A Rural Renaissance

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

The family from whom we purchased this place took great pride in their home and outbuildings. The house is rock solid, and needed very few repairs when we bought it. We did do a little bit of renovation for the B&B, including adding full bathrooms on the second floor for each guest room.

When we made changes, we did so with an eye toward more Earth-friendly options. These include bathroom tiles made from recycled auto windshield glass, no-VOC (volatile organic compound) paint, and no-VOC stains and wood floor sealers.

Staying connected

Past homesteading generations tended to live in more isolated locales, often building cabins in the woods alongside others with similar values, but we thrive on staying connected to a diversity of people around the world. Today's technology helps us do this. Between an Internet connection, faxes and international couriers, we can literally "set up shop" anywhere.

Connectedness is the element that makes this 21st-century rural sustainability movement different from the homesteading movements of earlier times. And modern technology makes it possible. Our Internet connection makes it far easier to earn income in a rural area from such nontraditional sources as we employ. Sustainability is an ideal, a "moving target" that we're always working toward. But living in the country, we find that more than ever, our environmentally responsible decisions are based on personal convictions rather than on what other people might think. The neighbors aren't close enough to see us, and those mythical image-driven Joneses probably would take one look at the chicken poop on the sidewalk and cruise on by.

The anonymity could give us carte blanche to do whatever we liked; recycling is voluntary and whether we apply chemical pesticides and fertilizers in the garden is up to us. But the frog croaking in the pond knows, and Liam is directly affected by our relationship with and treatment of the Earth. So we're determined to leave this farmstead, and this world, in better shape than we found it.

Fresh from the Garden

Growing 70 percent of our own food organically is one of our biggest investments in sustainability. We didn't harvest a single zucchini our first planting season, but every year since, we have increased our growing know-how and our production.

B&B guests always are served fruits and vegetables from our garden. Our chickens" multicolored eggs are popular in the thriving local barter economy, too.

We plant according to what we enjoy eating, and our gardens look similar to the victory gardens of the 1940s: We have three growing fields that measure 40 by 70 feet, 50 by 82 feet and 48 by 40 feet; in them, in 30 intensively planted raised-bed rows, we grow both fruits and vegetables, from staples such as tomatoes, potatoes and spinach to strawberries and pumpkins. What we don't eat fresh or serve fresh to our guests, we cold store and freeze for off-season use.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print