“If you get all your fruit in July what are you going to do with it?” This is the problem of urban farmer/homeowner Mateo Rutherford who, with his two housemates, tends to about a dozen types of fruit trees in their yard (these are in addition to their backyard veggie garden, goats, chickens, rabbits and bees).

To avoid harvesting all their fruit crop in one month, they plant a lot of variety of fruits: persimmons, plums, cherries, pears, apples, mandarin oranges, kiwis, apricots, peaches, gooseberries and olallieberries.

Another issue of the urban farmer is space. To get more fruit with less space, those at Berkeley’s Green Faerie Farm (the name of their homestead) graft several varieties of fruit onto one tree.

In this video, Rutherford shows us his backyard orchard, pointing out the growing seasons as well as a tree onto which they have grafted 15 different types of plums.

We also have videos of the household’s backyard produce garden and their milking goats.