Our LOVESPUN PHILOSOPHY
At its most basic, homesteading is a lifestyle of self-sufficiency, characterized by subsistence agriculture, home food preservation, and (often) small scale production of craftwork for household use and/or trade/barter/sale.
To us, homesteading means so much more than that. It means:
- taking on the burdens and pleasures of growing and raising our own food – and, in doing so, to categorically deny a corrupt system‘s attempt to control us by distorting our understanding of food ecology (as well as natural health and wellness practices) to the sole advantage of its corporate benefactors;
- making space for and nurture the inherent magic and beauty of the natural world, and to celebrate wild and cultivated plant-based medicine of all kinds (mind-body-soul); to grow and share our knowledge and our questions about identifying, storing and using all manner of wild and cultivated edibles; to do the hard work of figuring out our core values and beliefs, why we hold them, how we can stick to them, how we can expand upon them, and how we can share them with others;
- exploring the importance of place within a cultural framework that values convenience and disposability over stewardship and sustainable practices;
- actively refusing to be defined and confined by the constructs of today’s unstable and backward social and economic “reality”;
- cultivating a place and space that extols the importance of nature and natural spaces, so that our children will be raised in an eco-conscious, spiritual manner that reflects our core values – assuring that they will become thoughtful stewards of and advocates for this planet.
OUR VEG GARDENS
We feel so blessed to have the ability to refine and expand our gardens each year. From the year's first perennials, like Jerusalem artichoke & asparagus, to late-summer's rewarding melons and squash, to the autumn cannabis harvest – there is nothing more exhilarating than working alongside nature to grow beautiful, vibrant crops that sustain our bodies and our minds.
Here in Vermont, with our long winters and short, intense summers, we have to put in a lot of time and energy to be able to put away enough of our staple foods to see us through the winter. Though complete self-sufficiency is our ultimate goal, our main focus is on growing enough tomatoes, garlic, potatoes and winter squash to see us through the cold months to come.
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Our other main focus is on cultivating an alliance with the native plants and pollinators here.
OUR ORCHARD & BERRIES
FORAGING & WILDCRAFTING
Foraging, also sometimes referred to as wildcrafting, is the practice of harvesting plants from the wild land for food or medicinal purposes.
We enjoy foraging for wild medicine & edibles, including mushrooms (turkey tail, oyster, lion's mane, maitake, chicken of the woods, reishi & chaga to name a few), wild asparagus, burdock, comfrey, clover, chickory, plantain, purslane, wood sorrel, wild lettuce and mustard, mint and wild violet, among others.
OUR SUGAR LOT
Each year in late February we begin our maple sugaring season here in southern Vermont. We rise early in the morning to collect sap from the previous day's flow, we stoke the embers in our evaporators, fill our pans and begin the day's boiling. Our goal is to provide 100% of our family's syrup and sugar needs for a full year, and every year we get closer to realizing that goal.
Our small but growing orchard includes apples, peaches, pears, Asian pears, quince, pawpaw, hazelnuts, chestnuts and mulberries. Each year we work to plant a few more fruit trees on this land, so that years from now our children will inherit a productive orchard that will fill their bellies and stock their shelves.
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Our berry patches include raspbrries, black raspberries, golden raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, elderberries, gooseberries, currants, goumi berries, Japanese silverberry & sea buckthorn.
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