Description: Okfuskee is the 20-acre R&D farm designed and operated by BODHI president, Bobby Tucker (and family) since 2008 to develop techniques and plant selections for broad-acre permaculture systems in the Piedmont region. Over the past ten years, Bobby has intentionally planted over 4,000 woody plant species – mostly native – while allowing the natural regeneration of many more pioneer and understory trees through planned rest and grazing periods. The farm includes various low-input cropping systems that are easily scalable to larger lands, coupled with unique livestock integration methods for low-input land management and soil building. Successful systems include:

• Mixed agroforestry: various models for perennial agriculture establishment including silvo pasture systems, Keyline-based alley cropping, hedgerow plantings, swale/berm
• No-kill/no-till cropping using a combination of high-biomass cover crops, roll-down mulching, rotational grazing, and no-till planting of dent corn, winter squash, sweet sorghum, and southern peas
• Cultivation of various perennial cash crops, including asparagus, sunchokes, Asian/European pears, southern adapted apples, elderberry, paw paw, mulberry, native plum, American/European persimmon, Chinese chestnut, and southern pecan
• Sheep: managed intensive grazing for open-land management, soil building and nutrient cycling, and invasive species control
• Hogs: pasture-based pigs for pasture renovation/diversification (e.g., conversion of fescue dominated forages to native warm season grasses); creation of micro-ponds and priority landscape locations