Producer

Woodie Acres Farm LLC is a sustainable forest farm nestled at the foot of Bluff Mountain in Ashe County. We are a wife and husband team who love growing fresh food! Mikey was raised in Ashe County and has a long history of forest foraging and growing food. Ethan was raised in Wilkes County and grew up gardening with his grandparents and exploring the woods. Together, we have created a small farm in the forest, where we feel most at home.

We strive to work with the native landscape and topography of the land to cultivate healthy food while honoring our Appalachian heritage. We choose our products specifically to complement the existing characteristics of the soil, plants, forest, and wildlife in the landscape. We believe this creates a sustainable food system and business, as it reduces inputs and maximizes available resources. We hope to promote and preserve the Appalachian culture of having a close relationship with the forest as a provider of food. Currently we are growing mushrooms on logs, cultivating native forest plants, and expanding an existing orchard.

We are big on conservation! Our farm is part of the ecosystem, and we aim to work with nature as a central tenet of our farm.

We use Integrated Pest Management techniques and rely heavily on cultural, biological, and mechanical control of pests. We do not use any pesticides on our farm.

We use locally sourced trees for logs to grow our fresh mushrooms and create our pre-inoculated mushroom logs. We use forest best management practices for all tree harvests.

We maintain a riparian buffer along the waterways on our farm to prevent erosion, maintain cool water temperatures, and sustain wildlife. We incorporate wildlife food and habitat into all of our farm planning and actions. We avoid removing plants and trees that serve as wildlife food and cover to the maximum extent possible.

We quickly reseed any disturbed areas on our farm to prevent erosion. We take regular soil samples to reduce inputs and maintain a healthy soil ecosystem.

Overall, we view our farm as one part of a whole natural community, and we rely on that relationship to sustain our farm through these practices.