Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
This farm was once used as the meat and dairy farm for the historic Catawba
sanitarium...fell out of
regular usage several years ago and
now we're in the process of
renovating and bringing the farm back to life
by showcasing new sustainable practices.
Right now we're doing a lot of land management
and agriculture.
We're considering all agroforestry
principles and practices.
Right here along Catawba Creek
we have this agroforestry
demonstration in a riparian buffer where we are
actively implementing conservation practices
along Catawba Creek here, there are
several different species of trees planted.
We have some high value fruit nut trees planted on one side of the stream - all native species
and then over here we have
several rows of *** florals
that could be harvested in
a few years
and sold to
floral shops and
there's been intentional... intentional usage of planting along the
road
coming down here to the stream...both sides of the road have
high value fruit and nut trees planted.
They're still not at
high production age yet
but we've had a great...
great success rate - great survival rate.
In a couple more years
the maintenance level will drop and the productivity of the
plant should go up.
Several years ago
there was some golden seal planted on some of these shady north-facing forested
hillsides
...another way to
get land and production that's
not traditionally
used on a farm.
This
past winter
we...
conducted a very successful grower's academy course
for eight weeks we
taught a group of fifteen students...
about half business classes half
low-input agriculture classes.
All the students are aspiring ...a lot of the growers we're working with don't have
farms to plant.
A lot of it is just ideas... a lot of them have or two acres they want to put in
production.
I think we have a real opportunity
to reach out to farms - farmers and
teach them about these practices.