How Appalachian Sustainable Development supports forest farmers and native species
WORDS & PHOTOS | LISA ARCHER
“I think in the future, people are going to be doing more forest farming, because it’s such a resilient food system,” says Ryan Huish.
Huish and I are standing in the forest amidst a grove of spicebush with four of his children, one of his graduate students, and his dog. Huish and his family are harvesting spicebush leaves — one of the many forest botanicals they sell as part of their farm operation.
“You don’t have to worry so much about watering, about fertilizing; we don’t have to worry about the fluctuations in the climate as much because the forest kind of tempers that,” says Huish as we pluck leaves and place them into woven white oak baskets his children have made. “So I think there’s a lot of potential in feeding people with this method and it helps with conserving the native habitats too.”
Huish, a professor of Biology at UVA Wise, has been stewarding a 60-acre parcel of land in Duffield with his wife and five children for the past eight years. Their farm and homesteading practices include forest farming, permaculture, no-till animal rotation and alley cropping. They also raise pigs, dairy goats, chickens, cows and guardian dogs.
In 2017, the Huish family started growing for Appalachian Sustainable Development (ASD), a nonprofit organization founded in 1995 that seeks to cultivate a thriving regional food and agricultural network that creates healthy communities. ASD is rooted in sustainability and builds profitable opportunities for Appalachians.
Much of the region they serve was formerly devoted to coal or tobacco production, and now many landowners and newcomers to the area are seeking alternative ways to make a living from the land. Through grants, initiatives and pure by-the-bootstraps work, ASD is helping small farms in Appalachia.
“We’re sort of bringing a traditional industry up into the 21st century, you know, modernizing, focusing on sustainability and profitability,” says Robin Suggs, Procurement Manager for ASD. Their Agroforestry Program (which includes forest farming) was founded in 2010 with the intent to help landowners and farmers diversify their crops while avoiding timber logging. Ginseng, black and blue cohosh, witch hazel, spicebush and nettles are among some of the more popular native species ASD sources.
“We work as a middleman,” says Shannon Joyce, ASD’s Herb Hub Associate. “So technically, we’re not buying it. We’re just facilitating the sale, like a sales agent.” ASD’s Herb Hub — a shared multi-use facility — was founded in 2017 and serves as a space for growers, such as Huish, and wild harvesters to process their crops. Farmers and wild harvesters bring in their herb hauls and sort, wash, dry and store their harvest. ASD contracts with medicinal herb and natural food buyers, setting prices and determining quotas. Everything is pre-sold: all harvests brought into the hub for processing already have buyers lined up.
Suggs and Joyce work with both forest and field producers: those who grow and encourage native species in the forest and those who grow medicinal herbs in a more traditional field setting (Huish and his family qualify as both). To help growers succeed, ASD offers technical support: phone calls; site visits to determine what flora will grow best; training programs; and walking growers and harvesters through the sustainable harvesting, cleaning and drying process, all while managing buyer relations.
Preserving and sharing knowledge is vital to the success of forest farming in Appalachia. “Most of what we talk about with people is personal observation and anecdotal observation and sort of what we see that works and doesn’t work in the region,” explains Suggs. “There’s not a whole lot of science-based research to back up our recommendations … I mean, we do partner with Virginia Tech, but for them to get real science, they’ve got to have a real budget, right? That’s an ongoing issue. So, you know, we do trial plantings; trial and error, see what works and what doesn’t and we bring people together to have conversations.”
One of the trial plantings this year is Spilanthes, a medicinal herb and a new crop to ASD as well as the Huish family. Also known as the toothache plant, a tiny bit of the Spilanthes flower causes a buzzing sensation on the tongue, while more might quickly numb your mouth. Spilanthes is one of the higher-priced herbs: a pound of dried Spilanthes will fetch a farmer more than double the price of a pound of dried spearmint. During our visit, Huish and his family harvested a 25-foot row of Spilanthes and were experimenting to see if the base of the plants would regrow after cutting to yield a second crop.
When farming, be it in the field or beneath the forest canopy, Huish finds moments to observe and teach his children. As we walk from one spicebush patch to another, Huish’s daughter, Laurel, brings up the leaf of what she thought was a spicebush but turns out to be a young pawpaw leaf — Huish points out how the leaves have a signature peppery, green mango scent. As we roll pawpaw leaves back and forth in our hands, Huish tells me of ethical concerns he and other growers have. As native species become popularized, what effect will this have on overharvesting and respecting Indigenous knowledge? Pawpaws, which have gained popularity in recent years, are now being domesticated in nurseries. Yet these varieties all come from trees that Indigenous peoples domesticated and stewarded for hundreds of years. If you come upon a stand of old pawpaw trees with trunks branching evenly amongst the forest canopy, you may have stumbled on a former growing site of Indigenous peoples.
Huish is a member of the Native and Indigenous Relations Community at the University of Virginia and works with the Intertribal Agriculture Council to have a dialogue around these concerns. “We’re going to be domesticating these crops (spicebush, cohosh, witch hazel) for intentional farming, and before we go down that road too far, we want to make sure there’s an ethical foundation that ensures we’re moving forward in an equitable and respectable way, especially as it concerns to Indigenous people and their intellectual property and genetic resources,” says Huish.
On our walk through the forest, Huish pointed out dozens of species. From sycamore trees, whose sap tastes like butterscotch when boiled into syrup, to native and non-native violets, the leaves and flowers of which his children use to make their “trail mix,” to Applachian wasabi — a spicy root that Huish and his family use to tenderize meat and as an ingredient in their spice blends.
On a nearby slope, ginseng, goldenseal and Solomon’s seal grow, with trilliums scattered between them. Huish points out a wide basswood tree slanting overhead. “There are certain species you can look for — indicator species — if this plant [basswood] grows here, that indicates that it’s the right soil for other things too [ginseng, etc.].” Huish and his family are building natural terraces along the slope, sourcing fallen tree limbs to stake in crosswise: the limbs will collect leaf litter to enrich the soil.
After harvesting, the spicebush leaves and Spilanthes are taken to the herb hub that afternoon, sorted onto drying racks and placed in an industrial dehydrator. Reminiscent of allspice and often used as a substitute for bay leaf, the leaves of the spicebush release an aromatic, spicy fragrance when crushed. Its fruit ripens in the fall and the red berries are similar to mace in flavor. When harvesting the leaves, Huish and his family are careful to avoid overharvesting female plants, which need to reserve their nutrients for fruit set.
ASD is constantly expanding, and there is growing interest in forest farming and wild harvesting. This past spring, Roanoke hosted the first Appalachian Forest Farming Conference.“Some people have asked me, ‘Do you really think that the whole population can be sustained with forest-farmed food?’” says Huish as we take a lunch break and feast on hard boiled eggs, garnished with the Huish’s salt spice blend of sumac and nettle, and homemade hominy and fresh goat cheese.
“In Papua New Guinea, traditionally that’s all they did, forest farming, and they produced enough crops to sustain a population.” While not all farmers may incorporate forest farming into their business models, and while not everyone may go for a walk in the woods and see it brimming with food, a taproot of collective knowledge is forming and is vital to keep these native species flourishing while expanding streams of revenue in Southwest Virginia.
At the end of our lunch, we snack on a spice cake steeped with spicebush leaves, ginger and a dozen other aromatics. The cake is rich in flavor yet light and warming on the palate: an expression of the home it was baked in and the time-worn knowledge it honors
For more information on forest farming and wild harvesting in Appalachia, visit asdevelopment.org
This article first appeared in our 2024 Fall Issue “Under the Canopy”
