Wildsong
Cochecton, NY
Location:
Cochecton, NY
Total Acres:
30 Acres
Agroforestry Acres:
30 Acres
Year Established:
2021
Introduction
Wildsong is my exploration of how to live and grow healthy food in right relationship with Nature. I run both a Nature retreat center, and am establishing a regenerative food forest. The goal is to create full sustainability: abundance for humans, improvements in the ecology of the land, and financial sustainability. My intention is to execute on and prove a model of regenerative agroforestry that not only works; but can inspire more people – fellow farmers, consumers, anyone involved in the food supply chain – to adopt agroforestry practices & demand agroforestry products. We also run a small Nature retreat center here, where groups from the city come up to reconnect with Nature and I run regenerative farming workshop weekends and educational tours.
Our farm is on ~30 acres in Bethel, NY. The core of the agroforestry system will be North American pawpaw and American persimmon trees, with silvopastured ducks and geese.
Read more here about our farm and its design here:
https://wildsonggaiansanctuary.substack.com/p/a-prayer-of-pawpaws-persimmons-and
We’ve recently been featured in the New York Times, along with other local farmers who have left the “city life” to reconnect with Nature and work with the land: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/02/realestate/how-to-become-a-farmer.html
Main Agroforestry Species
North American Pawpaw, American Persimmon, Linden, Mulberry, Willow
Contact Information
Main Contact:
Bing Cheah, Farmer
Phone
617-230-1767
Email:
Website:
Social Link
Social Link
Site Visitors
Visitors by appointment
Nursery or Planting Stock Provider Information
Agroforestry System Design
The fruit trees will be Alley Cropped with forage crops (annual and perennial mixes, mulberries), as well as biomass and nutrient capture tree crops (willows, poplar, linden).
There will be windbreak rows of white spruce and pine at strategic elevation points to protect the fruit crops and shelter the animals.
Deer protection & predator protection will be achieved with Maremma Livestock Guardian Dogs in the fenced area.
All the rows will be planted in a modified keyline system, with extensive mini-swales and berms to maximize water infiltration and minimize runoff. Please see the detailed design for planting locations and species in the links below.
As of December 2025, most of the planning, layout and soil and site prep (e.g. swale construction, soil amendment, irrigation lines) has been completed. We have been ordering Nursery stock and planting in waves, beginning Spring 2025 and continuing through to Spring 2027.
Personal or Collective Experiences
This is my first go at commercial farming, so I've been learning all the lessons of farming. To me, they're not agroforestry-specific lessons - they are life and Nature and farming lessons. Generally, they are:
1. Funding
2. Marketing
3. Staffing / Labour
4. Know-how. Not just my own, but especially with agroforestry in the US, the total experience base is not very mature yet. There are only a handful of folks who have really been doing this at significant scale for decades. And even those who have, are typically not doing what I'm doing. So there's a lot of figuring things out as we go.
May 23, 2026 at 9:45:22 PM