Hi Steve, well I was intirgued by the book a few months ago and preordered it. I can't wait to receive it and start reading.
One thing I can say is that i came from reading Ben Falks book on the resilient homestead and thought it was going in the right direction giving great insight. Then I read Mark Shepards book, restoration agriculture, and saw how one can see working with tree's in an even more significant and useful way. Though Mark is working with a system that was planted by him and that is becoming stable, even if it is still growing and time will pass before it can be seen as a real stable system. Then you come along, with Farming the woods, and take the readers to a new, I
should write higher level, but I want to write lower level, lower in the sense of under the
canopy, in the soils depth, and in the soils most unseen force: mycelium.
You have set forward the idea that goes beyond forest
gardening that mostly implies planting from new a forest in a specific designed way, to instead finding the path to living in a forest that exists and that can give high yields, just by starting to look at the tree's and the understories in a different way. For sure there will be some intervention but the strong idea that you put forward and give strength to, is the concept that no
land is poor or non-yielding, and that we don't have necessarily to redesign a landscape, but can work with and under the existing canopy.
I don't want to stress the difference with forest
gardening and what you work on that is forest farming, I don't know in the specific if it is so much about not necessarily not redesigning a landscape but I like to think that this the probable outcome of the vision and practice you share in the book. Can't wait to read the Q's and A's
EDIT: one thing I just want explain to not be misunderstood: I know you actually did a great work searching for case studies, and not only working by yourself, otherwise it seems I think you invented something, a new method, and I don't give credit to all the people around the world that practice these methods. You have had the great insight in farming forests in practice, and even the great ability in organising the bulk of data you collected in to a book, a manual.
I guess one thing that has started to come out in
permaculture releated
books in the last years is that we start to see more and more published work on case studies, and real life
permaculture as
Mark Shepard put it on the cover of his book. From edible forest gardens onwards I think we have seen published more in depth studies of real cases that are drawing the line on what can be obtained, I was thinking even of Phillips book on the holistic orchard (I haven't read it still).
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