CALICHE.

Food forests on the land nobody wants.

For my family, and for Alice.

Side-by-side satellite comparison of 62 S. King St, Alice, Texas: a bare white caliche lot in December 2010 next to the same lot covered in tree canopy in March 2025
Our lot on King Street, from space — 2010 vs 2025.
21years watched from above
9+years growing
1ice storm survived
2drought summers survived
12+pomegranate varieties
0sprinklers, ever

Twenty-one years from above

Watch the white patch lose. Tap any year for the full block — the neighbors are the control group.

Aerial view of the lot, 2004, color infrared — bare2004infrared Satellite view, December 2010 — bare white caliche patch2010 Aerial view, 2012 — still bare caliche2012 Aerial view, 2014 — bare, the year before work began2014 Aerial view, January 2016 — first plantings visible2016 Aerial view, 2018 — green establishing, bare patch shrinking2018 Aerial view, 2020 — young canopy clusters2020 Aerial view, 2022 — alive after Winter Storm Uri, in the drought2022 Satellite view, February 2023 — dense winter growth2023 Satellite view, March 2024 — canopy2024 Satellite view, March 2025 — the food forest2025

USDA NAIP aerials (Texas GIO, public domain) + Esri World Imagery Wayback — verify it yourself.

The method, in five lines

🌱Topsoil goes back on top. It's alive — and it wakes the new soil in days.
💧Water goes down, so roots go down — below where drought can reach. A few soaks a year, then barely any.
🏜️Only survivors get planted. Nine years of freeze and drought picked the list — and banned peaches, plums, and apples.
🌼Some trees eat caliche for us. Anacahuita goes in first; we walk away and come back to living ground.
🤠Everything must work when nobody shows up. That's the South Texas test.

The loop

FREEWASTE THEDEPOT FOODFORESTS PEOPLE ↺
🚛Tree crews pay to dump their chips. Clearing makes brush nobody wants. It comes to us free.
🏭One yard turns it into clean mulch, biochar, living soil, and trees.
🌳That soil plants the lots nobody wants — and the surplus sells, which pays for the next site.
🤝Neighbors adopt the sites and take the credit. Their trimmings come back to the yard.

What we sell and what we plant are the same thing. That's the whole trick.

Land weed lot → living soil → food forest → the next lot ↺
Material brush waste → mulch + biochar → new soil → more growth ↺
Goodwill adopt a site → a few visits a year → your name on the sign + first harvest ↺
Long slow hardwoods → decades of shade → lumber + smoking wood → the next generation of sites ↺

Goodwill in, bounty out, nothing wasted.

Why

🪨Nine years ago this lot was caliche — the dirt that grows nothing.
🍇Now it feeds us — on rainwater and stubbornness.
🌎I want to do this to every unwanted lot in South Texas — with my family, as a nonprofit nobody can sell off or undo.

You already know who taught me. Time to hand it forward.

Room at the table

A Texas nonprofit needs three directors to start. Ours has room for seven. No money, no quota, nobody's property — just judgment, and dirt under your nails when you feel like it.

The paperwork is drafted. The domain is ours. The proof is nine years old and fruiting. All it needs is us at a table, one afternoon, and twenty-five dollars.

Caliche doesn't take anybody's land. It plants on the lots nobody wants.

For folks who aren't from here

What is caliche?

The calcium-carbonate hardpan of South Texas — pale, concrete-like ground most plants can't root into. We named the project after the ground we beat.

What is a food forest?

Food-bearing trees, shrubs, vines, and groundcover arranged like a natural forest — designed to sustain itself with minimal care.

How does it survive drought without irrigation?

Biochar soil that holds water like a battery, deep watering that trains roots below drought, and a plant list picked by nine years of real survival.

Is it really visible from space?

Yes — every frame above is from public archives, and anyone can check the coordinates.