At TLC Farm, Portland's sustainability movements are creating one example of how urban density human habitat can coexist with thriving food systems and native ecologies. Our demonstration projects, all of which are workshopped and volunteer-run, illustrate how specific technologies and practices work, and how they can interconnect.
You're welcome to come and walk through the land, learning from the signs along the self-guided tour. But the best way to get involved and learn about what it's like to build a new world, is to help create it alongside the rest of us!
The areas we're focused on are:

Gardening

Primarily focused on food production using standard organic and permaculture techniques: sheet mulching for weed control, interplanting, insectivories, etc. Primarily annuals and small perennials. Coordinated through the Garden working group, which has regular meetings.

Food Forests

Planning and implementing multi-story food forests both within existing native forest and orchard areas, and from scratch. In the medium-term we intend to establish a Food Forest Research Center in collaboration with local permaculturists, educational institutions, and urban policy planners. The purpose will be to develop experimental trials of various micro-habitat configurations and assess human food productivity, native habitat suitability, and human habitat usability. The goal will be to identify combinations that can be used on both public and private land to create corridors of stacked habitat and function.

Building

Working with volunteer professional architects, designers, and builders, TLC Farm pushes the envelope for regenerative design in Portland: built environments that are fully integrated into energy, water, food ("waste"), and habitat cycles with the rest of the local ecology. This includes a wide variety of demonstration natural building techniques (strawbale infill, cob, light straw/clay, earthen plaster, earthen paint, poured earth, earthbag, etc.). Saturday work parties frequently include a building element.

The easiest way to get connected is to come out to a workparty.
Or contact us: farm@tryonfarm.org
Together, we're building a better world!

• "Village Green" open gathering area
• Outdoor kitchen (with earthen ovens)
• Ecological Living Demonstration Projects (gardens, animals, naturally built structures, etc.)
• Trail leading into Tryon Creek State Park (650-acre forest)
• Large organic garden to nibble at and work in
• goats, chickens, and bees
• and much more!

Bring your group out to the farm!

Field Trip Scheduling: TLC Farm offers field trips Tuesday through Saturday.  We are an all-volunter program, and will work with you to coordinate a time that is good for your group and our volunteers.  The farm is open to the public Tuesday-Sunday between 9-6pm for self-guided tours, and it is closed on Mondays.

Cost : TLC Farm runs on donations, and requests that visiting classes donate $10/visit plus $5 or more per student if at all possible.

Contact us: For further information or to arrange a visit, please contact our education coordinators, at  edu[at]tryonfarm.org or by calling 503.245.3847.

Tryon Life Community Farm extends a special invitation to all communities of faith:

Come share your unique wisdom here at TLC farm.

We welcome all efforts to inspire dialogue, generate workshops, and spawn ceremonies that inter-activate our highest spiritual potential.

• How does your community root itself in its relationship to the earth?
• How do the lessons and teachings of your community connect us deeper with the web of life?
• How can we learn and work together for a healthier, wiser world?

A transformation towards just and sustainable economies requires a sea-change in values -- a dynamic necessarily founded in the ways of spirit. We accordingly seek to make TLC Farm accessible to all spiritual communities oriented towards the sacredness of the earth, and have hosted services and gatherings of Native American, Buddhist, Wiccan, Christian, Jewish, Sufi and other traditions, as well as interfaith ceremonies rooted in growing connection with the land.

In the past, TLC Farm has hosted blessings from Rabbis, Monks, and indigenous spiritual leaders. Currently, this land space holds a Native sweat lodge, earth-based altars built through community collaborations, rituals honoring the shift in seasons, and quiet sacred spaces.

Please contact us to discuss possibilities for occasional or regular engagement with this land and the networks connected through it.

TLC Farm provides common ground where a diversity of movements, communities and individuals in the metropolitan Portland region may:

1. EDUCATE themselves and one other in skills, values, and paradigms for holistic human integration within our wider ecosystem;
2. EXPERIENCE a sustainable urban ecology as possible, practical, and desirable; and
3. EMERGE as empowered co-creators of cultures, economies, and polities of deep change.

We invite communities and individuals of faith to build a relationship with this land and the beautiful creatures co-habitating here. Please:

• come visit this incredible land base,
• create sacred space,
• hold ceremonies and social gatherings,
• and participate in the ongoing visioning of the sacred transformation of ourselves and this piece of Portland's legacy.

We seek to share this earthly sanctuary for group and personal renewal, meditation and prayer, rites of passage, celebrations, youth retreats, seasonal services, and spiritual ceremonies of all kinds.