Welcome to Green Country Agroforestry

The Oklahoma bureau of tourism defines 'Green Country' as a geographical area that roughly corresponds to the North Eastern corner of the state.  It is renown for its lush landscape of forests and lakes.  The region receives, on average, 40 inches of rainfall each year - but it was not always so.

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Following the demise of the vast bison herds that once migrated across the Great Plains of North America, settlers discovered that the soil in the tall grass prairie was of exceptional quality .. and a booming business was established growing wheat and other cereal crops, with the heaviest farming taking place in Kansas and Oklahoma.  From the 1920s through to 1930, everything seemed to be going well - and then the weather patterns changed, drought came to the great plains region, and a period of ecological disaster began that would come to be known as "The Dust Bowl"

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In 1934, near the peak of the dust bowl years, a pair of brothers named Carol and Chester Conrad came to Oklahoma, and began work to halt and subsequently prevent the desertification process.  They were not alone in this endeavor: Half a world away, a young man named Percival Alfred Yeomans was also struggling to find ways to cope with soil loss and drought.  It seemed only natural for farmers working on similar problems to exchange ideas.  A long campaign of handwritten correspondence bore fruit: for Carol Conrad, the successful development of the Conrad Farms franchise, and for Yeomans, the basis for his book, "The Keyline Plan", Which he would publish in 1954 with a quote in the dedication "The development and custody of fertile soil is the great responsibility, of the men and women of the land" - paraphrasing Carol Conrad "My job as a farmer is not to grow food.  A farmer's job is to build fertile soil."

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Two generations later, the scars of the dust bowl era are healing, and the grandchildren of Carol Conrad are still finding ways to work with nature, building fertile soil, and preserving it with trees, just like Grandpa taught us. At Green Country Agroforestry, we continue the mission by offering education, and select offerings of nursery stock to help build soil, preserve soil, and provide sustainable resources for this, and future generations.