keep you back from producing. there are wonderful tiny dwarf trees available also called patio trees. Any well sorted big nursery should have them available, but to my delight weve actually seen some at Walmart for about 24$ the other day. I was so smitten with them that I almost fell for one, beautiful, extremely well established two foot tall fully decked out fruit trees. Happy growing and watch you growing zone for compatibility, when buying perennials.
With all the flu troubles this year, i have to suggest planting elderberries, my whole family had flu b this year, the kids and i taking elderberry syrup bounced back in half the time than my husband who keeps forgetting to take it, im planting as many as i can get my hands on. It grows wild on alot of roadsides but then you have to worry about what its been sprayed with/pollution.
How do you make your elderberry syrup? We have quiet a few growing, however we never made syrup out of them, only sun tee.
@wtstewart1979 https://www.growingupherbal.com/ultimate-immune-boosting-elderberry-syrup/