About us

From our growfood.org advertisement for internships next summer:

We (he is 39, she is 26 –very solidly partnered) are fairly new owners and stewards of an old homestead, which occupies 40 beautiful acres in the Cascades of Northern California. This land is blessed with generous amounts of gravity-fed spring water. Our cabin sits in a sunny four-acre meadow, surrounded by gently logged, biologically diverse forest. Our view includes an old orchard with very large apple, cherry, black oak and black walnut trees. In lieu of committing ourselves to an external cash source in order to purchase our necessities, we use our time and energy to directly fulfill our nutritional and financial needs at home on the land. We experiment (mostly successfully thus far) with growing organic food using flood and ditch irrigation, and we take pleasure in preparing and eating the food our labors produce. We adapt concepts from a wide variety of sources in an effort to facilitate our local ecology’s ability to sustain us. We take inspiration from Mansanubo Fukuoka’s farming philosophy and make growing grain without the use of a tractor a top priority (and had encouraging yields with test plots this first season). Our excitement about the ideas presented in the books Edible Forest Gardens Volumes I and II (and yes, we’ve taken the time to read them) can hardly be contained. We also like biodynamics and while we aren't going to be able to make any preparations in the near future, we especially think that the planting calendar is a good tool.

This is our first foray into blogging! Marina wanted a place to consolidate her rants, raves and photos, mostly. Hope you enjoy....