Forest-Farm
As we our culture continues to accept the inevitable shifting of paradigms, terms like diversity, cooperation, restoration, regenerative, synergy, symbiosis, and actual sustainability come to our collective minds.
In a shifting paradigm you are either still part of the problem or increasingly becoming aware of the problem(s) and part of the solution.
It's a time of order, turning to chaos, and finding order once again; a natural evolution of the systems of life.
For years (about 10,000) we have conditioned our collective minds to be either a forester or a farmer. After the industrial revolution we expanded upon these opportunities to profess otherwise. However, the family tree of opportunity in this world all stem from these two professions and the top-soil that make either of them remotely possible.
The chemical and war part of the industrial revolution have fooled us for a small part of this journey. I still remember in 1993 a professor at a upper level lecture series flat out stating that soil is only mechanical and nothing else. I left that lecture hugely conflicted and confused. Thankfully other professors stood up and bellowed and berated him for being a speaker of half truths.
I digress slightly.
Fast forward to the 2020s and all but those who are bought by big chemical corporations or asleep in their air conditioned nightmares believe such a thing.
The silent and non-violent revolution is upon us in full force and the big stick pullers of the 1% don't quite know how to handle it. Which is why so much confusion now days on-line in the all but failing quest for manufacturing consent (thank you Noam Chomsky).
The farm is now in the good hands of youth on its way to restoration.
The forest is yet to awaken but it too is well on its way to restoration much thanks to the First Nations who are not as far down the road of genocide as the white road travellers and still connected to their traditional ecological knowledge (TEK).
In this collective awakening we now have the logical next step of the farm-forest or food-forest.
I would like to share a story.
One example in a sea of many that are so inspiring to these days of radical change upon us.
It is within this pivotal book that you see here called 'Restoration Agriculture'.
I will give you some of this amazing story that is so critical to our future as a species.
Mark Shepard was a relatively large scale corn and soy farmer from Wisconsin.
His grandfather farmed organic corn and soy and then experienced the conspiracy of the 'green revolution' where the surplus of chemicals from the war machine were stockpiling and the failed farmers in suits and ties were wondering what to do with it all.
They conjured up a scheme and the chemical revolution was on its way into our food supply.
Mark's grandfather bit the hook and regretted the decision all the way to handing it off to his son, Mark's father.
Mark's father took the chemical reins and then experienced the next 'technological fix' from chemicals to gmo seed.
Now, not only did his father have to buy his fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, he now had to buy his seed.
His father, now disillusioned by the whole system started telling his son, Mark, to become an electrician, or something other than a farmer.
Mark eventually inherited the farm with these words in mind.
Every year, he set aside x thousand dollars to buy his chemicals and patented gmo seed for the next year.
He started to hear about the diverse and holistic scientific field of permaculture coming from down under and a little lower.
He thought it sounded nice for the small scale gardener but not the relatively large scale farmer.
It however kept sneaking into his dreams and nightmares as he got closer to the realization of selling the farm to the bigger corporations buying up all the smaller fish as monopolies and conspiracies go.
One day he said to his wife: "I'm going to have to sell out any ways, so this year i'm going to gamble with our x thousand dollars meant for the giant corporations and spend it on every perennial food and nut crop known to man (and woman of course) that will grow here."
He planted x thousand of trees and shrubs and the below picture is now 15 years later and one giant success story in nutrition, sustainable farming, food-forestry and the solution.
Once growing only 2 crops of subsidized filler foods (corn and soy), Mark Shepard now grows 100's of different organic and nutrient dense foods for the local economy. The amount of carbon alone that he stores in this farm is staggering in comparison to the dessert of corn and soy he once had to endure.
Here below is another example of a food-forest now in progress.
The shift from annual crop monocultures to perennial polycultures (with annuals grown in between the rows) greatly reduces our dependence on fossil fuels, chemical fixes, and big machinery.
Here above is a basic diagram of the guilds that are created in the rows. The diversity creates more resilient plants and the combination of shallow, medium and deep rooted plants greatly increases the cycling capacity of the water element above and below the soil horizon. This means this ecosystem is drought proof and highly passive (read low tech and affordable over time).
Here above is a video of the ability to fast track a SSOC (Slash Swale on Contour) with a drip line i am gravity feeding from one of our mountain springs.
These swales are closest to the edge of the forest/meadow zone which is in zone 2 of our permaculture zone map:
Zone 1 being the immediate living zone where the house and daily homestead infrastructure resides.
Zone 2 is the next concentric circle from zone 1 and where the orchards, berry patches, livestock shelters, apiaries, coppice wood plantation and now food-forest resides.
The swales are a couple years old now and this added moisture will conversion into moisture and nutrient batteries along the forests edge.
