WHAT IS AGROFORESTRY?

Agroforestry is a crop system that applies relationships found in natural ecosystems to the efficiencies that come with row crop farming. The ultimate goal of the farm is to always have some sort of fruit or nut in harvest during the growing season. For us, this includes:

Our perennial crops are planted in blocks of one or two crop types alongside plants beneficial to pollinators and other beneficial insects. In our honeyberry block, for instance, every sixth plant is not a fruiting crop. Instead, we have plants like bee balm, catmint, New Jersey tea, rudbeckia, elderberry, and many, many more.

Meanwhile, we rotate our strawberry and vegetable crops in between the perennial crop rows in a process called alleycropping. This lets us keep on top of weed and disease pressure that challenges annual crop production. Following each annual cash crop, we plant a cover crop to maintain and improve the fertility of the land.

This all invites inherent diversity, avoiding the pitfalls of monocropping while ultimately allowing multiple yields to be harvested from the same land base. It far from as straightfoward as your typical orchard, but that isn’t the point. We welcome that complexity.

We are committed to agroforestry as one system available for addressing the pressing needs of our regional and national food systems.