Latest Blog Posts
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Wildflower Ways
VersaLand Farm operates on a thousand-year outlook. We’re planning and planting with long-term resilience and abundance as primary goals. Nature has a great way of making everything work in harmony – we work to model those natural systems for optimized yields. Note: 9 months ago this particular farm was still a conventional corn/soy operation. Monocultures, herbicides, [...]
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Edible City
“You never change things by fighting existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” -Buckminster Fuller
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Keyline Silvopasture
We’ve just announced our upcoming workshop with Mark Shepard, Restoration Agriculture 101! Here’s a recent video of us installing a Keyline Silvopasture at VersaLand Farm
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Aussie Regenerative Farming
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Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture
We’ve recently tackled a tall challenge. Reshape 143 acres of degraded cropland into 143 acres of abundant multispecies agroforest. Yes, it can be done, and it will. Rome wasn’t built in a day. This will take years, but the first step is already underfoot. Others have come before us. J. Russell Smith first published Tree [...]
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Buckminster Fuller
We’re fans. 1,000 years ahead of his time. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller How do you spin to the world?
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Chestnut Redux
Dr. William Powell talks about chestnut trees at a TED event. Don’t call it a comeback. Play the video above to learn about one of our favorite trees.
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Science For Smart People
Click the video above for a refreshingly funny look at science, messaging, and critical thought. It’s funny, folks!
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Get Fit, Eat Real Fat
Click on the video above to watch a great synopsis on fats, animal fats, and how advertising can effect human history. Perhaps someday YouTube will bring back play buttons.
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Ernst Götsch
Click on the above images to play the videos. A Swiss farmer named Ernst Götsch (Goetsch) has developed an agroforestry system based on natural succession of species and soil recovery. Götsch, who moved to Brazil in the 80’s, has successfully proliferated his techniques throughout South America and Europe. Using a productive agriculture design free of artificial [...]
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Goat Anatomy
Tis the season of romps and wiggles. This graphic will explain the various goat dancy parts. Not everything we do is serious!
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Farm Hack: Minneapolis
Farm Hack: Minneapolis is on the horizon! You should come. Here’s the slideshow if you can’t be there in person
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Whole Systems Design
There are only a few farmers that I consider to be very thoughtful and genuinely curious about the natural world. Ben Falk is one of those people. In this video, Ben shares his design philosophies, many of which may change your worldview. Enjoy. Ben has just released his book The Resilient Farm and Homestead: [...]
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Paleo Permaculture
I eat meat. I eat vegetables. I eat fruits and nuts. That’s pretty much it. “You’re a farmer, so you obviously eat grains too, right?” No. Cows eat grass, not diesel fuel and corn. The thing is that truly healthy human diets can effectively *only* be produced in permaculture systems. This realization could take you [...]
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Priceless
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Critical Thought For Earth
A letter from Don M. Huber, Emeritus Professor of Plant Pathology, Purdue University Dr. Hartzler has written several similar papers, as have others, defending GMOs and glyphosate in spite of the growing scientific peer-reviewed studies to the contrary that document the serious health and safety risks associated with them. I guess it is like the [...]
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The Agro-Rebel
View this movie at cultureunplugged.com
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Twelve Aprils
How a South Carolina farmer overseeds a broad array of crops into his pastures so that his cows enjoy ’12 Aprils’ of new growth all year.
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True Lifecycle
New people, methods, and products are often suggested, recommended by peers, media, and governments. As individuals, we must constantly ask, “Is this right for me?” You’re invited to watch this very practical, well produced video. You may have had the observation that your CFL light bulbs are burning out faster than your ‘old style’ incandescents. [...]
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Restoration Agriculture
We recently had the pleasure of visiting one of the premier examples of broadacre permaculture in the US, 106-acre New Forest Farm in Viola, Wisconsin. Mark Shepard and family have sculpted New Forest Farm from a cookie-cutter row-crop operation into a diverse and productive farm of meat, fruit, nuts, and honey (much more than milk [...]