Reflecting back on our first season on the ground establishing Agroforestry, Holistic Planned Grazing, Kitchen Gardens and various other systems from scratch. It has been an amazing ride, so many incredible people from around the world made this possible; good team, clear design & a lot of well coordinated hard work.
Ridgedale is set on 10 Ha with pasture, forest, streams and sloping land with good solar orientation we have a great platform to begin regenerating the soils mineral and water cycles and build increasingly diverse habitat whilst producing very high quality food for the local community. One unusual aspect to the farm is that we aim to meet the majority of our own food needs first, and then produce a surplus to sell. Farming economically at this scale requires low initial debt, utilizing local waste streams, producing our own needs and focusing on high quality value added products. When we say our “own” food that includes a bustling average population of 25-30 folks who come to participate in trainings at the farm for half the year. This year we established 600m2 of annual vegetables in our contoured No Dig Beds and Polytunnels, and in 2015 we will be experimenting with innovative ATV cultivation, and look into extending annual production for a CSA. We plan to start this slowly and “feel into” the demand, partly as we have so many other commitments.
Designing at a farm scale involves a little more complexity, more systems to functionally interconnect, finances are usually stretched and there’s generally just a lot going on. That’s especially true in a Swedish spring when growth is explosive, and in autumn when harvesting and storing nutrient dense food and medicinal crops to keep up vitality through the long dark winter.
The mounded tree lanes were seeded immediately to kick start succession with plant assemblies we would actually like, timing being critical in this whole process. Once the tree mounds settled the tree and shrub crops were planted as bare roots / modules at regular spacing’s. In the back field there are two rows of crops planted according to their height to maximize solar collection due to the general E to W row orientation. In the front field the main tree crops are planted over a central rip with shrub crops on either side, due to their N to S orientation: The trees and shrubs are of high value, and longer-lived perennials deserve a good start in life. Bare roots are dipped in diluted molasses & kelp mix during planting out then watered in with 20l of the same to help kick start fungal symbiosis. We used recommended doses of commercial fungal inoculants and will be continuing compost tea applications throughout the season. (Kelp and fish products can also be useful in boosting initial tree growth.) We also added rock dust around each tree/ shrub. It is worth considering the relative placement of any amendments. Adding everything to a planting hole can possibly limit the organisms desire to root outwards in search of goodies. We also have compacted land that has not been grazed effectively (or utilized otherwise) for many years, with a consistent plow pan at 20- 25cm depth. We needed to prepare the ground for planting, lift compaction, deal with water and establish a multitude of support plants simultaneously.
As with any design work, the mapping and conceptual design process leads us to an accurate digital layout where we can generate a bill of quantities efficiently. The length of tree lanes and our chosen spacing’s allows rapid calculation of plant stocks required.
Main Tree Crops
- Apple
- Pear
- Plum
- Cherry
- HazelSea Buckthorn
Main Shrub Layers
- Raspberry
- Blackcurrant
- Redcurrant
- Gooseberry
- Hazkap
Marginal & Contour Plantings
- Goji Berry
- Japanese Quince
- Edible Rowan
- Chinese Mahogany (leaf crop pollard)
- European Lime (leaf crop pollard)
- Mulberry
- Elder var.
- Juneberry
- Chokeberry
Support Species List (hand broadcast seed)
Our groundcover mix was sown into the formed tree beds immediately after mulching trees & shrubs to quickly establish perennial groundcover. The multiple benefits we are looking for are nitrogen fixing, mineral accumulation, edible crops, insectary and nectary sources as well as protecting the soil. Having perennial support plants helps tip the F:B ratios in our favor, and the addition of chop and drop mulch and woody compost from deconstructed biomeilers will ensure a good supply of fungal food is present. Rock dust, kelp, provide the wide mineral spectrum being necessary to encourage fungi in depleted agricultural soils. Whilst there may be a few annuals and self-seeders in the mix, some of useful perennials we include are;
- Petasites japonicus
- Agastache foeniculum
- Armoracia rusticana
- Dryas octopetala
- Foeniculum vulgare
- Glycyrrhiza echinata
- Medicago sativa
- Origanum vulgare
- Thymus vulgaris
- Aegopodium podagraria
- Allium tuberosum
- Astragalus cicer
- Bunias orientalis
- Centranthus ruber
- Chenopodium bonus-henricus
- Diplotaxis spp.
- Dryas octopetala
- Hedysarum boreale
- Hemerocallis spp
- Lupinus spp
- Oxyria digyna
- Physalis heterophylla
- Physalis longifolia
- Pycnanthemum spp
- Rheum australe
- Rumex acetosa
- Rumex acetosella
- Rumex scutatus
- Sium sisarum
- Stachys sieboldii
- Symphytum uplandicum
- Symphytum grandiflorum
- Trifolium repens
- Trifolium pratense
- Angelica sylvestris
- Perideridia gairdnerii
- Petasites japonicus
- Myrrhis odorata
- Oenanthe javanica
- Origanum vulgare
After deep ripping with the Yeoman’s plow we tested the Simon bedformer and to our surprise it cut through our fairly dense sod with no problems. We took 2 or 3 passes to get the finish we wanted, the 3rd pass necessary only in the front field which has a higher clay content.
Other projects in the later part of 2014 included planting out our “nut field” with several species of walnut and a few other nut varieties to trial. We are shipping in nuts from all over the place to grow out and hope to find genetics suited to life at 59 °N. We inoculated 350m of mushroom logs of 13 species to produce a yield in the riparian buffers.
Fresh herbs, fresh pizza!
We also managed to fit in time to design half a dozen other farms and properties, including taking the Intern’s to Norway to design one of the sweetest small farms in a long time, spring fed reticulation system for mobile animals with 80m head pressure available. Magical places and magical people, it’s been an action packed 6 months to say the least!
Plans for 2015 involve a lot more tree planting, introducing pigs into forest pastures, scaling up layer & broiler production commercially as well as creating several water features in the landscape. We’ll also be working on passive solar heating, pond building and continuing our experiments with Jean Pain composting plus a whole bunch more. We are using the down period to build new portable and multi- functional animal shelters and working on processing and marketing locally. Plan, plan and plan! We will also be running intensive trainings again throughout the summer with a focus on supporting more folks to step into professional design as well as encouraging even more people to start land based enterprises of their own. You can follow us via the website or our Facebook page if you’d like to stay in touch, we post a lot of regular updates and insights and document our process so it can benefit others who can’t be here!
First published here.