MARQUETTE – The Fether home along Woodland Avenue is not your typical city yard. Instead of a manicured lawn and trimmed hedges, it has black raspberries, pear trees, honeybees and chickens.

And, of course, chicken eggs.

Jake Fether, who lives with his wife, Kate, and children Liam and Cora, talked about their “Yarden” – sort of a cross between a yard and a garden – during a Wednesday tour sponsored by Transition Marquette County, a local group concerned about climate change, food sustainability and related issues.

“Lawns don’t really do anything for you,” Fether said. “I’m trying to grow as much food here as possible.”

Bill Wood, of Marquette, was one of the tour participants. He was impressed with what the Fethers have done with their yard.

“They use their yard for other things than grass,” Wood said.

That said, if a yard is to contain little or no grass, what should it have? For the Fethers, it’s plants like spiderwort and Arctic kiwi.

The front yard, he said, is developing into a “food forest” where they grow perennial fruit trees and bushes, with beds that contain companion plants that help the fruit trees.

However, it also has a multitude of flowers.

“One, it just looks better from the street as people are walking by,” Fether said, “and two, in the winter, this is all the snow that gets plowed up, and so anything, the sand and salt, that melts into this, we’re not eating the flowers. So, we’re not really worried about what’s ending up in there.”

When they bought the property, he said, it had lots of sand and weeds, so they mixed in a couple of truckloads of topsoil. However, they’re adding more compost and manure to build it up.

“When I initially built the beds, I buried a lot of the leaves underneath the soil so they would compost in place,” Fether said.

However, the beds as well as the other vegetation have to be maintained, and Fether has methods that help.

Near a tree in the front yard, he grows comfrey – a nitrogen fixer – which feeds the soil.

“It has a deep taproot, so it’ll pull up nutrients, and then as they leaves die, it’s what you call a chop-and-drop mulch,” Fether said, “so you cut it down, lay the leaves down and they’ll mulch the soil and feed the soil.”

The flowers, he noted, attract beneficial insects.

“Almost always, when I’m out here looking, I see lots of pollinators on everything, so it’s fun to see,” Fether said.

He’s had some help from Mother Nature this year too. With the amount of rainfall that’s fallen so far, he said, the watering has been minimal.

However, Fether still has to contend with grass.

“Part of the idea too is to keep the grass out,” Fether said, “because the grass will compete with fruit trees, taking the nutrients and the water, so when you plant other things around it that are beneficial, the grass really can’t get in as easily.”

The tour participants had many questions, including asking about the amount of fertilizer he uses – in Fether’s case, he uses rabbit poop he gets from his neighbor who raises rabbits, which he places right on the beds.

Fether maintains not only plant life, but animal life. For example, he raises Gold Star and Americana chickens in his backyard, which live under his deck. Farther back near a wooded area live his honeybees.

Last year was the first time honey was harvested, he said.

Fether donned a bee suit to demonstrate how the hive works, showing the crowd, for instance, where the brood box – where the queen lays eggs – is located.

Fether, who’s lived on the half-acre property for four years, continues to work – and learn – on the site.

“It’s a work in progress,” Fether said. “There are successes and failures each year.”

Upcoming Yarden tours are scheduled in the Marquette area for: 7 p.m. Wednesday at 2 Hidden Creek Drive, 3 p.m. Sunday at 440 E. Prospect St., 3 p.m. Aug. 14 at the Climbing Co-op at 225 N. Fourth St. and 3 p.m. Aug. 21 at the Superior Acre Permaculture Project at the corner of Summit Street and Longyear Avenue.

Christie Bleck can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 250.