Saturday October, 24th, New Pioneers led Regenerative Farm & Garden Tour attendees into Nelson County's local food system. New Pioneers collaborated with community partners to showcase a range in regenerative design, production scale, and market models among farmers in the area.

Grace Permaculture, a consultation based company specializing in permaculture garden installations, homestead development, and compost solutions, immersed attendees in a food forest. The design featured a diverse range of edible plants, fruits, and trees. To increase efficiency and self sufficiency, Grace Permaculture utilizes self-seeding plants, stacking functions to optimize purpose of design elements, and reused materials to build structures.

Attendees gathered flowers throughout the food forest to make their own bouquets and got to sample stevia, yellow raspberries, and passionfruit!

Bernheim's Edible Garden produces vegetables and herbs for use in their own on site restaurant, Isaac's Cafe. They have designed the garden to use raised beds, collect rainwater from surrounding buildings, collect water in nearby ponds, and generate all the energy the garden needs through solar panels.

The Edible Garden also donates all of their excess produce to local food banks.

Coulter's Good Earth Farm was the largest of the operations included on the tour with 30 diversified acres of orchards, vegetables, high tunnels, and pastures. As a family operation, Chris and Amy use organic practices with low pesticide input, keep bees, compost, save their own seeds, use green manures, and collect rainwater. They also have a mobile chicken coop that they are able to move around the farm to give the chickens new areas to forage. They sell direct to consumer at farmers markets and through a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program.

Coulter's Good Earth Farm also offers workshops on farm for seed saving, tree grafting, mushroom inoculation and more!

New Pioneers was glad to offer its first farm and garden tour to educate our network on regenerative and permaculture design principles, connect with local farmers using sustainable practices, inspire backyard gardening techniques, and promote sourcing locally.