Today we’re listening back to a presentation from our 2022 Perennial Farm Gathering, by agroforestry entrepreneur and author Austin Unruh. There are many different ways to get started doing agroforestry, but for folks that don’t own land or have access to outside investment, getting started with agroforestry can sometimes seem like a long, hard road.
Tom Wahl and Kathy Dice, owners and operators of Red Fern Farm in southeastern Iowa, have been managing a hyper-diverse agroforestry system on their farm for decades. Podcast host Jacob Grace visited Red Fern Farm in July of 2023 to ask Kathy and Tom what they see as the top three mistakes an agroforester can make.
Kevin Wolz: Here in the US, around the year 1900, the black currant industry was about as large as the blackberry industry is today. Blackberries are not the most common fruit, but everyone knows what a blackberry is, and you can buy them in basically any store. And that’s what black currants were like at around the turn of the century in 1900.
Excerpts from Mark Krawczyk's presentation at the 2022 Perennial Farm Gathering, drawing from Mark's new book, "Coppice Agroforestry". Mark provides an overview of techniques and tree crops for coppicing, or "the ancient practice of resprout silviculture" - cutting off trees to make them resprout and regrow in useful ways.