Northeast Forest Farmers Coalition - NFFC

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Northeast Forest Farmers Coalition - NFFC

These sites also serve as locations for hands-on educational opportunities.

We are a partnership of universities, nonprofits, businesses, and other organizations with a shared goal of bringing forest farming opportunities and education to the Northeast region. The Northeast Forest Farmers Coalition (NFFC) is a partnership of universities, nonprofits, businesses, and other organizations with the shared goal of bringing forest farming opportunities and education to the Nort

heast region. At the center of the project is a network of Research & Demonstration Forests – these are active research sites generating important ecological, financial, and production data on five understory plant species with significant profit potential. The project is funded through a USDA Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) grant. This page will be used to post updates, events, and educational information regarding forest farming in the Northeastern United States. Please post your own forest farming resources or share updates on your own forest farming operations!

06/07/2026

We were lucky to attend and participate in the inaugural Mid-Atlantic Agroforestry Conference hosted at Penn State this week. So many inspiring practitioners and farmers shared about the amazing work they’re doing in forest farming and multifunctional riparian buffers, and it was an honor to join on the forest farming panel.

We also got out in the field to collect data from our long-term research plot at and share about this project during a field tour led by . Shoutout to and for helping with the plot maintenance and monitoring 🪏🪨🤘

The conversations and connections remind us why we do this work: not only for love of these plants and the woods, but for the people.

05/30/2026

Join us for a workshop on June 25 in Ridgefield, CT where we’ll discuss ecological and legal considerations for forest farmers growing ginseng and goldenseal in Connecticut hosted with . Linked in the May newsletter, out now, and on our website: northeastforestfarmers.org/events

Forest farming offers an exciting strategy for cultivating high-value herbs within a natural forest setting. However, some of these herb species are very rare in most New England states like Connecticut. These rare species are protected by state law, adding complications for growers. This workshop will focus on two of the highest-value, rare native herbs: American ginseng and goldenseal. We will discuss the basics of forest farming and delve into the details of working with these sensitive species. This is a free, 3-hour event including a classroom presentation followed by a field walk.

This is the first of three workshops we’ll be holding across the state, so if you live in central or eastern CT, we’ve got you covered! These workshops were made possible through a grant from the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service.

04/25/2026

On earth day, served forest farmed ramp ice cream 🍦🌱 it was really fun to talk about the good, the bad, and the murky of culinary foraging, and how forest farming systems can be a solution to unsustainable wild harvesting practices of the seasonal plants we love.
Admittedly, the ice cream was not for everyone 🧅 but those who liked it loved it 😍 much like agroforestry and all farming, it was a fun and wild experiment. Do you have questions about forest farming ramps? Drop a comment below ⬇️

04/17/2026

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” - Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

Look a little closer—this is a forest bed full of ramp seedlings. Springtime in the forest asks us to pay close attention to what is emerging from the earth. Take a moment this weekend to look at what’s coming up in the woods where you are: each season is an opportunity to grow our knowledge along with these plants.

Ramps (Allium tricoccum) are spring ephemerals that, as seedlings, look like little more than a blade of grass! Later in their perennial lives, they usually have 2 or 3 leaves. Swipe through this post for more ramp pics.

In the April newsletter, find more resources on ramps as well as some forest herb seedling ID for other woodland botanicals. The newsletter just went live—link in bio to read and sign up for future editions 🌱

03/09/2026

“In a climate where winter lasts six months, we always search assiduously for signs of spring, but never more eagerly than after we decided to make syrup.” Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass.

Sap is flowing and the NFFC March newsletter is up—check your inbox, or sign up and find it at the link in our bio. In the newsletter: maple resources and NTFPs, an herbal growers survey from our friends at the Vermont Herb Growers Initiative, state funding opportunities, forest farming conference and workshop dates, and more 🍁

02/17/2026

Registration for the mid-Atlantic Agroforestry Conference is open! We’re excited to be there in the company of an incredible lineup of agroforestry practitioners, researchers, and professionals on June 4th and 5th, 2026 in Pennsylvania Furnace, PA.

Hosted by , and a slew of partners across the mid-Atlantic region, we hope to see you there. Link for more information and registration in our bio 🔗🌱

11/20/2025

We were lucky to spend a day with the forest crew at earlier this month setting up indicator species research plots for ginseng, goldenseal, and bloodroot. We’ve been planting new research funded by at farms across the Northeast this fall, and sometimes it feels like we’re farming pin flags, not forest herbs!

The flag colors correspond to the seeds of a certain species we’ve sown, 5 seeds per square foot. The changing leaves add to the rainbow of color at this time of year 🚩🍁

Other than the flags, which will help us find these plots in the spring to count germination rates, you wouldn’t know this was a forest farmed plot. That’s the beauty of these agroforestry systems—and a reminder to keep really good records 📝 so you don’t lose the plants come spring 🌱

11/14/2025

Scenes from the Forest Farming Field Day at KindredCRAFT. After a morning drizzle, the day turned to blissful sun—hard to imagine a better November day in northern Vermont to get some roots in the ground before the big snow.

We talked through common forest botanicals, their habitats and uses, and listening to the plants before bringing our tools and rootstock out to a mature sugar maple stand to cover site selection, indicator species, and prepping the site for a wild-simulated planting.

All in all, we planted hundreds of bloodroot and black cohosh roots, plus some spikenard, ginseng, and black cohosh seed. Warming empanadas from rounded out the day. Some stuck around to put up a deer fence to protect the planting, and some turned to planting indicator species research plots for a new funded project we are setting up this fall.

Thank you to Nina and Roberto and for hosting with us, for funding this work, and to all who spent the day with us in the forest 🍂

10/30/2025

The October newsletter is up—find it at the link in our bio. Over the past few weeks, we:

🌱planted wild-simulated ginseng plots at demonstration sites in Vermont (featured in the newsletter) with and

🚩put in new site selection research plots at farms and forests in Maine , Massachusetts and Connecticut

📊hosted a Q&A panel and presented a speaker series on our research and programs at the society of conference (+ a field trip to get to know some forest botanicals at )

🌰 collected and connected ecotypic seed savers and sources with forest farmers wanting to plant local types.

And more to come in November. Check out the newsletter for events, funding and job opportunities, and more.

10/09/2025

We were so lucky to spend a couple days in VT this week planting ginseng with forest farmers Kai Thomas and Liang Cheng. They led a quarter-acre planting at and then one at Jericho Research Forest the following day.

We talked through site selection, indicator species, seed predation, policy and markets, and species conservation and genetic diversity.

Thank you to for organizing this event and to all the workshop attendees for showing up and doing the raking, scuffing, seeding, liming, and tamping dance!

Address

Pennsylvania Furnace, PA

Website

https://www.northeastforestfarmers.org/

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