Farming & Permaculture

 I grew up on 40 acres of heavy clay in Houston County, in the southeastern toe of Minnesota. My family kept llamas, poultry, and one particularly ornery billy goat named Billy.

My fascination with permaculture and subsistence farming began on a post-college gap year that I spent traveling to twenty-three National Parks while living and working on established, intentional communities. I met teachers and mentors who taught me the magic of plants and the power of learning their names and gifts.

I’m grateful to co-own a CLCLT Land Trust house in South Minneapolis, whose lot I have filled with the beginnings of a permaculture food forest, including fruit trees, perennial installations, and lots of annual vegetables and flowers. I worked with the Corcoran Pollinator Project to install a prairie garden on the front slope and have been excited to see rusty patched bumblebees and other pollinators visit. The south side of the house holds a large three sisters garden, a practice that consistently teaches me about the beauty (& metaphor) of companion gardening. I am humbled to be a student of indigenous plant knowledge and hold that wisdom with respect.

I am especially interested in established cooperative farm structures, off-grid living communities (did someone say Earthships?), and longtime permaculture food forests. I’m interested in all forms of apprenticeship and skill-sharing!

Fermentation Work

Fermentation is happening all around us, whether we can see/smell it or not. With the right materials (namely a vessel and salt), we can harness this natural transformative process to create something delicious, funky, and nourishing. Through the magic of brine and time, we can preserve what is important to us.

Fermentation connects humans with their own life cycle - it reminds us that decay is a part of our story and that with the right mindset, we can make delicious rot. Unlike pasteurized cidermaking or vinegar-based pickling, we don’t add commercial yeast to lacto-fermented goods. We rely on the vast colonies of bacteria and yeast that can be found on all materials. It is the millions of different microbes that we can thank for the uniqueness of each ferment batch. The temperature outside, microbes from the farm field, and even the human skin that presses the soon-to-be-fermented vegetables underneath the salt brine: all of these impact the eventual flavor and tang of the finished, fermented product.

I’ve taught fermentation classes to middle and high school students and can teach fermentation techniques to anyone interested to learn! My regular practice involves fermenting anything I can pull from my garden, kombucha and hard-cider brewing, sourdough starter feeding, and yogurt making.