Carya
Farmland Commons
The Farmers Land Trust is partnered with Dispersion Farms to hold, steward and protect a nut-tree crop farm focused on notable hybrid hickories, persimmon and honey locust, and a subsistence orchard. Utilizing this farm, unmatched in its bioregion, to catalyze and manifest a nut-tree farm focused Carya Farmland Commons in the Driftless region of Wisconsin.
Carya Farmland Commons is being created to facilitate and hold:
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Orchard and farm land - through transitions from private ownership to community nonprofit commons holding
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Relationship and agreements - through lease conveyance and management plan agreements that support access, use, management and stewardship of land, trees, and natural and human habitat systems and enterprise production
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The coming together in collaboration to hold this natural tree farm focused, regenerative food production ecosystem
Meet the Steward, Breeder, and Land Donor
​Alex Tanke is a dedicated tree crop breeder specializing in hybrid hickories, with additional focus on American persimmon and honey locust. His work in selection, breeding, and research has produced one of the most significant hickory breeding collections in the region. The site he stewards contains rare and historically important germplasm from Carl Weschcke, Badgersett Farm, and John Hershey’s lost orchards. Driven by a commitment to long-term agroecological resilience, Alex is working to ensure these trees—and their genetic legacy—are preserved and protected from short-sighted land use threats. His vision is rooted in the belief that what bears fruit in a century begins with careful stewardship today.
Please support this profoundland gift
A donation to the Carya Farmland Commons will endow this unique and important Dispersion Farm and will support the development of the 501(c)(25) Carya Farmland Commons, demonstrating regeneration and the interconnected
dynamic systems of nature that sustain life, support health and create food.
Project summary:
This is a research project with two main barriers, both of which
will be important to break in order to make hickories a crop in
the upper midwest.
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Tree evaluations need to be done on hundreds of hybrid
individuals in the upper midwest to provide variety
recommendations for growers in the upper Midwest. Currently, only
a small handful of subpar hickory selections have been made and
often have been trialed only outside of zone 4/5 upper midwest.
Additionally, evaluations are almost entirely anecdotal and
insufficient to give growers security in planting varieties that
are of high cost and may take over a decade to bear nuts.
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A procedure for epicotyl grafting hickories (grafting onto a
sprouted nut) in zone 4/5 needs to be developed. Traditional
nursery growing of hickories is challenging and problematic due
to the high costs of producing grafted trees because of slow
seedling shoot growth, strong taproot dominance, and the stress
responses of hickories.
