For many years have been interested in concepts like food forests and permaculture. Integrating those concepts into my property as I could.
In 2020, the farmstead started our journey toward forest farming (agroforestry) with plugging mushroom logs with lion’s mane, blue oyster, and reishi mushrooms. Since then, we have expanded with various other medicinal and edible plants such as pawpaw, elderberry, ginseng, goldenseal, blood root and more.
Agroforestry is the practice of farming under a forest canopy, usually with wild simulated and organic techniques.
This isn’t a normal farming technique here in Georgia, but there are many great groups of forest farmers in the Appalachian region in general.
From what I can tell, I am the only forest farmer in Northeast Georgia (Rabun County). Considering I have a limited amount of space compared to most farmers, I have been slowly adding what I can.
The last few years, I have added a wide variety of regional medicinal plants, as well as a few edible plants. These include golden seal, pawpaw, blood root, ginseng, elderberry, wasabi, and more.
The wasabi has been the most interesting to grow. Choosing to follow traditional Japanese wasabi growing techniques has been a fun process. We are using the natural occurring creek diversion to grow the wasabi, with fresh running spring water being the most important part of the plot.
We are hoping to start providing forest farmed products by 2023.
