Agroforestry: Growing Food, Healing Earth, Awakening Spirit
At Love Is The Source Farm, we believe farming is more than producing food — it’s a spiritual practice, a way of aligning with the rhythms of nature, and a path toward healing the planet. That’s why we’ve committed ourselves to agroforestry, a system that blends trees, crops, animals, and people into living harmony.
Recently, Cory deepened this path by completing a training with Tiago in South Florida, one of the leading teachers of syntropic agroforestry. What he brought home wasn’t just new techniques — it was a vision for how farming can restore ecosystems, feed communities, and reconnect us with the sacred.
What is Agroforestry?
Agroforestry is the practice of integrating trees, perennial plants, crops, and animals into one holistic system. Unlike industrial agriculture, which strips the land bare and grows in monocultures, agroforestry mimics the design of a forest.
Think of it as farming in layers:
🌳 Tall trees forming the canopy and protecting the system
🍊 Fruit & nut trees in the mid-story
🌿 Shrubs, herbs, and vegetables growing below
🍠 Roots and groundcovers feeding soil and suppressing weeds
🐝 Pollinators and animals moving through the system, keeping it alive
The result? Abundance. Diversity. Resilience. Instead of fighting nature, agroforestry works with it.
Why Agroforestry is the Future
The truth is, our current food systems are broken. Industrial farming relies on chemicals, depletes soils, and weakens ecosystems. It produces calories but not vitality. Agroforestry flips that script:
Regenerates soil instead of depleting it
Captures carbon and mitigates climate change
Supports biodiversity — pollinators, birds, beneficial insects
Produces year-round harvests of food, medicine, and fiber
Builds resilience against storms, droughts, and disease
Reconnects communities to the land and each other
When Cory came back from his training with Tiago, he said something simple but powerful: “This isn’t just farming. This is the blueprint for how humans and nature thrive together.”
The Spiritual Side of Agroforestry
For us, this isn’t just about technique — it’s about spirit. Working with trees, soil, and cycles of succession awakens something ancient in us. It teaches patience, humility, and reverence.
Planting a tree is a prayer for future generations.
Watching succession unfold is a reminder that life is always renewing itself.
Building diversity in the land is a reflection of the diversity and unity we seek in the human family.
Agroforestry isn’t only about food security — it’s about soul security. It reconnects us to what is sacred: the earth, the air, the water, and the web of life.
Our Agroforestry Work at Love Is The Source
Here in Zone 9b Florida, right on the edge of the swamp, we’re putting these principles into practice:
🌱 Planting syntropic rows with fruit trees, support species, and crops all together
🌱 Practicing chop-and-drop to feed the soil
🌱 Growing herbs, vegetables, and medicinals within tree systems
🌱 Using permaculture design to work with our wetland edge rather than against it
🌱 Teaching others through hosting volunteers and community workshops
Every day, the land is teaching us. And every day, we’re reminded that this isn’t just farming — it’s a spiritual path, a healing journey, and a gift to those who will come after us.
Closing Thoughts
Agroforestry is more than a method. It’s a movement. It’s the future of farming — and it’s also a way home. Home to harmony with the earth, home to communities nourished by abundance, home to a way of living where love truly is the source.
As Cory often says after a long day of planting: “We’re not just growing food. We’re growing a new world.”
✨ Want to experience it? Come visit us at Love Is The Source Farm or follow along on our YouTube. The forest we’re planting today is the medicine of tomorrow.
