🔊Partnering for Agroforestry, Part II: Nettle Valley Farm, Southern Ohio Chestnut Company, and Delight Flower Farm
The latest episode of our podcast features more farmers from our Partnering for Agroforestry video series! This is a project we’ve been working on for the last year or so, looking for examples of creative partnerships that people have come up with to help make their agroforestry dreams a reality. Agroforestry takes a lot of time, money, and labor up front, and it can take years to start paying off… which can make it pretty risky to do on your own. If we want agroforestry to succeed, we’re going to need examples of agroforestry partnerships that succeed. As Dayna Burtness of Nettle Valley Farm says in our first interview:
“We don’t all have to do it alone. That’s the way of the past!”
How do you handle a partnership where one partner lives twenty minutes from the farm and the other lives two hours away? Or even more importantly, what if one partner is providing all of the money and land and a different partner is doing all of the work? These are some of the questions that Chris Smyth and Badger Johnson had to think about when they started the Southern Ohio Chestnut Company.
Maggie Taylor owns and operates Delight Flower Farm in central Illinois. Maggie worked with our agroforestry technical service program and with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (or NRCS) to get cost-share funding to add agroforestry to her fresh-cut flower CSA farm. But Maggie has also developed neighborly partnerships that are less formal, but no less important, for the success of her business.
Before you plant your perennial crops, ask yourself this one question:
“Who are my partners?”
Check out some of these stories to find unique partnerships that might appeal to you.
More from Perennial AF
🔊 Thick as Thieves with Samantha Bosco
In this episode of Perennial AF, we’re listening back to another presentation from our 2022 Perennial Farm Gathering, and we’ll be hearing from Samantha Bosco, a postdoctoral fellow at the USDA National Agroforestry Center, who conducted research on temperate nut trees for her Ph.D. work at Cornell University. Samantha’s presentation covered a lot of ground from how forest composition can be influenced by the personalities of foraging animals to the non-binary nature of agroforestry and its connections to social justice and queerness in nature.
🔊 The Institute’s Roots: 10th Anniversary Conversation with Keefe Keeley and Kevin Wolz
This year is the tenth anniversary of the Savanna Institute, and in our latest podcast episode, we’re looking back at the institute’s roots. Host Jacob Grace talks with two people who have been at the core of the Savanna Institute over the last ten years: Kevin Wolz...
Our 10-Year Perennial Report
When the Savanna Institute started in earnest in 2013 by a small volunteer group in Illinois, few supports existed for perennial farmers. Ten years later, a network of demonstration farms, technical service providers, and social enterprises now serve Midwest farmers that want to plant trees. This year’s Perennial Report is a retrospective on the Savanna Institute and our last decade’s worth of work to lay the groundwork for widespread agroforestry. Thank you to everyone who helped us grow along the way!
🔊 Thick as Thieves with Samantha Bosco
🔊 The Institute’s Roots: 10th Anniversary Conversation with Keefe Keeley and Kevin Wolz
🔊 Agroforestry and the Artist’s Way
🔊 Grazing on Solar Farms, Mobilizing Goats, and Finding Farm Dogs – with Aaron Steele
🔊 New Forest Farm Tour with Mark Shepard