Over the past five years, Vermonters have dealt with prolonged drought, severe rain events, and just about everything in between. As communities and farms plan for this uncertain future, it’s essential that we learn strategies to help adapt to this new reality.  Keyline design offers a tool both understand how water moves across our landscapes and design accordingly. This powerful farm and landscape planning tool looks to the topography of the land to inform the design and layout of planting patterns, water harvesting infrastructure, access ways, buildings and more.

Join us in West Woodbury, VT on Sunday October 20th to gain a practical introduction to Keyline design at a new agroforestry farm in the north-west corner of Washington county along the slopes of Woodbury Mountain. We’ll begin the morning with an overview of the philosophy and practice of keyline before shifting towards a deep focus on our host site. After developing an appreciation for the site’s unique topography studying freely available high resolution LiDAR-derived contour data, we’ll head out into the landscape and identify these patterns and opportunities in the field.  Participants will learn to use a laser level to rough out what a keyline patterned access and agroforestry system might look like. Time and weather permitting, we also intend to spend some time looking at a few of the participants' own parcels to help illustrate these concepts applied to several diverse sites.

This workshop is designed to serve the needs of farmers, homesteaders, technical service providers, educators and people passionate about holistic land management.  It is open to all knowledge and experience levels and will offer lots of opportunities for Q and A throughout. Come prepared to be in the field and walk in wet and rough terrain in whatever weather late October may bring.

To prepare for the workshop – so we can spend as much time as possible in the field – a webinar will be made available for participants to view before the workshop to familiarize you with the basics of keyline design.  

Please register (at no cost) by October 15th!   https://forms.office.com/r/n6f4NHG2JZ

Please bring your own bag lunch

Details to follow by email. Questions?  Contact Charlotte Rosendahl, charlotterosendahl70@gmail.com, or 802-472-2298