Guilds
Land Regeneration
What if you could graze animals, harvest crops, and restore the land all at the same time without chemical additions to the soil?
Here are a few ways believed to be the future of restoration agriculture (agroforestry):
Silvopasture
Where domestic animals rotationally forage and graze in a sustainably managed forest that mimics the patterns and relationships found in Nature.
Alley Cropping
Plantings along rows of more permanent crop production like nut or fruit crops, food forest, lumber and/or forage with alley ways in between rows with rotational crops planted and harvested until the forest matures.
In southern France, walnut trees mark the alley boundaries where wheat is harvested in between them. Source photo: AGROOF
Mark Shepard's New Forest Farm, Oak Savannah in Wisconsin, USA.
Alley cropping doesn't need to be straight.
In Alberta, several farms have integrated various agroforestry/restoration agriculture methods successfully. These include shelter belts, silvopasture, alley cropping and riparian/eco buffer strips using bioregion specific plants.
Contact us for details.
Are you interested in ensuring wetlands and waterways on your land are clean, healthy, and continue flowing?
Riparian Buffer Strips/Eco-Buffers
Plantings of perennial vegetation bordering waterways (large and small) designed to conserve the shoreline and keep the water clean from agricultural run-off, reduce the impacts of floods and slow stream bank erosion.
Riparian buffer strip in Iowa, USA. Photo source: USDA
Integrate all these systems with edible plants to create a self-sustaining, multi-functional giant garden with a surplus for humans and animals alike. All this while restoring the soil, keeping water clean, redirecting the force and flow of wind, reducing fire hazards through water infiltration in the land, and connecting more deeply and wholly with the Natural World.
These projects bring communities together and restore large sections of land to a thriving ecosystem. At Noster Nature, we design the living systems, help implement the plans and let Nature take over to adapt and evolve the process. In some jurisdictions, there may be grants available to design and implement these larger scale projects.
Contact us for details.