Our home farm sits in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains, overlooking the Shawangunk Ridge in Kerhonkson, NY, under a long-term lease with the landowner who shares our commitment to ecological restoration and has put the land into agricultural conservation easement to protect it from ever being developed. The site was once a dairy pasture, grazed for generations until the soil compacted into a dense hardpan. Underneath lies a mix of clay and silt, remnants of the glacial lake that once filled this valley. That legacy of overgrazing, combined with water erosion off the mountain, left the field increasingly unmanageable, and over the past few decades the hay production on the hilltop declined while the rest of it grew into a stand of ash that all died and became unmanageable.

Through a handful of grants, we're regenerating this old pasture into a highly diverse silvopasture orchard. Rehabilitation began with a winter of cutting and forestry mulching to clear the dead ash trees and non-native plants that had overtaken much of the field, while preserving the native trees worth keeping. The site is laid out on contour, with swales and a pond designed to slow, spread, and infiltrate water across the land.

Tree crops include chestnut, hazelnut, hickory, oak, elderberry, plum, aronia, and mulberry.