Silver Run Forest Farm

Home
United States
Harrisonburg, VA
Silver Run Forest Farm

Silver Run Forest Farm propagates plants for food sovereignty and ecological restoration See Our Story!

02/16/2026

Getting grounded is a real challenge in a time of ice. For the last three weeks we’ve been skidding on a hard pan of snow a foot-and-a-half above ground, getting shoveled out and shoveling others out; for longer we’ve joined others to defend and tend community from the invasion of deputized bounty hunters. Ancient frozen water gushes as ice caps melt from global burning while funds for life-giving entitlements are frozen and funding caps for frontier cops and concentration camps thaw to unprecedented levels. In disaster zones, so many people rapidly respond to keep beloveds safe, in times of natural ice and the militarized kind that kidnapped the name.

What’s the point of growing trees when you can’t get grounded? More honestly, when I can’t get grounded? I shared here about a recent trip to P@lestine, where I visited a vital seedbank. A few weeks after I returned, soldiers invaded this organization, bound and gagged the people, sealed the offices, and destroyed the seeds.

What’s the point of growing trees when getting grounded is impossible, because the ground can be ripped out like a rug or frozen over? I suppose one point is the radical point of the root and shoot. I stay steadfast with roots and shoots, memory and possibility. Trees remind me of my responsibility to organize with a deeper view of time, and growing them reminds me of two perspectives I keep close together. João Paulo Rodrigues, a leader of the Landless Workers Movement, said “It is impossible to produce ‘healthy’ food in a land so full of exploitation.” Angela Davis, interviewed while incarcerated, said the complementary inverse: “The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what’s that? The freedom to starve?” Growing trees should be grounded in a land free of exploitation so people are free to eat and be healthy.

Spring sales are open (link in bio). Hundreds of trees are tucked under ice, memory and possibility. Roots rest under the insulation of snow, frozen over the sawdust and woodchips that keep them moist. As ice melts, the radical underground will turn green and sprout, making it a little easier to get grounded.

11/06/2025

Ten days back after ten days in P@lestine. A follow-up trip to one last December, which grew from multiple stints of work there over the years, which came from decades of family relationships. Last year was to be with friends and to grow practical connections through trees and farming. This trip was to see if those connections are fertile ground for ongoing accompaniment. Sentiment is one thing, solidarity is another.

I won’t name a bunch of names right now for a variety of reasons, but I spent time planning an updated compost system and agroforestry possibilities on a besieged farm surrounded by settlements, a microcosm of the entire place. Last December, I worked with a native plant nursery and research farm to build propagation beds; this time it was gratifying to see hundreds of Oak and Carob seedlings sprouting up. We talked about next steps for bare root trees in arid climates and potential for acorn flour. I also met with a long-standing organization that develops the self-determination and sumud (steadfastness) of farmers, part of a global peasant movement for food sovereignty. They showed me their gorgeous seed library with 80 landrace varieties of significant crops, one of the few remaining forests where they’d like to demonstrate agroforestry, and we discussed future partnerships for nurseries and more.

The olive harvest is historically low due to drought; the attacks on harvesters and the theft of the harvest is the worst in years. How do we stay steadfast when we can’t see the horizon, or when what’s there doesn’t bode well? How do we plant trees when the branches can be chopped down, when the land underneath can be ripped out like a rug? How can we move from sentiment to solidarity?

Resist and build and sumud. Build nurseries not bunkers. Yalla y’all.

10/14/2025

Fall orders are trickling in, leaves shapeshifting color. We recently planted over a thousand Chestnut Oak acorns in air prune beds as we dried chestnuts for flour and pulped persimmon for the seed and the sugar. The nursery is how we cultivate and celebrate all these beautiful and useful plants. We’d like to invite you to celebrate with us!

Every Fall and Spring we schedule times for local pickup orders, and that’s always seemed like an amazing opportunity for a festive event. Join us on Sunday November 16th for our first small Fall Festival! Details are germinating, but come for tree crop taste testing (Pawpaw! Persimmon! Butternut! Acorn! Chestnut!), a nursery tour, music by a fire, and take some plants home with you! Place your local pickup order ahead of time on the website and we’ll have them ready when you arrive, but you can also show up on the spot and see what we’ve got. We may also have other friends with wares to share. Scan the QR code on the last side and fill out the RSVP to stay in the loop for Sunday November 16th.

Thank you!
To the Fall of tree crops, to the fall of empire!
Build nurseries, not bunkers

11/12/2024

Dug up, sorted, shipped trees over the last few weeks. Dug out pathway mulch to reshape beds. Digging in with companions, comrades, and kindred spirits to sort through and reshape what to do.

Political and atmospheric climates are simmering. 80 degrees here in November. Organic-to-alt right pipeline is slick with snake oil about pure food. Catastrophic normal just got dialed up a few degrees. It can get worse for a lot of people, it can get better for an elite few at the expense of those lots of people. But only if we acquiesce to the violent normalcy of empire.

Always time to dig in, dig out, dig down. Defend and tend, resist and build, uproot and plant strongly-rooted mother trees in place, tie into mycelial railroads of the radical underground to cooperate and coordinate.

Make nurseries, not bunkers.

08/06/2024

A few thoughts on a hot day…

08/02/2024

Inventory updated for the Fall! Order now and we’ll have beautiful and useful plants ready for shipping and pickup in November. Can’t recall if that’s the main event happening that month. We’ll check out calendar…

07/25/2024

Last week, on the hottest day of the year so far, I (Jonathan) traveled back down to visit Luke Tyree and NDPonics’ efforts to preserve the traditional ecological havens of the Monacan (see our March 20th post). Our friend Taylor Evans of Valley Conservation Council, and member of our advisory council, initiated the trip for other conservation colleagues to see the havens that a proposed easement would preserve.

We bounced in the back of Luke’s truck several miles up old logging roads to an 800 acre stretch on top of the Alleghenies, nearly surrounded by thousands of acres of state land. Luke thought it might be the most remote spot in the so-called commonwealth. We spent hours driving overgrown roads, pausing to move roadblocking logs, pick berries, or marvel at the changing ecosystems: Chestnut Oaks over Blueberries (and friendly debates on the differences with Huckleberries) in sandy soil; White Oak, Hickory, and dead Ash over Ferns; Pine and Hemlock and a little Beech; acres of Smooth Alder wetland and Pawpaw-lined pathways.

Luke and I smuggled in side conversations about growing out Persimmons, Plums, and Mulberries to plant in gaps and fields edges so food will drop from the top down.

07/22/2024

We’ve been full in the real world and quiet online for the past few months. Honestly, still unsure what to say here. Every sentence feels like it needs at least a paragraph of context, otherwise the algorithm replaces analysis with simplistic sentiment and reduces all insight and experience to the narrowest frame. Do the flowers in our words match what actually blooms on the ground after our efforts?

It’s also been a hard summer around here. One of us took a needed health leave. Early drought dried everything out. So many plants in the nursery have struggled, some because of infuriating deer browse, some because of improper storage, some inexplicably. Cuttings that always do well, seeds that reliably sprout. Not sure what to make of it or what to learn from it other than accept that sometimes what we want doesn’t grow.

But a lot is growing too. Butternuts are busting out of the air prune beds. Persimmon leaves look deep green even in drought. False Indigo never disappoints, and Poplars are taller than us. We’ve hosted agroforestry groups from Virginia Tech and field days from joint efforts by Soil and Water Conservation District, NRCS, and Department of Forestry. Some beautiful celebrations for new seasons of life. And we’ve been busy organizing.

Other possibilities should sprout soon, and the rain is finally falling. We need to be prepared to harvest it.

04/17/2024

Our nursery (wants to) cross-pollinate food sovereignty and ecological restoration. Food sovereignty requires agroecology to grow enough food while maintaining harmony with nature by sharing land with the rest of life. Ecological restoration puts that harmony into practice.

04/15/2024

Our nursery (wants to) cross-pollinate food sovereignty and ecological restoration. Food sovereignty isn’t a synonym for farm-to-table or homesteading, neither of which are one-to-one substitutes for small farming, which also isn’t wholly exchangeable with agroecology, which grows in lots of shapes and sizes around the world. Food sovereignty hasn’t historically been the aim or the frame for so-called sustainable agriculture in the U.S. As a concept and movement, it has its own lineage and social trajectory that animates what we’re doing.

04/12/2024

The bugs and bacteria and fungi of the radical underground economy metabolize and redistribute every resource without judgment of identity and rank, some of it circled back to feed the roots of plants while aboveground leaves open towards the sun to harvest the primitive accumulation of 1% from whic...

Address

Harrisonburg, VA
22802

Website

https://www.silverrunforestfarm.org/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Silver Run Forest Farm posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Silver Run Forest Farm:

Shortcuts

Want your business to be the top-listed Home Improvement Business in Harrisonburg?