Persimmon Season
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writings & media
Articles, photography, video, and writings sourced from our work in and beyond the field. Our “from the field” series features projects, daily life, and reflections inspired by our work at home on our two farm sites in Frenchtown, New Jersey. Our “beyond the field” series features, projects, collaborations, and partnerships we are engaged in with our broader community.
Popular subjects include permaculture, forest gardening, regenerative agriculture, plant medicine, ecological restoration, earth based spirituality, and other diverse musings on agroecology topics.
Decade in Reflection Part Four: Beyond the Field
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In honor of our ten year anniversary, we’re taking a trip down memory lane in a new multi part series. Through archival photos and retrospective writings, we’ll revisit forest gardening, water management, plant medicine, and other pursuits we’ve explored over the last ten years at Fields Without Fences with the kind of nuance and cosmic humor that only hindsight provides.
Read MoreDecade in Reflection Part Three: Plant Medicine for People & Planet
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In honor of our ten year anniversary, we’re taking a trip down memory lane in a new multi part series. Through archival photos and retrospective writings, we’ll revisit forest gardening, water management, plant medicine, and other pursuits we’ve explored over the last ten years at Fields Without Fences with the kind of nuance and cosmic humor that only hindsight provides.
Read MoreDecade in Reflection Part Two: The Way of Water
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In honor of our ten year anniversary, we’re taking a trip down memory lane in a new multi part series. Through archival photos and retrospective writings, we’ll revisit forest gardening, water management, plant medicine, and other pursuits we’ve explored over the last ten years at Fields Without Fences with the kind of nuance and cosmic humor that only hindsight provides.
Read MoreDecade in Reflection Part One: Forest Garden Farm
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In honor of our ten year anniversary, we’re taking a trip down memory lane in a new multi part series. Through archival photos and retrospective writings, we’ll revisit forest gardening, water management, plant medicine, and other pursuits we’ve explored over the last ten years at Fields Without Fences with the kind of nuance and cosmic humor that only hindsight provides.
Read MoreFrom the Field: Spring in the forest garden
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Photos and reflections of the farm in spring; * Our “From the Field” Series features projects, production, and reflections derived from our work at home on our two farm sites in near Frenchtown, New Jersey.* Earth day arrives just as I’m beginning to feel love drunk on a new spring. A few days ago, standing under an old pear tree, alive and buzzing, radiant in sun gold full bloom, I abandoned my farm chores…
Read MoreFrom the Field: Forest Garden "Greenhouse" Season Extension
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This is a late season snap shot of our unheated high tunnel, which is planted with perennial species that benefit from the heat gain and wind protection that the house provides in our zone 6. Figs, trifoliate orange, and passionflower grow into the vertical space, while a diverse understory of primarily mediterranean herbs clump and crawl across the understory (rosemary, sage, oregano, thyme, lavender, hyssop, lemon verbena). There is also a population of self seeding annuals (kale, mustard, lettuce, leeks, cilantro) that grow and flourish from late fall to early spring, when the warm season perennials are in dormancy.
Read MoreWILD FARMING SERIES: Perennial Polycultures / Complexity & Abundance
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Growing in perennial polycultures mimics the complexity and abundance naturally displayed by wild ecosystems. Cultivation happens within a horizontal and vertical spacial context, maximizing the productive yield of any given area, but also within the context of perpetually unfolding succession.
Read MoreUNDERSTORY SERIES (UNDERSTORY 004)
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The shadblow serviceberry are in bloom at fields without fences in the cliffside above the river. Down in the valley below, their namesake, large river fish called shad, are beginning to make their run up the Delaware river to spawn. Just a bit downstream, in the river town of Lambertville, street vendors and local musicians are preparing for this weekend’s annual Shad Fest…
Read MoreUNDERSTORY SERIES (UNDERSTORY: 003)
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For the first few years when anyone would ask what we grow on our farm, I would crack a smile and quip, “we mostly cultivate patience.” It’s like that with perennials. A tiny herb, a bare root whip, a scattering of seeds cast out into the landscape like a wish that might one day blossom and fruit into the vision so easily teleported to within the mind’s eye. But time travel otherwise trudges on at a reliable pace; minutes becoming hours, becoming seasons, becoming years. In the meantime you will curse the nursery woman who sold you the poorly grafted pawpaws, then you’ll curse yourself for buying more…
Read MoreWATCH: Fields Without Fences Forest Garden Interview with Green Revolution
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Sharing this rather sweeping interview with our friend Alex Marcoulides for his Youtube channel called Green Revolution. Alex stopped by Fields Without Fences for a broad conversation with us about forest gardening, permaculture, successionally managed farm ecosystems, and elderberries, and we go pretty damn deep. This interview is from last season (2017), and listening back to it, I am completely impressed with Alex's ability to listen, synthesize, and offer careful reflection at a nearly rapid fire pace! Alex's energy is purely electric and plugged in.
Read MoreUNDERSTORY SERIES (UNDERSTORY: 002)
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Someone chopped down a tree and began the task of making firewood. That task was abandoned in favor of a more pressing task, and a forgotten round of tree trunk began to dry, then wet in the rain, then dry again. One day someone pulled it into the shade of the old crabapple to sit on for a sunny afternoon, until it was forgotten and left to decay once again…
Read MoreUNDERSTORY SERIES (UNDERSTORY: 001)
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Each still image I capture in the garden represents a particular passing expression of the plant world in seasonal succession. And the static nature of the photo belies the true nature of the emergent forest garden which is in a state of perennial movement, forever shifting as plants come into blossom, maturity, death, and rebirth. I’m beginning an ongoing series where I’ll explore dynamic evolving interactions within the polyculture understory of our forest garden farm. If you enjoy it, please let me know and pass it on!
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