Wrap fruit tree trunks with plastic pipe, add wood chips around the base, then plant comfrey underneath. As it grows, the comfrey shades soil, kills weeds, and provides nitrogen-rich leaves you can harvest multiple times a season without chemicals.
This is the foolproof permaculture way to minister to your trees. Step 1: put a plastic pipe around them, protect from step 2, which is wood chips coming around them. This suppresses the grass, therefore killing that competition and allowing more nutrients to the plant. Step 3: get everybody working. Come on, come on, get in, let's go. Step 4: take a mattock, move the wood chips out of the way, pull aside some soil. Put a little comfrey in there. This is just a little 1-inch piece of comfrey. Put a handful of compost and then just slightly cover it. The wood chips will hold the weeds at bay for a while until that comfrey can establish and it becomes a live mulch. Its leaves prevent grass from falling. You can cut the leaves 4 or 5 times in a season. They will be a mulch, and plus that's a nitrogen-fixing plant, natural fertilizer. No chemicals necessary on the permaculture farm.
If I had to start my Homestead all over again, it could only pick one animal… 
