I wanted to pass on this blog post that our friend Jesse (the leader of the permaculture group we’ve been working with) made recently. Very exciting stuff! It’s a great post and includes drawings of the plans for this coming year.
====================
AMPY is proud to partner with Dawn Farm and in particular Grace Yoder for the generous community offer to share a portion of their 65 acre farm just South of Ypsilanti. Dawn Farm is a non-profit, substance abuse recovery center with an integrated petting farm that features an ever shifting mosaic of llamas, chickens, pigs, turkey, duck, sheep, and cattle. Clients at Dawn Farm work on the farm (annual vegetable production and animal care) as part of their treatment.
We couldn’t be happier to partner with such a care-based and integrated social service, thank you Dawn Farm! Grace Yoder has been managing the annual vegetable production area and has opened up the space for many people, with various farming/gardening enterprises coming and going throughout the years. Currently this is the broad layout of DF.
All maps are positioned facing South and the quadrants are numbered somewhat arbitrarily 1-5. The “Food Forest” at the SW corner is currently a small apple orchard. Last year AMPY members worked to sheet mulch around the trees to help suppress weed and grass competition and added root cuttings of Comfrey, Daylily clumps, and Wild Mint. We hope to further bolster the orchard into a full fledged Food Forest complete with functional diversity of species (Service Berry, Currants, Gooseberry, Sea Buckthorn, and Elderberry). Here’s closer view of 1 and 2.
To the right of the Open Space area is where Grace, clients, and volunteers focus their attention on annual vegetable production, with the produce going to client meals. To the right of that area is the main building which has ample food storage space and potential for storing root crops all year. The Jamboree Area is parking for DF’s annual Jamboree celebration in September.
The Woodlot area is mostly Cottonwood (Populus deltoides) and has begun to be selectively harvested for mushroom production. Mushroom species include Oyster, Shitake, Reishi, and Turkey Tail. Mushroom yeilds are for AMPY members and Dawn Farm clients. We are looking forward to Spring inoculations!
Read the rest of the post here.