Funding and Collaboration
It is hard not to despair as funding for restoration and regenerative agriculture (and so many other important areas of life) gets cut, and we see amazing projects being halted… but we know that collaborating and supporting each other will bring us forward to sustain life.
In the midst of bad news, we have a bit of good news to share with you all: Wonderland Community Project has been awarded a stipend by Climate Land Leaders for planting 40 new trees in our growing agroforestry operation!
CLL promotes climate-friendly agriculture and provides stipends to organizations that set and implement goals for land stewardship and conservation on their land. We are proud to be able to implement perennial solutions (in our case, fruit and nut bearing trees) on our land.
Our tree nursery in Wonderland!
Additionally, this year we will be planting hundreds of chestnuts from Experimental Farm Network that were planted in air prune boxes in Chicago last year, as well as pawpaws, persimmons, hazelnuts and more fruit and nut trees that are currently in our nursery. Be on the lookout for a special tree planting volunteer day in May!
Air prune boxes with hundreds of chestnut seeds, pawpaws and hazelnuts growing in Chicago.
Our agroforestry operation will consist of food forests, alley cropping, windbreaks and aquacultures - including chinampas! This is our 4th year stewarding Wonderland and since we started we have removed several acres of invasive shrubbery and we have planted hundreds of native flowers, grasses, as well as fruit and nut trees and shrubs. This work is a labor of love and it is always multiplied when our amazing volunteers show up! Our goal is to diversify the understory, currently taken by honeysuckle and buckthorn mainly, to generate an ecosystem that can serve us, others (including you!) and wildlife.
Thank you, Climate Land Leaders for helping us get closer to our goal!
Map showing windbreaks and alley cropping
Pd. The last image is a map we made with the support of Mycelium Co-Design, for a grant that just got canceled. Even though it’s frustrating and disheartening, we will continue working to make our plans a reality!
