Mark Shepard
Recently, we at EarthDance were excited to host our first ever weekend intensive workshop with permaculture designer and farmer Mark Shepard. The workshop took place April 25th-27th at two local venues and at EarthDance at the Mueller Farm.
“Its time we get past all of our concepts, and start really living on the real planet Earth,” said Shepard, many times over the course of the weekend intensive. Shepard is an emphatic advocate for perennial agriculture and ecological design. He is the CEO of Forest Ag Enterprises, and the proprietor of New Forest Farm in Viola, Wisconsin. He grows fruit, nuts, a few annual and perennial vegetables, and raises pastured cows, pigs, chickens and goats. According to Shepard, most of the conventional wisdom about farming, including organic farming, is based on concepts, rather than realities about our capacity to design ecosystems that yield food, fuel, fiber and medicine.
Most of our staple foods (wheat, rice, beans, and starches) are derived from annual agriculture, meaning that the plants we eat live their entire life cycle in less than one year, and must be reseeded annually. These systems require huge inputs of seed, fertilizer, and water. Shepard explains that we need not be so dependent on the annual crops. Some of his most fascinating work concerns chestnuts. Chestnut trees can live and produce crops for thousands of years. Shepard has done research and experiments to prove that chestnuts can be processed into everything we currently produce from corn! This work is at the core of Shepard’s thinking: he does not propose a return to pre-industrial agriculture; rather, he argues that we can plant long-lived trees that grow well in our bio-regions, and develop industries that efficiently process and distribute foods made from the nuts and fruits that succeed even when grown without chemical inputs.
Shepard shared his vision of perennial ecosystems renewing our food system and the environment at a free public lecture on Restoration Agriculture, hosted by the St. Louis University Nutrition and Dietetics Department. EarthDance thanks Millie Mattfelt-Beman, the head of the N&D Department for her help bringing Shepard’s ideas to the public in St. Louis. One hundred and thirty-five people attended the talk, during which Mark Shepard outlined the basics of permaculture design, restoration agriculture, and farm-scale permaculture water management. Thirty-five of the attendees were also registered for Shepard’s full weekend workshop with EarthDance.
The focus of the Saturday and Sunday portions of the workshop was water management. Shepard aimed to teach the workshop attendees his approach to finding “key points” where earthworks such as swales, berms, and ponds can be connected to maximize a site’s ability to capture rainwater for irrigation and gain resilience in times of flood or drought.
Saturday morning, the group gathered for breakfast and class at First Presbyterian Church in Ferguson; after lunch, the workshop reconvened at EarthDance, where Shepard and Molly Rockamann discussed EarthDance’s values and goals in front of the group. Shepard then segued into the hands-on portion of the weekend: using a tool called an A-frame, Shepard showed the group how to find contour lines on the land, a skill critical to digging swales that will hold, slow, and channel water.
Understanding keyline design proved challenging at first, but as the group worked together to flag some of the farm’s contour lines, a few definite “ah-ha” moments arrived for some participants. Students also had the opportunity to play with Shepard’s laser level (a higher-tech version of the A-frame). A highlight of the day occurred when Farm Manager Monica Pless used EarthDance’s tractor to dig the first swale. The gracefully curving ditch, spanning several hundred feet, allowed the group to visualize big changes ahead, as EarthDance incorporates more of these earthworks into the farmscape. Following the workshop, farmers Matt and Monica dug three more swales, and plan to create seven more in the coming months. They will also be developing several ponds to hold large volumes of water. In the fall, EarthDance will plant fruit trees in the swale’s accompanying berms.
In addition to the focus on keyline design, Shepard also took the group along for several farm walks, to view the property in its entirety. He pointed out the many potential commercial crops suggested by https://exprealty.com/us/ca/rancho-cucamonga/houses/ already growing untended on the farm, including elderberries, chestnuts(!), wild grapes, apples, and mulberries. He made suggestions for site planning, from where EarthDance would locate a future event barn to plans for a poly-culture orchard featuring pawpaw trees, elderberries, blueberries and pecans.
For EarthDance staff, the Shepard workshop marks a turning point in our interactions with the land. EarthDance is “going beyond vegetables,” as we seek to diversify our farming enterprises, in order to educate apprentices and members of the public about the huge range of techniques, crops, and approaches to sustainable agriculture.
Thank you to all who attended Mark’s Workshop! We hope that many of of you second the sentiments of one of our participants, who reported that, “I loved getting to learn about permaculture and water management at EarthDance. It was invaluable to see the practices put into place. I want to come back and see the results!” Please do!