I’m Heather, the resident witch, the chaos-maker and tamer, depending on the moment. I’ll stir the soup pot and the figurative pot, depending on the day. I believe in community over individualism, in creativity over commercialism, that all humans deserve to live a good life, and that we’re better working together.
When we first arrived here, the farm, or more specifically the animals of the farm, greeted us with a jailbreak.
A 600-pound pig named Gary tore through a metal gate and decided to take a scroll while I ran after him in sandals, bribing him with peaches from our new conveniently loaded peach tree. A donkey named Churro followed.
Neighbors appeared like summoned spirits with tools and calm assessment of the situation. The movers got a show. And just like that, our first night on the homestead became legend.
That’s how this place said hello.
These letters come from a house tucked into woods and clay and blackberry thorns in Virginia, from a hill where fog settles low and mushrooms appear overnight, from a patch of earth that has more to teach than any book ever could.
We arrived thinking we were inheriting animals and functional infrastructure.
What we were really inheriting were lessons.
The fencing wasn’t safe. The systems weren’t ours. The goats wandered, the electric lines ran straight through blueberry dreams, and my body, already living with chronic illness, flared hard under the weight of it all. So we made the hardest choice in our first week: the animals went with their people to a new farm in New York, and we stayed behind with quiet pastures and open gates.
I longed for the goat sounds.
And then, I got to work.
Since then, days have been filled with sheet mulching in the rain, learning drip irrigation zone by zone, hauling woodchips up a hill I couldn’t have climbed a year ago, spreading daikon seeds into clay like prayers, and discovering just how many grapes can hide 35 feet up a tree.
There have been meltdowns on the bathroom floor.
There have been turtles and foxes crossing the yard.
There have been moments where one of my kids looks around and says, “I can’t believe this is our house,” and I can’t either.
This is a place where I am learning to build systems that love me back.
Where permaculture isn’t just about plants, but about designing a life that can hold illness, joy, rage at the state of the world, deep gratitude, and the slow work of healing land.
I listen for seasons. I light candles. I talk to trees. I believe cardboard and woodchips can change the world, at least a few square feet of it. I believe food is a spell. Rest is a spell. Choosing community values and mutual aid is a spell.
In these Fireside Letters, I’ll write about:
- 🌿 Rebuilding soil and planting permaculture guilds
- 🕯️ Tending a cozy, imperfect homestead
- 🌀 Learning to live big dreams in a limited body
- 🍑 Feeding my family from trees we didn’t plant, and lots we did
- 🔥 The quiet, stubborn magic of staying soft in a burning world
If you’re here, pull up a chair.
The kettle’s on.
The story is just beginning.
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