GREAT BARRINGTON — If you drive along Route 41 between Housatonic and Great Barrington this week, you might ask yourself what’s going on in that field to the east, with all the white sticks in the ground. They’re actually plastic greenhouse tubes, for keeping the trunks of growing trees straight and their branches out of browsing height for livestock. The acre-plus plot belongs to Sean Stanton of North Plain Farm, but this spring he’s allowing the land to be converted into a chestnut orchard. Stanton’s chickens and cows, now grazing in the adjacent field, will one day find shade under the trees, and local residents will find a carbohydrate-rich food source.
These goals are the vision of Great Barrington resident and Flying Deer Nature Center instructor Chris Wiltshire (“River Otter” to his young charges). He and his partner Mikayla Morley, along with community volunteers and members of the 3rd-grade class at Berkshire Waldorf School, spent the Sunday of their Earth Day weekend planting, mulching, and setting up a watering system for 100 chestnut seedlings, which are set in the earth as thin, bare-rooted babies, barely twigs.
The name for what Wiltshire is creating on the land is silvopasture, which refers to the “deliberate integration of trees with grazing livestock.” The livestock in question are Stanton’s cows and chickens, who will return to graze there shortly. In the short term, said Stanton, the seedlings will take up grazing area, but he’s thinking long term, to the shade their canopies will eventually provide from the summer sun, about seven years down the road. As a local food provider, he’s also invested in supporting and mentoring the younger generation’s efforts to increase the means of producing their own food.
As Wiltshire explained, the orchard will be made up of Chinese, not American, chestnut trees. Readers of Richard Powers’ novel “The Overstory” might recall the portrayal of the American chestnut (Latin name: Castanea dentata) in that book. It was king of the trees in the 1800s. Its durable wood was used to build cribs and coffins, and its produce fed billions of animals and humans. It dominated the Eastern U.S. with a population of roughly 4 billion, representing a quarter of all trees. But in the early part of the 20th century a terrible blight, native to East Asia, was accidentally introduced through infected plants, and killed off nearly all of them.
Wiltshire calls what he’s undertaking an “experiment,” but it’s part of greater, broader effort regionally to reintroduce the chestnut into the food supply, including the American chestnut tree. Some of the work includes the hybridization of the blight-resistant Chinese with blight-vulnerable American varieties. The SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry is at the forefront of this work, creating new cultivars, and spearheading the Ten Thousand Chestnut Project.
If all goes to plan here in Great Barrington, in 20 years or so the current crop of chestnut trees will be thinned out to ensure the remaining trees have enough room to grow their canopies. By that time silvopastures like this one should be a regular sight around Berkshire County, marrying the animal and vegetable components of our diets.
Wiltshire received a $5,000 grant from Berkshire Agricultural Ventures’ (BAV) Resilience Fund to purchase the seedlings and other materials. BAV’s mission is to “support the development and viability of local farms and food businesses in order to build a thriving and equitable local food economy.” Dan Carr, BAV’s outreach manager, said of the project, “This is a great example of agroforestry in action. The USDA has recognized agroforestry as one of the practices that reduces greenhouse gas emissions and sequesters carbon on farms. From a conservation perspective, we already know trees help draw down more carbon, reduce runoff, lower surface temperatures, and improve the health of our soils, waters, and air.”
The seedlings came from Z’s Nutty Ridge in Ithaca, New York, where you can also purchase hazelnut trees. As the seedlings take root this growing season, Wiltshire’s work will be to ensure the trees are well-watered, and that the wire and posts he’s putting in place to ensure the cows don’t interfere with the seedlings remain intact.
This project is far from a one-off. In fact, Wiltshire said, there’s another orchard a few miles north of the Stanton plot, on Long Pond Road. “It’s a movement happening all over the East Coast. Chinese chestnuts are being planted in the thousands, to start the reintegration of chestnuts into the food system.”
Emily Kasten, volunteer parent organizer of the 3rd-grade class at Berkshire Waldorf spent most of her Sunday planting with her kids, but she got involved for a bigger reason than just keeping the family busy.
“My fellow class parent and our amazing teacher, Anna Taiga, and I have been looking for ways children can help in the community. One of the things that really strikes me is the idea that the phrase ‘Think globally, act locally’ can stop us from acting at all, as we ponder the enormity of the suffering in the world. I reached out to Chris knowing the amazing work he does with the children at Flying Deer and having experienced him as a true shepherd to the earth. Our children have such an important, intense and challenging time to be here. We need to allow them to feel deep reverence for our planet.”
