View Sites on the Ground

A small 10.8 acre farm and home stead site nestled in the Upper Connecticut River Valley of Vermont. It is on a northwest-facing slope with about 40% meadow and 60% woodland. It currently has one existing man made pond, three year round streams, two running South to North, the other West to east, all draining towards the Connecticut River. Timber framing and natural building and basic infrastructure building is the current focus as well as establishing perennial systems. We are a young site and looking for help with establishment and are willing to trade space to live with work on […]

Willow Crossing Farm is an experimental and educational organic family farm, and the birthplace of the Prospect Rock Permaculture Project. We grow a diversity of nuts, fruit trees, vines, berries, vegetables, medicinal and culinary herbs and teas, sell nursery plants, produce eggs, honey, and host a variety of educational programs, youth nature, and celebratory events. We research, innovate, experiment, evaluate, demonstrate, and educate about new crops, techniques, and value-added products that have the potential to be both profitable and ‘ecologically regenerative’. Our mission embody permaculture design as an economically viable farm and homestead that increases ecological health while meeting human […]

This public commons in Washington Park is planted for food, medicine, wildlife habitat, craft material and storm water mitigation. It is open every day and is used for education both historic and modern. The public is invited to participate in open volunteer days and permaculture classes use the gardens for training. Forage, medicinal herbs, dye plants and other uses are layered onto the beauty of the naturalized plantings. A new program is allowing Caregivers to plant the Farm garden as they mind their young charges. Butterfly species have risen from zero to nine as the landscape becomes ever more dynamic.

Mt. Joy Orchard is a free to pick public orchard providing a creative social space while demonstrating the use of agricultural practices that promote pollinator habitat, biodiversity and the preservation of Maine's agricultural heritage. The orchard consists of about 85 trees, mostly apples, but with a ever growing diversity of tree crops. Mt. Joy is maintained by volunteers at monthly work parties.

Seeking folks to help design, install and maintain public forest gardens or 'orchard islands' around Northampton and beyond. All skill levels welcome.

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The UMass Carbon Farming Initiative is a 2 acre Chestnut and Sheep Silvopasture. We have over 15 different varieties of Hybrid American Chestnut trees and rotationally graze 6 sheep in between the alleys. We have taken base carbon soil samples and are monitoring the results of our farming practice.

Wildside is a 10-year-old open teaching platform and demonstration site on eight hilly, ledgy acres in Western Mass. Our mission is to enable greater regional grassroots food and energy security for all. We welcome about 300 visitors a year. We also offer seven or eight hands-on work-shops through the summer months. In our first decade, we have transformed the land – which is not suitable for conventional farming -- into an abundant edible landscape, with about 100 varieties of plants -- some eat-in-season, some for harvest and storage, others used as natural fertilizers. Seven specialized gardens are carefully sited in […]

Permaculture Homestead with diversified uses such as edible forest garden, annual gardens, terraces, rotational chicken grazing/forage, woodland management, rainwater collection/cistern, home renovation, compost toilet. Small commercial kiwi vineyard in development.

Nutwood Farm is part of a new agroecological food system turning farming back into an complex mutual relationship with the land and its many intertwined inhabitants. Inspired by the principles of agroforestry, permaculture and food justice, we are bringing a different approach to food production that thrives on maximizing the beneficial impacts of human interplay and technologies to build soil, sequester carbon, increase diversity, and thrive nutritionally in community on a small scale. By growing nuts in a perennial agroforestry system that integrates full sized trees, diverse edible hedge rows, and medicinal understory plantings, we are producing highly valued crops […]

We are a shared homestead of 4 permaculture designers, 1 midwife, 1 solar engineer, and 2 children. We grow and forage about 1/3 of our food through annual + perennial vegetables + fruits, chickens and eggs. We share a two-family, 6-bedroom house with 8 people, so we practice a lot of social permaculture and non-violent communication. The Perch is on an island in the Kwanitekw ("Connecticut") River just south of the Great Falls, where 100,000+ native peoples from all over the northeast would gather each May + June for the salmon, shad and lampreys to run. Our place is suburban, […]

Geodesic dome greenhouse containing a year-round aquaponics system.