An edge of a pasture left to its own devices for 2 seasons has started its own nursery of aspen trees. These trees are now big enough to move to other parts of the farm, and all I have to do is transport them. I put two things together to figure out this strategy.
Firstly, the land the farm is located on wants to be a forest. If we humans stopped cutting, chopping, spraying, bulldozing, tilling and all those other busy practices then we would have forests. Cornelian forests is what this farm wants to be.
Secondly, I learned this trick to productivity from reading about English agriculture about 500 years ago when they figured out how to get the most productivity out of land. Farmers noticed that land where growing annual crops year over year became depleted over time. If they let the land rest for a few years, they could start again and have productivity.
Add these two things together and you get an interesting system. My land can improve, while I get trees I can transplant to other parts of the farm. Check out all the trees!
