News
Happy Deepwinter...
We are enjoying the season of rest here at the Whole Systems Research Farm, although we are busy in the studio finalizing spring development plans for sites from Barnard, to Vershire, Warren, Waitsfield, Moretown, Burlington, and New Haven. We've also continued consulting and performing master planning work on projects further afield in CT, NH and NYC. The spring is looking to be especially busy with the development of post-peak oil land and infrastructure systems and perennial food systems installation across Vermont, new training program developments across our central Vermont sites, a half dozen presentations and ongoing site design work. The following items are some of the latest happenings here at WSD. Please also see the selected projects page for additional listings. Also, check out our new workshop program...
Whole Systems Skills Launched
10 years in the making, a learning organization takes form to train and share tools and techniques needed to respond to the unprecedented challenges of the early 21st Century including peak oil, climate change, economic impossibility and other resource system failure. Please click below to view the workshops. Click HERE if your browser doesn't show a viewable graphic above.
Rice Paddy Installation and end of Summer
Double rice paddy trials and production area for 2010
Rice seeds from 2009 trials for paddies above in 2010:
Wine cap stropharia growing in fruit tree groves: 
Design Gallery Premier
Vermont's Future Past: 21st Century Land Use & the New Commons
At the Big Picture Theater and Cafe in Waitsfield, Vermont
$2 Switchback Pints
Opening Remarks, Reception & Live Music- Thursday, October 1st, 5:30pm
Design Gallery- October 1st through October, 29th
Presentation & Discussion- Thursday, October 29th, 5:30pm
Join Whole Systems Design's exploration of a land use for the long haul. This presentation and gallery offers a view of and opportunity to dialogue around the work involved in regenerating Vermont's landscape of abuse and abandonment. The gallery highlights leading-edge strategies toward localizing and solarizing our most basic resource systems such as food and fuel, to be more productive and resilient as we enter an age of peak oil, rapid climate change and economic collapse.
Whole Systems Design's work focuses on the recolonization of rural landscapes from hillsides to former town commons in the transition from a fossil-fuel, import-based economy-culture to a renewable and place-based economy-culture.
Please Join us to contemplate, visualize, discuss and celebrate the future of Vermont.
Click for pdf flyer.
Fuelwood Hedges Continue
We continue planting fuelwood hedges this spring, lining out another 700 feet of hedge to be managed as a perpetual cordwood supply for wood heating. The hedges will be coppiced and cut repeatedly, resprouting each time. We're after the energy dense wood, timber, nectar (honey), berries, soil fertility and other benefits of using trees and shrubes like black locust, speckled alder, seaberry, hazelnut and many others. Biochar Production Resumes
Various Deans Mtn Farm projects underway since snow melt include turning the char made last fall from scrap building wood piles into the ultra durable soil amendment. We are applying the char to both perennial and annual planting zones in various ways and recording each treatment for comparison as each area treated develops.