http://www.hawthornfarm.org
Introducing you to my current home.
I’ve landed in what many dream of being their forever home; a sort of proto-village of 8 people living on an 8-acre permaculture oasis in the middle of suburbia about 35 minutes from central Seattle. The abode I live in has no corners, my landlord’s design mentor said “the devil lives in the corners” — so I feel like I’m already well on my way to my “heaven on earth.”
This place is truly amazing. Alexia first moved onto this land in 2003, in her words, “when I had to crawl around to find even one earthworm casting in the mud of the overgrazed pasture. Now whole kids can hide in the tall grass!”
She has been intentionally tending to the nutrient cycles, analyzing the soil, loving on the animals, and educating future generations while she walks her talk in living a regenerative life in the age of technology.
Daniel and Alexia are the couple who own and oversee the property, and then there is Chiara from Italy, Martin from Quebec, Jeff from California, and Nikita, a native Russian speaker. We also have an elder on the property who lives there seasonally named Jenn. In addition to humans, other animals include goats, ducks, chickens, rabbits, and turkeys. Many other wild creatures come and go on the property including a plethora of songbirds, barred owls, Cooper’s hawks, great blue herons, and coyotes. Across an easement road, Hawthorn Farm has a 10 acre stretch of forest with trails, campsites, an outdoor yurt, and a creek that runs through it that is poetically called Daniel’s Creek (and was long before Daniel ever heard of it). Daniel and Alexia live in the house, along with Jenn, while thee others spend most of their alone time in various outbuildings, including two hand-built teeny-cabins, along with an 18 and 30-foot yurt.
The farm is largely a subsistence farm, although we do have a few families who are a part of a CSA. There is a tight-knit community woven into the farm life and there are often people coming and going, dropping off and picking up their kids either to just hang out or attend programs. Daniel and Alexia are long-time teachers and outdoor educators and have their own home-schooled programs that offer such skills as farming, carpentry, naturalist skills, archery, and awareness. They even have weekend-long programs as well as week-long summer camps.
An out-house, that is up!
Every Wednesday we have a farm day that all residents attend, in addition to opening up the farm to many volunteers that want to help with various projects on hand. We usually start the morning with gratitude, a little movement, and get to the tasks of the day. We then go until 2 pm, when we have a huge feast that is almost always entirely from the garden. It is like having Thanksgiving every week! The first bite always goes out to the ancestors as we take a little bit from each dish and fling it out into the field after we bring our bellies together a round of gratitude.
I find myself learning so much about living in community, farm life, taking care of animals, and myself as I fully sink my roots into this place. We share the animal chores, though we try to have some regularity with who attends to who. Alexia milks the mama goats, Daniel tends the rabbits, Jeff has historically been on the goats, and I have been the point person on poultry. Since Chiara and Martin moved in, they have been filling in and taking over where needed, and that has been super helpful considering the many shifting schedules of September.
I’m so excited to be a part of this farm and dream up the future while learning from the past. Sometimes I feel like I am learning new information, and yet I almost feel like I am just remembering thee ancestral skills that are written in my DNA. Digital technology is amazing and all that, I mean I am doing my classes online after all, but I feel there is a lost art of working with the analog technology of the earth. We can only hope to mimic the mastery she has perfected over the billions of years. Plenty of abundance, no waste, and a solar-powered jukebox as the legendary acoustic-ecologist, Gordon Hempton likes to call it.
Hawthorn the tree is known for its heart healing properties, and Hawthorn Farm has been known to heal hearts through the rich soil and community it cultivates. It is a privilege the help the heart pump with vibrant life energy, and I can already feel the magic working on me.
