Community Provisioning Farm Series

I LOVED the blend of walking the land, working with our hands in soil, learning the “why” of making something, and then making it. It felt so robust and complete.

-Stevie (Sapsucker student)

The Home Farming Series:

At Sapsucker Farm we use a circular calendar which roots us in the activities and celebrations of the season. Each year we add to our seasonal round and come to know our location and its rhythms better. We can anticipate the seasons’ tasks to come and have the seeds started, tools sharpened, and firewood cured in time. Replacing frantic reactions with well-timed preparations gives a relaxed and confident feel to farming and providing from the land.

Through our home farming classes, we invite you to join us for a day on the farm each month to learn what tasks are at hand and how we manage them. Farm classes will include some sit-down time to record and discuss what the current season requires and then several hands-on activities because you cannot learn to farm from a book. We are a very diversified, family-scale farm, so you will get experience across the spectrum of provisioning activities including vegetable production, animal husbandry, orcharding, pasture management, perennial gardening, food preservation, mending and repair, and ecological landscape management.

About our Farm:

Sapsucker Farm is the home and vision of Eowyn and Sierra Smith and their school-aged children. The farm provides meat, eggs, vegetables, fruit, and nuts for the family, the neighbors, and the community. More than that the farm provides a location to connect with the land and the other creatures that call it home. It is only 6 acres, but integrated into the surrounding small properties and wild spaces it supports not only the Smith family and their livestock, but also countless other species of birds, amphibians, mammals, reptiles, and insects.

Farming with the wild involves listening to the land and making space for all that want to be there. On a small property this means layering the functionality of plantings. Perennials and natives are incorporated everywhere. Trees are added to pastures to increase bird use and provide berries and nuts for the family, livestock, and the wildlife. Wet spots in the fields are turned into vernal pools to support amphibians and provide locations for fruiting shrubs and ecological diversity. Wooded areas are tended by hand and supply medicine and native fruits.

Annual food crops – your typical vegetables – are early successional plants requiring highly disturbed (tilled) soils to thrive. We grow vegetables by following ecological succession patterns, burning new garden sites, planting annuals for a few years while we incorporate perennials and then transitioning fully to perennials, shrubs and trees. Digging and tilling is minimized, as is mowing and other gasoline powered activities.

Slowing down to the speed of living beings instead of machines has allowed the return of many animals and plants to the farm as well as making work more enjoyable, safer, and family-oriented. We can all tend fields and orchards together and create abundance that spills over to our human and more-than-human neighbors.

Our goal as a family is to provide for as many of our needs as possible from ourselves, our friends, and our community rather than relying on corporations, governments, or highly abstracted economies. We know we can’t do it all at Sapsucker Farm and we don’t want to. We need our neighbors and fellow farmers, makers, healers, and artists. Together we can step away from the supply chains and systems that are failing us and the planet. Together we can build the local resilient systems we need to heal ourselves and the land. Come and be the change you want to see in the world.

Your Instructors: