In the last blog post, I introduced some of the benefits of silvopasture and mentioned that we are planning 2 silvopasture projects. There are 2 ways to create silvopasture, one is to take a wooded area and thin it for pasture and the other is to plant an open area (presumably current pasture) with trees. This post is out how we are going to plant an open area on our farm in trees.
Let’s start with the backstory. Most of our pasture is on a hillside and it gets fairly steep at the top, so steep we say that we go Mario Carting around in the zero turn to mow it. Since the first summer we took over this property, we said we needed to plant it in something so that we don’t have to mow it anymore. 2 years later we have landed on planting it in trees for silovpasture.
How did we come up with this idea? Well, we liked the idea of an orchard for ourselves. But then, I stumbled upon Appalachian Forest Farmers. This is a fantastic group promoting the benefits of forest farming. They are creating quite the community around farming the forest. The AFF held a conference in Roanoke, VA, very close to where we live and did a field day at the Catawba Sustainability farm which is truly just down the road from us. So I went. At that field day, I was able to talk with tree experts and let them know what we we were thinking about. When I mentioned that we also have sheep, they informed me that sheep LOVE mulberry leaves. Honeylocust and black locust were also mentioned as great trees for silvopasture. And then from there, I found the Appalachian Sustainable Development (ASD) group and their ASSETS program. This program provides funding to farmers who are willing to plant their pasture in trees. You get a lump sum to help with the planting and then future carbon credits for the trees that you plant. The part I love about this particular program is that they are willing to work with those of us on small acreage (which has been a barrier to other similar programs).
And so, the scene was set. We connected with an expert at ASD and she was able to help guide us on a planting plan based on our goal of providing additional fodder for the sheep and humans on the farm, while creating a silvopasture. This plan includes a map of where we will plant what, with spacing. We talked through how we will protect the trees while they mature, how to water them, and the works. We mostly talked about what to plant. This is a particularly fun topic if you are a bit of a plant nerd like me. Trees are absolutely fascinating and their individual benefits are wide ranging. Our ASD consultant though was able to help us narrow down the possibilities based on our goal and this is what we landed on:
1. Lots of mulberries – sheep like the leaves so we can prune the trees each fall and turn the sheep out with the fresh cutting AND we get to eat the mulberries
2. A few pecan trees – sheep also really like pecans, and these are really nice, big, shady trees, the people can also eat these
3. A few fruit trees – apples, peaches, plums are all in our plan – mostly for human consumption, but the horses won’t complain about the apples either
4. Transplanted tulip poplars and striped maples – The tulip poplars and striped maples are a bit like weeds around here and several of them are growing in an electric line area so they would be cut down when they get too big so we’ll transplant them to an area where they can grow as large as they like. This also reduces the cost of the planting a bit.
5. Redbuds – a nice native, small tree – helped us to get to our minimum number of trees/acre for the Assets program
6. Black locust – these grow like weeds around our farm as well so we’ll transplant a couple of these from my native plant garden (where they shouldn’t be) to this silvopasture where they can be nitrogen fixers and where the sheep can eat their leaves.
I’ve just ordered all of the trees and I’m like a kid at Christmas just waiting around for November when they’ll be delivered and we can start planting. We’ll be sure to keep you posted on our progress. Of course all of the trees we’ve ordered will be quite small so it will take some time for the trees to begin producing. It is important to remember this is a long term commitment. As they say, “the best time to plant a tree is 30 years ago, the second best time is now.”