Beyond the Field: Cooks Venture Project

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Beyond the Field: Cooks Venture Project

One of the larger projects we've been working on beyond our fields this spring is taking shape across 17 partner farms in the midwest. Cooks Venture, a meat wholesaler based in Arkansas approached our sister organization, Restoration Agriculture Development (RAD), to design and implement an agroforestry iniative across existing farms in their network to enhance biological diversity, poultry health and wellbeing, and environmental integrity.

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Article: Reading the Landscape in Snow

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Article: Reading the Landscape in Snow

Snow slows the mutable activity of water into a highly observable form. Its imprint on the landscape offers us a window into observing otherwise invisible water, wind, solar, and migration patterns that wield their influence across the earth and sculpt the natural world. Learning the art of landscape reading is a foundational step in developing a deeper relationship with the world around us, and understanding the natural forces that shape and shift its evolving form.

Right now, the streams and creeks are coming alive with rushing water flowing off of farm fields and backyards. It feels like the circulatory system of the earth is coming alive with the first sounds of spring! For this brief moment, between the freeze and the thaw, there are secrets to be gleaned and valuable insights to be revealed.

Read on to learn about the ways in which we can develop a deeper understanding of our landscape and context by reading the patterns of snow…

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Beyond the Field: Water Farming / Managing Agricultural Lands for Clean & Safe Water recently published by Pasa

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Beyond the Field: Water Farming / Managing Agricultural Lands for Clean & Safe Water recently published by Pasa

“Can agriculture transition from a major source of water pollution to a major force for improving water quality and, in turn, for protecting human and environmental health?”

That question was the subject of a white paper titled, Water Farming: Managing Agricultural Lands for Clean & Safe Water, recently published by Pasa Sustainable Agriculture late last year. The downloadable booklet features key approaches and perspectives on specific farming practices to protect and enrich watersheds.

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WATCH: Regeneration Conversations Episode 03 Featuring Mark Shepard of RAD & Johann Rinkens of Fields Without Fences

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WATCH: Regeneration Conversations Episode 03 Featuring Mark Shepard of RAD & Johann Rinkens of Fields Without Fences

“What is Regenerative? The answers continue to inspire us. In Episode 3 we get the privilege of hearing from Mark Shepard and Johann Rinkens.

Mark Shepard is a leader in the regenerative agriculture movement. Author of the award-winning book, Restoration Agriculture: Real-World Permaculture for Farmers, Mark has had boots on the ground in the real world of restoring our planets food systems with his grounded approach to food production for decades. Johann Rinkens is the co-founder of Fields Without Fences, a forest garden farm and permaculture design service, and teaches extensively on the subjects of permaculture design and agroecology. Both Mark and Johann are playing critical roles in helping farmers understand how they can plan for succession as they plant their forest-based farms.”

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From the Field: Forest Garden "Greenhouse" Season Extension

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From the Field: Forest Garden "Greenhouse" Season Extension

This is a late season snap shot of our unheated high tunnel, which is planted with perennial species that benefit from the heat gain and wind protection that the house provides in our zone 6. Figs, trifoliate orange, and passionflower grow into the vertical space, while a diverse understory of primarily mediterranean herbs clump and crawl across the understory (rosemary, sage, oregano, thyme, lavender, hyssop, lemon verbena). There is also a population of self seeding annuals (kale, mustard, lettuce, leeks, cilantro) that grow and flourish from late fall to early spring, when the warm season perennials are in dormancy.

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From the Field: The multitudes that surround us

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From the Field: The multitudes that surround us

This season is shaping up to be a season of revision and revelation both on the farm, and in the wider world that surrounds us. There have been no markets here this year, no events, no classes, and barely a visitor on the farm to speak of. And in the silence and stillness, an opportunity for deeper listening has risen into focus. In the absence of rote imposition, the natural world rings out loud with its secrets - not really secrets at all, just intelligence that can go unheard in the heavy to-do of the day to day…

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From the field: Plants enjoy good company

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From the field: Plants enjoy good company

Plants, like most people, enjoy good company. Everywhere in the wild they can be caught gathering and mingling about together, and on our farm it’s no different. This wild approach to farming is based in biomicry, and is wholly dependent upon strategic collaboration with the plant world…

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Beyond the Field: Edible Weeds on Farms / Northeast Farmer’s Guide to Self Growing Vegetables by Tusha Yakovleva

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Beyond the Field: Edible Weeds on Farms / Northeast Farmer’s Guide to Self Growing Vegetables by Tusha Yakovleva

Tusha Yakoleva has authored a wonderful resource guide exploring the crop value of wild plants within the cultivated landscape. The project was funded by a Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Farmer Grant, and has been made available to all for free download…

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Bearing witness to what is

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Bearing witness to what is

There is a permaculture principle called Observe & Interact, that like most permaculture principles, seems at first, simple, obvious, and perhaps perfunctory. But to truly observe with honesty, is a radical act that requires one to suspend preconceptions, rote prescriptions, and built in prejudices to stand as a witness to what is. It is precisely at this intersection that interaction with our environment can begin from a place of collaboration and respect, rather than dictation and control….

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Permaculture Principles: Produce No Waste

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Permaculture Principles: Produce No Waste

We keep a lean operational budget on the farm. It’s one way we’ve found to make it work over the years on this experimental farm in the absence of topsoil, existing infrastructure, or reliable market channels. We might say this attention to the bottom line is the primary motivation for saving seed, not heating the propagation house, or conducting every class for seven years around a single picnic table, but that would only be part of the story…

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When the center of gravity shifts

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When the center of gravity shifts

We’ve been out of touch for a while. It’s been a challenging time to put to words as the world around us rapidly reorients, and moves like the blustery winds in this otherwise mild spring.

At the start of the year, our center of gravity was already shifting. We ended our three month stay at the farm on Barbertown Idell Road nearly a decade later than expected. Johann’s mom finally moved into the cottage, and we moved to the “new farm,” five years later than anticipated. The intervening years between expectation and realization were some of the most challenging of our lives so far…

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What does it mean to be part of community?

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What does it mean to be part of community?

What does it mean to be part of a community? Once a young boy was visiting the farm from the city, and sitting in the twilight of a still summer sunset, he looked around and announced, “I could never live here, it’s so lonely!” His parents giggled nervously. I smiled and lowered myself to his height to divulge a secret, “But... we’re not alone right now. Listen, do you hear the frogs croaking to one another? The deer crackling over fallen branches in the woods? The wild ducks taking off in flight from the pond? Do you smell the fragrant plants in the fields? See the fireflies twinkling in the distance?”…

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READING THE LANDSCAPE SERIES: Microclimates

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READING THE LANDSCAPE SERIES: Microclimates

Watching this ice storm melt is like lifting the veil on the energetics of elemental forces in the landscape. Where does the water gather and freeze, or trickle and melt? Where is the whipping wind persistent enough to keep a bent branch permanently encased in ice, even as it twinkles in the sun? It is as revelatory as it is enchanting…

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Shaping the World Through a Conscious Process of Encouragement & Discouragement

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Shaping the World Through a Conscious Process of Encouragement & Discouragement

As the plants retreat into the underworld and we wrap up another season, our focus naturally shifts from the complex web of relationships that comprise the green world, to the curious continuum of human relationships that shape our culture and connect us to one another.

Over the years, through our work on the farm and within the fields of permaculture and ecological restoration, we’ve developed and refined an approach to landscape management that revolves around a deliberate process of encouragement and discouragement.

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Water For Any Farm

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Water For Any Farm

Great time traveling to the midwest last week! First stop was the Savannah Institute Perennial Farm Gathering and then onto the ACRES Eco-Ag Trade Show in Minneapolis, Minnesota to meet up with our sister organization, Restoration Agriculture Development. Many exciting initiatives are afoot in the regenerative ag community! One of which being Mark Shepard’s forthcoming book, Water For Any Farm - officially available now!…

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Beyond the Field: Ironbound Hard Cider Project

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Beyond the Field: Ironbound Hard Cider Project

A couple of seasons ago, we were approached by Ironbound Hard Cider to help develop their new cider orchards within a regenerative design context. This summer we broke ground on installing a swale system on their sloped field to help mitigate erosion and run-off, while retaining water in the landscape and increasing soil hydration for tree roots. Their new orchard layout will follow the contours of the landscape creating a continuity between agricultural production, and the underlying geographic formations of natural landforms.

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From the Field: The Overlap Between Productive and Wild Spaces

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From the Field: The Overlap Between Productive and Wild Spaces

There is often the opportunity for overlap between productive and wild spaces. The best designs are guided by observations we can make about the way the world around us behaves.

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Permaculture Principles: Appropriate tools & technology

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Permaculture Principles: Appropriate tools & technology

Appropriate tools & technology: The plant nursery on our ten acre forest garden farm is active, robust, and as low tech as they come. Early in the season I’ll start propagating in a small unheated hoop house, but for the bulk of the year all the action happens in sprawling, shady area under an old maple tree with a few wooden pallets and raised bed boxes.

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