"We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect." ~ Aldo Leopold
Pacific NW Garden of Eden
Farmland Restoration - creating a sustainable century farm and learning center that teaches respect for the land, conservation practices, self sufficiency, craftsmanship, and a deeper connection and understanding of nature.
Wetland Restoration
Designing A Permaculture (a.k.a. Permanent Agriculture) Food Forest
Like a wild forest, Permaculture Food Forests have trees both short and tall, shrubs and vines, ground cover and fungi. They can have animals, too. Even cattle can graze among fruit trees. The idea is to build healthy soils, create shade, allow beneficial insects to thrive. The idea is not to produce the highest yields possible of one crop, which is the goal of modern industrial farming. Nor are they exactly backyard or neighborhood gardens, with rows of annual crops and flowers. They have several layers, from underground tubers to vines to shrubs to short and tall trees. All play different roles. All, or most, are perennials.
Work Song: A Vision
"If we will have the wisdom to survive, to stand like slow-growing trees on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it if we will make our seasons welcome here, asking not too much of earth or heaven, then a long time after we are dead the lives our lives prepare will live here, their houses strongly placed upon the valley sides, fields and gardens rich in the windows. The river will run clear, as we will never know it, and over it, birdsong like a canopy. On the levels of the hills will be green meadows, stock bells in the noon shade. On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down the old forest, an old forest will stand, its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots. The veins of forgotten springs will have opened. Families will be singing in the fields. In their voices they will hear a music risen out of the ground. They will take nothing from the ground they will not return, whatever the grief at parting. Memory, native to this valley, will spread over it like a grove, and memory will grow into legend, legend into song, song into sacrament. The abundance of this place, the songs of its people and its birds, will be health and wisdom and indwelling light. This is no paradisal dream. Its hardship is its possibility."
—WENDELL BERRY
Contact
Feel free to contact us with any questions.
Email
info@mana.farm
Phone
(503) 396.7100