Our farm will set new precedent in sustainable agriculture using practices from agro-ecology and permaculture: building soil and conserving water while producing a variety of valuable and nutritious foods. All residents co-own the farm business together, while some are employed in management and labor, everyone benefits from fresh, healthy foods and their sale at local markets. Unlike many other communities, we encourage residents to garden on their own plots, or work with the farm! The following planned farming operations represent our plans thus far and we are open to including your ideas.
Edible Park Commons
Our Edible Park is envisioned as a beautiful central area for residents to stroll, play, picnic and relax. Mulched pathways meander through fruit and nut trees arranged in polycultures of berry bushes, leafy salad greens, medicinal plants and flowers. Each plant is available for sale from our Plant Nursery, creating a display of our edible landscaping design service for resident’s forest gardens or regional customers. Planned species of canopy tree: Apples, Pear, Peach, Plum, Cherry, Almond, Apricot, Nectarine, Mulberry, Persimmon, Cornelian Cherry, Quince, Jujube, Pawpaw, Mayhaw, Che, Serviceberry, Medlar, Shipova, Trazel, Yellowhorn.
Silvopasture Fruit and Nut Orchard
A silvopasture combines a fruit and nut orchard with livestock pasture in the alleys between the tree lines. The sheep and goats help fertilize and control grasses, while providing early profit as the trees mature. There is strong evidence that this agricultural system builds the most soil and may be the most productive. Planned species of canopy tree: Chestnut, Apple, Pear, Hazelnut, Peach, Hickory, Pecan, English Walnut, Black Walnut, Pawpaw, Plum, Apricot.
Livestock (Meat/Dairy)
Sheep and Goats are ruminants. They convert inedible leaves, grasses and weeds into human usable calories like meat and milk. Sheep eat grasses while goats eat tougher plants. Our system will rotate the animals through the alleys between the orchard trees to maximize pasture production. By starting with a meat operation that is less capital intensive, we create productive value early on while the trees mature. We can then transition to dairy (and hopefully cheese) as funds and labor allow. If we keep the best livestock breeds, we can also gain from the high value sale of offspring.
Useful Plant Nursery
We plan to operate a nursery of our Edible Park and Silvopasture Orchard plants for local and regional sale.
Vegetable Production
Annual vegetable production for community members and for sale externally in the Community Supported Agriculture model. Like the meat livestock, annual vegetables are a way to produce tangible value in the early years, and continuing on as the orchard matures.
Cheese
We would like to include cheese-making in our long term plan. Building our own creamery can enable us to make high value cheeses and creating a storable product. This operation can be staged over time, with the creamery built after 5 years of growing our dairy animal stock and milking and cheese-making for non-commercial sale.