Down on the Family Farm

A city boy explains the enduring appeal of his sister’s Maine homestead.

“You’re obviously playing the long game,” I tell my brother-in-law, Peter, after we spend an hour strolling around what he and my sister, Rebekah, consider their “forest farm”: a third of an acre of southern Maine woodland on which they’ve planted chestnuts, hazelnuts, black walnuts, and the berry bushes that love to grow in their shade.

Peter smiles. “Well,” he replies, “someone once said, ‘If I knew I’d die tomorrow, I’d plant a tree today.’”

This corner of the farm—affectionately called “the savannah”—is the latest addition to their North Berwick homestead. It’s all part of a life they’ve dedicated to growing food: not for any sort of retail market, but as a way of sustaining themselves, of building a livelihood from the ground up. It’s a far cry from my decidedly more urban existence, busy with a downtown desk job as food editor of the Washington Post, with restaurant tasting menus and yoga classes. As a journalist, I’ve spent many years getting closer and closer to the source of my sustenance, but my sister takes it to a level that has both intimidated and fascinated me. A few years ago, when work and personal stresses (plus a book contract) had me longing for a retreat, the first place I thought of was the homestead, and I spent a year there learning as much as I could about how they do what they do, and why.

Ever since I started visiting them about 15 years ago, urban friends have asked me to define “homesteading.” It’s tempting to call it the act of growing your own food, but that doesn’t exactly do it justice. “The farmer grows for what sells and must make a living doing it,” Peter says. “The homesteader grows for what the family wants and needs and how they want that to happen.” It’s about frugality; about a close, respectful connection to the land; about using sometimes-limited resources in a thoughtful way. It’s the antithesis of one-click Amazon shopping, something I engage in just about every week.

But homesteading isn’t about strict self-sufficiency. As Peter points out, why try to do everything yourself when your neighbor is happy to trade his fresh milk for your eggs? When I visited Peter and Rebekah for a week last summer, the first thing I noticed when we pulled onto their road was a huge sign that read, “Leaves wanted.” And sure enough, neighbors were soon dropping off bags of what became a rich mulch for the garden. It’s about interdependence, not independence.

Peter

Peter, now 69, bought his five acres for $1,500 in 1976, a little more than a decade after he’d lived for two months with back-to-the-land gurus Helen and Scott Nearing. With a background in construction, he went on to work for many years as a labor activist and writer; in his spare time, he cleared the land and built all the structures himself. When Rebekah, 63, first joined Peter in Maine, the main house was about the size of a trailer, but they expanded it to about 1,200 square feet, brought the garden up to a quarter-acre, and built more sheds, a cold house, even a yoga studio, all powered by solar panels.

My year with them was transformative: It made me much less likely to shy away from physical labor. It taught me the therapeutic value of what I call “mono-tasking”: taking time to immerse myself in one activity rather than toggling among email, Facebook, and the like. It made me into a gardener, too: Upon my return I sold my condo, bought a townhouse farther from downtown, and transformed my 150-square-foot front yard into an abundant source of food. (My first summer harvest included 30 pounds of cucumbers, 50 pounds of tomatoes, and more chile peppers than I could count.)

I continue to be inspired every time I visit. This last time, the two beamed with pride as they pointed out the beach-plum bushes, the persimmons, the native chestnuts. It looked supremely organized into a grid, each tree encircled by logs that will feed the soil and the tree’s growing roots as they decompose. They’re watering it all generously, just once a week, but after a year or two they’ll step back and let nature take its course.

At one spot in the heart of the savannah, Rebekah took a seat on a stump that Peter had left in place—and on which he had carved a simple back. “We call it the throne,” she said. She looked up and around and let out a sigh, and I knew exactly what she saw, because if I squinted I could start to see it, too. She was envisioning tomorrow, and next year, and the next decade, and the next century, each year richer and lusher than the one before as the trees grew at different rates and as the grid gave way to nature’s gorgeous randomness. She saw a canopy of greens and browns and reds shading a forest, sun-dappled and scattered with leaves and moss and twigs, brimming over with food, forever.