
Farming the Woods: An Integrated Permaculture Approach to Growing Food and Medicinals in Temperate Forests
Ken Mudge
The first in-depth guide for farmers and gardeners who have access to an established woodland and are looking for productive, innovative ways to create a natural forest ecosystems that produces a wide range of food, medicinals, and other non-timber products.
"What a joy to read! Nice pictures, great case studies, and well organized. . . . Farming the Woods is the source for temperate climate agroforestry."—Jonathan Bates, Owner of Food Forest Farm
While this concept of “forest farming” may seem like an obscure practice, history indicates that much of humanity lived and sustained itself from tree-based systems in the past; only recently have people traded the forest for the field. The good news is that this is not an either-or scenario; forest farms can be most productive in places where the plow is not: on steep slopes, and in shallow soils. It is an invaluable practice to integrate into any farm or homestead, especially as the need for unique value-added products and supplemental income becomes more and more important for farmers.
Farming the Woods covers in detail:
- How to cultivate, harvest, and market high-value non-timber forest crops
- Comprehensive information on historical perspectives of forest farming
- How to mimic the forest in a changing climate
- Cultivation of medicinal crops
- How to create a forest nursery
- Harvesting and utilizing wood products
- The role of animals in the forest farm
- How to design and manage your forest farm once it’s set up
Forest crops covered include:
- American ginseng
- Shiitake mushrooms
- Ramps (wild leeks)
- Maple syrup
- Fruit and nut trees
- Ornamental ferns
- And many more!
This book is a must-read for farmers and gardeners interested in incorporating aspects of agroforestry, permaculture, forest gardening, and sustainable woodlot management into the concept of a whole-farm organism.
Product Details
About Ken Mudge
Reviews for Farming the Woods: An Integrated Permaculture Approach to Growing Food and Medicinals in Temperate Forests
Jonathan Bates, Owner of Food Forest Farm & contributing author of Paradise Lot “My particular focus of research is in mushrooms, and Farming the Woods not only offers detailed methodology and techniques for woodland mushroom cultivation, but also adds insight on scheduling and calendars to help orchestrate yields in seasonal climates. I have always wanted to find this information on forest farming bundled together into a collaborative matrix with nut, berry, and rhizome production, and this book helps bridge sustainable agriculture and a healthy, circular systems approach. The authors urge us to take advantage of forested acreage we may have thought was unusable. Fill your forests with food!”
Tradd Cotter, author of Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation “At last, a comprehensive forest farming guide for cool temperate climates! The authors have done a superb job explaining forest ecology and describing how to integrate fruits, nuts, mushrooms, medicinals, animals, and more into forest systems. A must-read for anyone interested in agroforestry, forest gardening, or utilizing forests for specialty crops.”
Martin Crawford, author of Creating a Forest Garden Publishers Weekly- "In this latest of the publisher’s serious, readable, and eminently useful books on cutting-edge permaculture practices, Cornell University professor Mudge and Fingerlakes forest farmer and horticulturalist Gabriel take a step outside the permaculture trend toward forest gardening—gardening that emulates forest patterns—and focus on farming in the woods by maintaining a healthy forest 'while growing a wide range of food, medicinal, and other non-timber products.' Beginning with a nuanced cultural history of forest farming, Mudge and Gabriel share their expertise on an abundance of woodland products: pollination techniques for paw-paws; the comparative economics of shiitakes and ginseng; maple, birch, and walnut sugaring methods; hazelnut breeding; and the safe use of a chain saw, to name but a few. A thoughtfully speculative but practical section on the possible effects of climate change reflects the authors’ humble and hopeful perspective that 'much of the trouble in the world today is due to disconnection from ... larger cycles. Forest farming invites us to change these cycles and to offer a gift for generations to come.’”