Earlier this summer, I got to go out to our Spring Green Campus on a beautiful June day to explore the woods with Dr. Eric Burkhart in a forest farming workshop hosted by the Savanna Institute. Dr. Burkhart is a professor at Penn State University whose research interests include agroforestry, forest farming, ethnobotany, non-timber forest products, and wild plant conservation. 

As you’ll hear in this podcast episode, part of what gets Eric excited about forest farming is that it can be a gateway for people to start thinking differently about how we manage forests, and even about things like our place in nature, or where food comes from. 

Transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Eric Burkhart: So the fascinating thing about forest farming is that it really can highlight relationships and things that you never really thought about. What I like about forest farming in particular is that it’s a forgiving practice. You can invest very little in it, aside from time and attention to what’s going on on your forest lands and just playing around a little bit, and that’s forest farming. You should be thinking about what grows well on your forested lands in the first place. 

So a big part of what we’re going to talk about as we walk along is going to be trying to understand the forest and understanding how site conditions will dictate what we want to grow. So unlike other agroforestry practices, you need to get to know your forest land first of all, for at least a year. What is the cast of characters in the understory? We’re finding that more and more foresters are interested in this, because it opens up pathways for landowners to get to know their forest and the conditions of their forest.