Regenerative Agriculture :
Productive Landscapes
Students were tasked with a hypothetical commision by a Landowner (UVA) to envision and create a stewardship framework plan for the property (Milton Airfield) focused on regenerative agriculture and productive systems. They were asked to consider long-term stewardship goals for the property and how best to balance both ecological and productive landscapes to create a resilient and economically stable endeavor
This project aims to help restore the site’s degradedecosystems by ushering in a new period of multi-purpose agriculturally productive land labs, and learning spaces encouraging sustainable land stewardship practices, interdepartmental collaboration, and engagement with local business owners within the community. The four-part enterprise plan will focus on forested mushroom farming, goat, sheep, and goose herding, as well as the eventual introduction of agrovoltaics.
Anson Tse, Julia McNelly, Sean Alberts
Fiber Friends Farm
Fiber Friends Farm is a regenerative landscape combining hemp cultivation for fiber and alpaca wool production. Native warm season grass meadows serve as pastures that allow the local ecosystem and pollinators to flourish while providing forage for alpaca who in turn maintain the health of the pasture.Monica Nichta, Lysette Velazquez, Mary Cotterman
ABC Farm
The proposed programs at ABC farm reference the history of the former Milton Airfield while also looking imaginatively at the site’s cultural potential. The practice of sheep farming offers a nod to Thomas Jefferson’s breeding of sheep at nearby Monticello while the clearing of land for cultivated crops, here in the form of dyes, renews the site’s pre-colonial status as a productive landscape for both human and non-human communities. While our proposal elects not to maintain space for the Rivanna Radio Control Club, the abundance of gravity-defying bees and the retrofit of the former airplane hangar into a multi- purpose barn and workshed offer ample allusion to the site’s aviation history.
Ari Bell, Brianne Nueslein, Charlotte Devine
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