With two replaced hips, growing a food forest – and a movement

Dani Baker was panicked about what she was going to do with her idle time and copious energy when she retired as a clinical psychologist at a prison. So she and her husband, machinist Dave Belding, bought a 102-acre property – a former dairy farm – in the Thousand Islands region, as far upstate as you can get and still be in New York. “We weren’t planning to be farmers, but I thought, at least I’ll have space to roam around, and maybe I’ll do a little landscaping,” said Baker.

The pair took a class with Cornell Cooperative Extension about building your small farm dream, “and we were both so inspired,” said Baker. So began the couple’s next chapter. They planted 140 trees, which promptly got eaten by deer, then 50 grapevines, which suffered the same fate, then an eighth of an acre of vegetables – which sold out.

“By the way, when you’re a farmer you have no idle time, so it totally solved my problem about what I was going to do in retirement,” she laughed.

In the two decades since Cross Island Farms launched, Baker’s contagious smile has become a regular sight in the growing world of small-scale permaculture. That’s by design. About seven years into farming, Baker had the realization that the fraction of farmers making a living at it were the ones who wrote books and went on the lecture circuit in the winter. Plus, as her “edible forest” matured and her expertise along with it, Baker wanted to spread the good word that there’s a better – and easier – way to garden.

“I want to inspire as many people as possible to do this kind of planting. It’s good for the family that does it, it’s good for the earth, it’s just a really cool way to grow food,” said Baker.

Up in the North Country with its short growing season, the headstart that perennial vegetables have over annuals is crucial. Baker and Belding were still cross-country skiing when we spoke in early March, but she’d be harvesting by April – not just asparagus and rhubarb, but also Good-King-Henry, Turkish rocket, sweet cicely, lovage and water celery.

She’s also been “pushing the envelope” as her region hovers between Hardiness Zones 4 and 5, trying her hand at growing American persimmons, pawpaws, Asian pears and peaches.

When they bought this property, the couple had assumed they’d be isolated up here on Wellesley Island (year-round population 318), going to town once a year for provisions.

Instead, their sphere of influence just keeps growing. In addition to giving talks and hosting farm volunteers, tours and workshops, Baker authored The Home-Scale Forest Garden (2022, Chelsea Green Publishing), and spent last year shooting a gardening series by the same name, now airing on PBS nationwide. From an island in the St. Lawrence River, Baker is reaching her widest audience yet.

Baker, 77, attributes her vigor not to genes (her parents were not particularly long-lived) but to diet and lifestyle. She and Belding grow all their own certified-organic vegetables and meat. Baker starts each day with a half-hour of lifting free weights, a half-hour of yoga and meditation.

She had two total hip replacements in the last five years. “Now they’re fixed, and that’s made a huge difference,” she said. “My shoulders bother me, but I’m trying to avoid surgery” by doing shoulder exercises every couple days.

Filming the show was a lot of work for someone back at the studio, Baker assumes – but not for her. The film crew would show up at the farm, and Baker would take them around her two-acre garden, planning the route to minimize the lugging of TV equipment. Making this show marked the first time in a quarter century that PBS had shot its own gardening program.

Deciding what to highlight in each episode – out of the over 200 edible plants in her garden – was straightforward for Baker. “I know this material so well, and I would just scout out what needed to be done this time of year and what was blooming, then make a list,” she said. “I’m very extemporaneous, so I don’t need notes.”

She had wanted to do 13 episodes, PBS was thinking six; they settled on eight. They got so much material at the April shoot that they ended up splitting that episode into two, on Baker’s suggestion. Still, she said, “We had to cut so much to do eight episodes.”

Readers can contact their local PBS station and request that they schedule the show. “The more stations that pick it up, the more likely that we’ll get a national sponsor and can do another season,” she said. Baker is really hoping the show gets renewed, because she’s just getting started. “There’s so much more material that we could have talked about.”

Did you know, for instance, that daylily flowers are edible? “They’re sweet and crunchy,” she said. “Each one has a different flavor.”