Farm Story

When I took my inaugural gardening class in Los Angeles, my teacher posed a riddle to start the class: What is the first thing you should plant in your garden? I’m not sure why, but multiple people guessed tomatoes. There were many other fruits and veggies that were yelled out popcorn-style in response. None of us guessed the correct answer, though: A chair. He was quite pleased when no one guessed it and even more so at the collective sound of understanding that rolled through a beat later. This is an important lesson for any new activity integrated with the Earth. The most important thing is to observe before you implement or change something. 

Our backyard farm started in this way, although we had a hammock, not a chair. When the idea for the farm was birthed, I was planting chairs in multiple areas of my life. Work, family, personal identity, creative pursuits, and effects of society/culture; I was investigating what it meant to live in alignment with my values. Long story short, it motivated me to cultivate community so we could build more resilience and connection in our lives. Long story medium: I quit my space engineering job, took a permaculture design course, and started working to redesign our home in a way that was more integrated with the Earth. While studying what design features make a home “resilient” (think: water reuse, passive heating/cooling, energy redundancy), I realized that the most resilient thing we could ever do as people is live in a connected community with other people. 

As a family, we wanted to have something that we could offer to our neighborhood and community, something special that would help bring us together more. So, we started digging. The farm was built entirely by hand, carved from a steep hillside shaded by 6 Eucalyptus trees and a Peruvian Pepper tree. We were told no other plants would grow under these invasive trees and that there wasn’t enough sunlight to grow food, but we did it anyway… just in case. This back hillside is now home to countless thriving native plants, blackberry and passionfruit vines, a beautiful lemon tree adopted from one of our neighbors, and about 350 square feet of farm space.

There are also a lot of chairs.