Ken Mudge Author

Ken Mudge has been involved in agroforestry research, teaching, and extension for over twenty years. His research has focused on non-timber forest products including nitrogen-fixing trees, American ginseng, forest-cultivated mushrooms, and others. He teaches courses including a practicum in forest farming, plant propagation, and grafting. He is principal investigator on a NE SARE-funded extension project, in collaboration with the University of Vermont and with established shiitake farmers (including coauthor Steve Gabriel) to train forest owners in shiitake mushroom production as a business enterprise.  Steve Gabriel, author of Farming the Woods (with Ken Mudge), is an ecologist, educator, and a forest farmer who has lived most of his life in the Finger Lakes region of New York. His personal mission is to reconnect people of all ages with the natural world and to provide the tools for good management of forests and other landscapes. He currently splits his time between working for the Cornell Small Farms Program, and developing the farm he runs with wife Elizabeth, Wellspring Forest Farm, which produces shiitake mushrooms, duck eggs, pastured lamb, nursery trees, and maple syrup. John Munsell is an associate professor and forest management extension specialist at Virginia Tech. His background is in sociology and natural resource management. He also is associate editor of the journal Agroforestry Systems and has served as a reviewer for New York City Museum of Natural History, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. John teaches agroforestry and permaculture at Virginia Tech. He has worked with communities from Appalachia to Cameroon to study agroforestry implementation and associated environmental, social, and economic impacts. He has helped design whole-farm plans incorporating permaculture and agroforestry for properties across the United States.