Welcome Home(stead)

Outside my window the snow is coming down heavy now, piling even higher on top of tired white pine branches, some of which are now touching the ground. The silence is punctuated by the occasional car or scraping of snow plow, a falling icicle here and there, a chickadee call, the sound of the furnace humming in the basement.

Yep. I'm back in Maine, alright. And its still winter.

Which always leads me to daydreaming about springtime. About mud and sunshine and green things. But this year, the dream is just a little bit bigger.

Welcome to the homestead. This year, I'm gonna make a go of it on my own. Here on this old turn-of-the-century farmland with its overgrown apple trees, dilapidated red barn, and thirty-year-old preserves in the cellar; with its marshy pine forest and foxdens; I'm going to try my darndest to return to an older way of life so as to create the best possible future for myself and this land. It's gonna be an adventure, folks. I hope you'll come along for the ride.

I'm calling it Fiddlehead Homestead. Its a working title. I feel like a better name for this project is lurking among the aspens and milkweed, but I won't know what that is until the snow melts and the land wakes up and I can ask it. In the meantime, Fiddlehead speaks to me -- something about that plant being a native to this bioregion, much like myself, and it being supremely tasty, nutritious, wild and perennial. All attributes that I want my homestead to embody. Also, it is an ephemeral creature, prompting one to not only be aware of seasonality, but more generally with the impermanent nature of all things. Plus it makes me think about fiddles, which are pretty wonderful. So for now, a fiddlehead seems to be an apt namesake to describe what I'm going for with this thing.

I also consciously use the word homestead rather than farm, as to me they signify very different scales and purposes. I am not aspiring to be a market farm by any means, and while I hope to feed as many people as I can, that's not my sole aim. Farm to me suggests multiple acres in cultivation, annual crops arranged in straight rows, and the export much of the produce. While I have worked on farms such as this, and don't have anything necessarily against them, its not what I want my project to look like. A homestead, in contrast, is much smaller in scale ("go big or go homestead" as a friend of mine is fond of saying) and to me conjures up images of food production more integrated with the landscape, grown with subsistence as the goal, surplus as a bonus. This seems to me a good place to start -- to see if I'm able to grow enough to feed myself and my family, and hopefully have enough left over to barter with, gift to friends and neighbors, and occasionally sell to help financially support the project.

So with that prelude, here, simplified and somewhat artificially separated from each other, are the five main intentions and goals I am setting to give shape and direction to Fiddlehead -- a mission statement of sorts:

1) SELF-SUFFICIENCY: Raise as much food as possible to feed myself, my family, and my friends. Limit the amount of materials being imported onto the land, including food, medicine, fuel, soil amendments, and building materials, using (wisely) what is here first and locating salvaged materials if I have to import. Similarly, ensure that "waste" products are able to be reintegrated into the land (i.e. no toxic byproducts) and that I don't have to export anything. In short, attempt to "close the loop" and have greater control over the source and destination of the resources I use.

2) SUSTAINABILITY: Even more important than growing food is growing soil. Make sure my practices are regenerative, making the land more fertile, not less as is usually the case in agriculture. Don't use any resource in a way that depletes it faster than it can regrow. This includes human resources: energy, compassion, etc. The use of permaculture principles is key here, introducing and supporting perennial plants and diverse polycultures that largely self-maintain and build the fertility and resilience of the ecosystem.

3) BIO-CENTRISM: Learn about the land and local ecology, and have the health of the overall biotic community be primary in any decision or action I make. Support and build habitat for a variety of plants and animals, and leave the majority of the land wild. Better yet, blur the distinction between wild and cultivated in order to reintegrate human life into the biotic community of which it is a part, avoiding the human/nature dichotomy.

4) COMMUNITY: Use the homestead as a tool to involve, and get involved in, the local community, both human and non-human. Invite neighbors to be involved in the project, and offer to help out on their projects, becoming a part of and enriching the local economy and allowing us all a "way out" of current systems dominated by money, isolationism, disempowerment, and scarcity mentalities.

5) EDUCATION: Use the space to further my own education (learning from others and learning-by-doing) as well as to pass along my knowledge to anyone interested in learning. This includes new, innovative discoveries and technologies when appropriate, but places primacy on older, tried-and-true ways of living in this world. We are a society that -- due to changes that took place throughout the twentieth century -- has lost touch with a lot of traditional knowledge and skills. I feel that its the calling of my generation to relearn what has been forgotten before it is lost forever, and figure out how to apply that knowledge and those skills to our current circumstances. I see this as not only necessary for the health of the planet, our communities and ourselves, but also a hell of a lot of fun. :)

Its a tall order, I know. But I think its possible. I invite you all to follow me this year as I try my darndest to live up to all this, and better yet, to come on down to the homestead if you're able. Or start your own, however small. I'll be posting about my projects to try and give you enough information to do it on your own, so you can learn from my failures and my successes -- I've already got some in the works that I'll be posting about soon, including a vermicompost bin, adventures in kombucha and sauerkraut, and home mushroom cultivation. Yip!

So keep your eyes, ears, minds and hearts open, folks; roll up your sleeves and hold on to your hats. We're going down home.