Many Hands Peace Farm :: ASAP :: Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project's Local Food Guide

MANY HANDS PEACE FARM

About Many Hands Peace Farm

Mission The Many Hands Peace Farm is an educational farm dedicated to teaching apprentices and The Mountain Retreat & Learning Center’s guests about the concepts and techniques of regenerative agriculture.

The Many Hands Peace Farm contributes to The Mountain’s overall environmental sustainability, producing food, mushrooms, flowers, and herbs for use in our kitchen and dining hall. The Farm sells produce at Highlands Farmers' Market and Cashiers Farmers' Market. This generates modest revenue, raises visibility for the Farm and The Mountain, and provides our apprentices direct marketing and sales experience as well as farm training. Farm staff regularly host farm tours, foraging and wild edibles tours, workshops, and other educational programs in the area to learn from other farmers and gardeners.

We use no synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, etc. Most of the work on the farm is done with hand tools, though we occasionally use a walk behind tiller or tractor. We compost all food-waste from the dining hall to reduce our waste stream and to utilize nutrients and organic matter that would otherwise go to the landfill. Many Hands Peace Farm aspires to make a lasting impact on The Mountain, its overall sustainability, and our guests through educational programming, improving the soil and infrastructure of cultivated areas, and planting perennial food crops.

Many Hands Peace Farm is in the process of establishing a 1-acre Food Forest in the Black Locust grove at the base of The Mountain. A food forest is an intentionally managed space with trees, shrubs, vines, low-lying plants, and mushrooms that are planted in symbiotic communities, and all together produce a long-lasting, abundant harvest for humans and wildlife.

Thanks to a group of wonderful donors, we raised over $5,000 for this project on Faithify.org. We’ve used some of the money to buy over 200 fruit or nut-producing trees and bushes, many of which were purchased from nearby nurseries that specialize in native and naturalized food producing species. In fall 2017 we planted these new acquisitions into a temporary nursery adjacent to the food forest, to allow them to naturalize to our climate for a full year while we prepared the Food Forest area. During summer and fall 2018, we rotated roosters and turkeys through the space in mobile coops, letting them do some soil-prepping work for us by trampling and scratching the weeds/plants and leaving us open soil to scatter cover-crop seed and introduce our perennials. We are happy to say that over this past fall and winter, with great thanks to all of our volunteer help, we established all of the plants from 2017 in our Food Forest– and they are looking happy!

By establishing the Food Forest, we create a demonstration site for those interested in homesteading and regenerative agriculture, This space will also be used as a unique outdoor learning space for MountainCamp activities and other programming. The Food Forest is an attractive place for guests, campers, and visitors to gather for peaceful reflection, wedding receptions, forest-to-table dinners, or other social events.

The space provides habitat and forage for a wide range of wildlife, including bees, butterflies, deer, rabbits, birds, toads, and thousands of soil microorganisms. If we provide these critters with ample food in the Food Forest, they’re more likely to coexist with our field crops rather than destroy them!

In addition, the Food Forest contributes to the farm’s financial fortitude. Fruits, nuts, and other products derived from the Food Forest will be processed into products to be sold at market or our Mountain Store. Many of these products, such as greens, herbs, nuts, berries and fruits, will be supplied to The Mountain’s kitchen for preparing delicious meals and unique desserts for our guests that are locally sourced and bioregionally appropriate.

The farm is proud to provide handcrafted, locally & sustainably foraged mountain goods for all to enjoy! Our products include: herbal salve, medicinal mushroom tinctures, beeswax lip balm, and hand-stuffed herbal teas. You can find our products at The Mountain Store or on our Etsy.
From May through October we sell these goods, as well as our fresh produce, at Highlands Farmers Market (every Saturday morning) and Cashiers Farmers Market (every Wednesday afternoon). Come by, say hello, and try a sample!
We have a happy flock of around 60 chickens both young and old! Currently we have Buff Orpingtons, Black Australorps, Plymouth Barred Rocks, Silver Laced Wyandottes, Americaunas, Transylvanian Naked Necks, and a few mixed breed roosters. We primarily hatch our own chicks every spring.

We also have a mixed flock of 12 ducks (Khaki Campbell & Ancona), and 3 Bourbon Red turkeys. Our birds have access to pasture every day and freely intermingle with one another. Their coops are managed with the deep litter method. This consists of regularly adding leaves or sawdust to retain nutrients, give the chickens something to scratch through, and to keep the chicken coop free of unpleasant odors. During the growing season we rotate our poultry to help us prepare uncultivated land for annual and perennial crop production. We supplement their foraged diets with fermented grain and kitchen scraps, plus calcium to ensure they receive all their necessary nutrients and minerals.

Our eggs go to the Highlands Farmers Market, Cashiers Farmers Market and are also available to our guests on the salad bar.

Come visit our happy poultry!

CONTACT

Physical Address

3872 Dillard Rd
Highlands NC
(Macon County)

Mailing Address

PO Box 1299
Highlands NC 28741
(Macon County)

Phone (803) 767-6122
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Location Contact

Tolvin Stiles
Farm Manager
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