Listening Rock Farm produces various organic foods, including honey from our apiary, garden vegetables, diverse berries, fruits from our orchard of apple, pear, peach, plum, and cherry trees, and fresh herbs and flowers.Current Projects
AgricultureListening Rock Farm produces various organic foods, including honey from our apiary, garden vegetables, diverse berries, fruits from our orchard of apple, pear, peach, plum, and cherry trees, and fresh herbs and flowers. |
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Listening Rock Farm is available to environmentally-oriented organizations for board meetings, retreats, benefits and educational activities. The main barn is set up as an environmental education center, with an inspiring gallery of eco-heroes, an exhibition of diverse regional sustainable building materials, and mechanical systems that use agricultural fuels, and a display of regional Native American prehisotric artifacts. The barn is set up to comfortably accommodate groups of up to 300 people, with a full commercial kitchen to satisfy the culinary needs of a wide range of events.
It is not possible for the world to continue to use fossil fuels at the rate we currently use them on a sustainable basis. From the very inception of the farm we have concerned ourselves with how to plan our future using agriculture based fuels that we can control. We use biodiesel for running tractors and farm equipment, heating, and producing electricity. It smells like popcorn when it burns, has very low emissions, and is not toxic to have around the farm. Making bio-diesel is a one-day process that begins with pure vegetable oil and ends with a product very similar in its performance to fossil diesel fuel, yet capable of burning more cleannly. Our decision to use biodiesel at listeinign Rock Farm was motivated by our desire to use regional farmland to produce fuels rather than remain dependent of foreign oil, with all of its economic, ecological, and political complications.
Listening Rock Farm has forests that produce many hardwoods for use in furniture and buildings. The floors, chairs, and table bases in the central space of the main barn are among the products from our forests that visitors can see. We maintain our woodlands with a sustainable forestry program that cuts less than is grown each year and steadily maintains a forest that is a complete ecosystem. Our harvesting schedules are considerate of animal breeding patters, soil erosion issues, and forest health. We maintain a sawmill on site at the farm for cutting our products and try to maximize the yield form each tree in length and width.
Current Projects