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24/5/2014

Perennial Cropping:  Silvopasture meets Forest Gardening meets Keyline Design ( soon to meet Holistic Management!)

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This article documents the major patterning of the farm at Ridgedale PERMACULTURE as we laid the Keyline tree lanes and planted thousands of long term perennial crops within our pasture lanes.  For a better introduction to the farm's context you can read an article here.  Water systems and Keyline patterning is also addressed here.  The original plan for the tree layers of the farm design is outlined in another article available here.  So now we explain & assess the actual implementation.  For context, at the time of this work we ourselves had only been on site for 6 weeks and the planning, layout, machine work and major planting all took place in Week 1 and 2 of our 10 Week Internship.  (We have another 10 Week Internship program running July- Sept)


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20/3/2014

Perennial Plant Profile

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PictureHippophae rhamnoides, Sea Buckthorn
We can think of at least 180 great forest garden & perennial crops for cold climate Sweden.  Want to hear about them? Over the course of the next year we will profile 5 a week on the blog. Perennial plants and crops offer a low energy, oil & resource input based foundation for future-proof agricultures. By default if an agriculture is to be called regenerative the bottom line is that it must be soil building, not soil depleting. Relentless deep tillage & poor soil husbandry (wifery?!) contributes to the majority of the 24 billion tons of topsoil lost every year on planet water.  We are going to be focused on holistic polyculture grazing and perennial production at ridgedale over most of the site as this represents the most effective way to restore our degraded landscape, produce high value produce and ensure the future resource base we are managing holistically for in our decision making. 


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24/2/2014

Perennial Plant Profiles

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PictureGinkgo biloba, ginkgo
We can think of at least 180 great forest garden & perennial crops for cold climate Sweden.  Want to hear about them? Over the course of the next year we will profile 5 a week on the blog. Perennial plants and crops offer a low energy, oil & resource input based foundation for future-proof agricultures. By default if an agriculture is to be called regenerative the bottom line is that it must be soil building, not soil depleting. Relentless deep tillage & poor soil husbandry (wifery?!) contributes to the majority of the 24 billion tons of topsoil lost every year on planet water.  We are going to be focused on holistic polyculture grazing and perennial production at ridgedale over most of the site as this represents the most effective way to restore our degraded landscape, produce high value produce and ensure the future resource base we are managing holistically for in our decision making. 


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9/2/2014

Perennial Plant Profiles

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We can think of at least 180 great forest garden & perennial crops for cold climate Sweden.  Want to hear about them? Over the course of the next year we will profile 5 a week on the blog. Perennial plants and crops offer a low energy, oil & resource input based foundation for future-proof agricultures. By default if an agriculture is to be called regenerative the bottom line is that it must be soil building, not soil depleting. Relentless deep tillage & poor soil husbandry (wifery?!) contributes to the majority of the 24 billion tons of topsoil lost every year on planet water.  We are going to be focused on holistic polyculture grazing and perennial production at ridgedale over most of the site as this represents the most effective way to restore our degraded landscape, produce high value produce and ensure the future resource base we are managing holistically for in our decision making. 


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28/1/2014

Perennial Plant Profiles...

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PictureCrataegus ellwangeriana, hawthorn
We can think of at least 180 great forest garden & perennial crops for cold climate Sweden.  Want to hear about them? Over the course of the next year we will profile 5 a week on the blog. Perennial plants and crops offer a low energy, oil & resource input based foundation for future-proof agricultures. By default if an agriculture is to be called regenerative the bottom line is that it must be soil building, not soil depleting. Relentless deep tillage & poor soil husbandry (wifery?!) contributes to the majority of the 24 billion tons of topsoil lost every year on planet water.  We are going to be focused on holistic polyculture grazing and perennial production at ridgedale over most of the site as this represents the most effective way to restore our degraded landscape, produce high value produce and ensure the future resource base we are managing holistically for in our decision making. 


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25/1/2014

Perennial Plant Profiles

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PictureCorylus spp. (here avellana), hazel
We can think of at least 180 great forest garden & perennial crops for cold climate Sweden.  Want to hear about them? Over the course of the next year we will profile 5 a week on the blog. Perennial plants and crops offer a low energy, oil & resource input based foundation for future-proof agricultures. By default if an agriculture is to be called regenerative the bottom line is that it must be soil building, not soil depleting. Relentless deep tillage & poor soil husbandry (wifery?!) contributes to the majority of the 24 billion tons of topsoil lost every year on planet water.  We are going to be focused on holistic polyculture grazing and perennial production at ridgedale over most of the site as this represents the most effective way to restore our degraded landscape, produce high value produce and ensure the future resource base we are managing holistically for in our decision making. 


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2/1/2014

PART 3, KEYLINE DESIGN IN COLD CLIMATE SWEDEN

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This is the third of a series of articles looking at design considerations for our Cold Climate Permaculture site using the Keyline Scale of Permanence as a organizing framework, as well as an informative read for anyone interested. 
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1/1/2014

We like well engineered stuff...

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There's something about cutting and chopping firewood by hand that is sublimely pleasurable, and after all, whomever cuts firewood warms themselves twice.  Good tools are always worth investing in, and time and time again experience shows it's often cheaper to spend more initially!  We're loving the awesome quality of Gränsfors Bruk axes, made here in Sweden and sold internationally. Hand made, individual craftsman marked and guaranteed for 20 years, these are tools we can highly recommend. 


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19/12/2013

Agroforestry: A visit with Denis Flores

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Following up the previous post visiting Professor Martin Wolfe here's a little clip with Denis Flores down in the South of France, at probably the oldest established agroforestry trial site in Europe.  Thanks to Mark Anthony for helping with communication, although we not film makers I hope this is interesting to folks and that the subtitles are fairly accurate!  Denis and his family are fantastic hosts and lovely people, well worth a visit.

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19/12/2013

Perennial plant profiles

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PictureAlnus sinuata, Sitka alder
We can think of at least 180 great forest garden & perennial crops for cold climate Sweden.  Want to hear about them? Over the course of the next year we will profile 5 a week on the blog. Perennial plants and crops offer a low energy, oil & resource input based foundation for future-proof agricultures. By default if an agriculture is to be called regenerative the bottom line is that it must be soil building, not soil depleting. Relentless deep tillage & poor soil husbandry (wifery?!) contributes to the majority of the 24 billion tons of topsoil lost every year on planet water.  We are going to be focused on holistic polyculture grazing and perennial production at ridgedale over most of the site as this represents the most effective way to restore our degraded landscape, produce high value produce and ensure the future resource base we are managing holistically for in our decision making. 


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18/12/2013

Agroforestry; A visit to Martin Wolfe

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Having had the pleasure of visiting and researching some of the best agroforestry sites in Europe I thought some folks might enjoy this interview I filmed with Professer Martin Wolf over in Suffolk, UK.  The video is probably far too slow if you suffer a 3-minute-social-media-saturated-attention-span but personally I would happily sit and listen to Martin for hours.

The video begins with Martin recounting his work as a grain disease specialist at Cambrige University- which led to broad scale East German adoption of multi- variety grain production and subsequent huge reductions in fungicides (which quickly fell apart when the wall came down) 350,000 ha under this production system in Germany sadly fell to 20,000ha almost overnight.


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18/12/2013

perennial plant profiles

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PictureAlnus glutinosa, European Alder
We can think of at least 180 great forest garden & perennial crops for cold climate Sweden.  Want to hear about them? Over the course of the next year we will profile 5 a week on the blog. Perennial plants and crops offer a low energy, oil & resource input based foundation for future-proof agricultures. By default if an agriculture is to be called regenerative the bottom line is that it must be soil building, not soil depleting. Relentless deep tillage & poor soil husbandry (wifery?!) contributes to the majority of the 24 billion tons of topsoil lost every year on planet water.  We are going to be focused on holistic polyculture grazing and perennial production at ridgedale over most of the site as this represents the most effective way to restore our degraded landscape, produce high value produce and ensure the future resource base we are managing holistically for in our decision making. 


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14/12/2013

imagine if our staple crops were perennial

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Humans spent many thousands of years breeding out grasses into the staple grain crops we are addicted to in the majority of our global diets today.  The problems with corporate, monocultural, machine, oil, energy, capital & resource intensive annual- based agriculture are self- evident looking at the state of soils, communities & economies globally.  Perennial plants have the potential to restore degraded ecosystems and provide for our basic carbohydrate needs with much lower external inputs.   Badgersett are doing awesome work in the US breeding out hardy and disease resistant Hazel & Chestnut (amongst others).  Future-proof farming will incorporate a lot more solid perennial crops and holistically managed grazing systems, it's why we are designing our farm primarily around these systems.  We need a lot more advocation and incentives for people working to breed up productive hardy lines here in Scandinavia.  This video shows a chestnut product developed by Badgersett- a polenta that is steamed, extruded in a "ricer", then dried; can be used like either corn meal or whole wheat flour, is gluten free, and will keep for a full year at room temperature. Work involved is about the same as canning tomatoes.

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2/12/2013

perennial plant profiles

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PictureAcer saccharum, The Sugar Maple
We can think of at least 180 great forest garden & perennial crops for cold climate Sweden.  Want to hear about them?  Over the course of the next year we will profile 5 a week on the blog. Perennial plants and crops offer a low energy, oil & resource input based foundation for future-proof agricultures.  By default if an agriculture is to be called regenerative the bottom line is that it must be soil building, not soil depleting.  Relentless deep tillage & poor soil husbandry (wifery?!) contributes to the majority of the 24 billion tons of topsoil lost every year on planet water.  We are going to be focused on holistic polyculture grazing and perennial production at ridgedale over most of the site as this represents the most effective way to restore our degraded landscape, produce high value produce and ensure the future resource base we are managing holistically for in our decision making. 


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  • Home
    • Contact Us
    • Homesteader Vacancies
    • Job Vacancy
    • Getting to the Farm
  • About
    • About Us
    • Design at ridgedale
    • Permaculture
    • Keyline Design
    • Managing Holistically
    • Agroforestry
    • Reading List
    • Past Co Teachers
  • Training on farm
    • Regen Ag Design IRELAND June 2022
    • 4 Day Market Gardening July 2022
    • Regen Ag Design Jul 2022
    • Regen Ag Design WALES Aug 2022
    • Feedback from students
    • Refunds Policy
  • Read our book
  • Online Courses
  • Hire Richard for trainings
  • Our Account Terms