Vision for Farm

All around us nature provides guidance on how to grow good plants. Look carefully at a native forest for its members speak volumes about growing food. In our region, a piece of land left alone will quickly return to forest. Grasslands, as we maintain them in our yards, parks and agricultural fields are not natural to the area. We expend a great deal of effort and energy forcing the environment to grow something it would rather not. In the process we reduce the fertility of the soil, pollute the land and waste scarce resources (like fossil fertilizers).

At the edge of the field, the woodlands need no servant. Natural forest systems maintain themselves without humankind planting them, turning or fertilizing their soils, watering their roots or pulling their competition ('weeds'). All the while, the fertility of a forest's soil actually increases with time.

The long term vision of the farm is to create a system of agroforestry where the natural forces that maintain forest systems are put to use growing food from fruit and nut trees. To that end, I have been planting out a great number of different perennial food producing trees and shrubs to determine which are the most suitable to our region, and would be good candidates for larger scale diversified plantings. The process is one of transition. Many of these trees will take years to produce marketable quantities of food, and so more traditional methods of organic agriculture are also used on the farm to grow vegetables, hay and perhaps soon grains as well. It is also my hope to one day be able to sell cold hardy varieties of plants and seeds to the public so we can reforest our communities with useful plants together.