I think wanting to do this is really the secret to farming in general because this is hard work and the world we live in today almost looks down on people who do hard work…but unless you have gotten the satisfaction that comes from doing this sort of work, you have no idea how spectacular it can be.

Eliot Coleman

Hello! I’m a mom and the driving force and primary energy behind this farming endeavor we call Wild Culture Farm. I became inspired to grow my own food after seeing first hand the awesome power of deep nutrition to heal my eldest child. This outcome led to my study of ancestral diets, growing food, and soil health and then, almost inevitably, permaculture and regenerative agriculture.

Healing a sick child thru a therapeutic diet taught me so much about the importance, power, and possibility of food. It has been the biggest catalyst in my life thus far. Ancestral diet knowledge and deep nutrition were topics that had not previously been a priority in my personal life nor the lives of people I knew.

In 2010, we found Nourishing Traditions and then read The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Which led to Joel Salatin’s work and ethic on raising a family, growing healthy food, and feeding others. I also dove into writings and workshops on growing bio-intensive and permaculture. I started gardening every inch of my landscape, planted a forage lawn, captured our water in rain-barrels, and put chickens in my front yard. The neighbors and local newspaper took note of the transformation and many people stopped to chat and share their garden seeds and growing stories. (FACT: A well tended garden is an attraction to all humans!)

When the opportunity presented itself, and having been primed with the knowledge of how to grow and prepare vitally nutrient dense healing foods (and that it’s not only about what you eat but what your body can easily digest), we purchased land and I furthered my study of holistic management and regenerative agriculture but now with a really big sandbox in which to apply my studies. I worked to learn ancestral and local knowledge to trial and grow ecologically diverse systems, with ruminants grazing the forage, cultivars of diverse fruit, storage, perennial & medicinal crops, and an array of natural craft materials.

This is quite a narrow simplification of our path but explains the spark that kindled the fire to grow the healthiest food, and collaborate with this knowledge now having a place to put it into practice. A place to grow, to learn, to teach, and to restore this bit of land and humans, as a regenerative ecosystem.

Now, on this land, we have the capacity to weave many techniques from various schools of thought. We observe, we try, we fail, we change, we question, we learn, we succeed and repeat. WE SHARE and WE EAT. To this very day, we are repeating this cycle in both small and large scales of time and space. Each season that passes teaches us something new. But, let there be no mistake, this is labor intensive and very much on nature’s timeline (which for some is not fast enough) and it is also what many might consider VERY HARD WORK.

Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life.

Theodore Roosevelt

Holistically tending and stewarding the life growing here fills us with a deep satisfaction from knowing this experience is shared with willing others on so many levels; from the vital reality of nutrient density to the nourishment of our role in being a valued part of these natural systems that can be thriving providers of abundance. We are building an ecological experience for income, profit even to be able to continue to nourish and empower others with skills to also grow and thrive. It’s not yet clear if our small scale and purpose can sustain us but we still strive to share, sell, barter, and donate what we learn and can produce to continue to grow on these few acres for our family, our volunteers, our guests, our neighbors, and our community.

When medical emergencies occur (as they did for us in 2019, 2020), fires devastate (CZU fires of 2020), floods ravage (three times in 2023), vital roads fail (2023), pandemics shut things down (2021-2023), financial markets crash; thru it all I knew we’d be fine AND we were in a position to help others. Thru all these challenges, we have delivered food to the housebound, temporarily housed families of evacuees, cared for and sometimes adopted evacuated animals, hosted garden and farming students, and provided food & other donations many times over to local individuals thru both organizations and privately in every single year we have lived here.

As a farmstead, anything we have in abundance beyond what our family, farm, volunteers, and guests consume is offered to our local community. As an experience, we can share various levels of participation, education, and immersion in what we consider this most diverse puzzle and rewarding endeavor. We offer this as a trade or as paid participation, depending on the type of interest and hosting desired. THIS is how we are changing and growing a more connected, resilient, and caring world. We can’t do all that we want but we can, with intention, do something and so here we are.