Happy Dancing Blog

Happy Dancing Turtle is taking on a new and exciting role in pursuit of a local, sustainable food system. We will be working directly with farmers and ranchers to accelerate adoption of adaptive grazing practices. Building on our past work of consumer education, promoting market driven conservation, and advocating for local meat processing and distribution, we are now a certified Technical Service Provider for the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. This will allow u

Arbor Day is an international holiday that encourages celebrating participants to plant and care for their trees. Did you know that the word arbor is the latin word for tree. The first Arbor Day celebration was organized in a small town in Spain in 1594, but the first recognized celebration in the United States was in the Kansas Territory in 1872 where an estimated 1 million trees were planted. Across the world, Arbor Day has been celebrated at different times due to the rota

This is the Garden Crew Podcast team. Not pictured: Colin M, who does whatever he can to keep his hands as clean as possible. In this week’s episode, we talk about the different ways you can incorporate trees and woody shrubs into your garden or farm. This is called “Agroforestry,” and has five different methods to use. Alley Cropping Riparian Buffers Silvopasture Windbreaks Forest Farming HDT is using two methods (alley cropping and forest farming) and will introduce a silvo

On June 19th, fifteen forestry, conservation, and agricultural professionals gathered at the U of M Southwest Research and Outreach Center in Lamberton, MN. This lucky gardener, from a plucky little non-profit in North Central MN with a mission in sustainability, was excited to be among them. We were all ready for a 3-day intensive workshop on agroforestry. Community food forest in Mountain Lake Agroforestry: Intensive land-use management that optimizes the benefits (physical