FOREST FARMING BY THE STARS
Dark Hollow
A biodynamic farmstead along the Susquehanna, where discovery and the capacity to discover grow side by side.
The Work
This is where the ideas become tangible.
FIELD NOTES FROM THE FARM
It’s one thing to ask how people might live better with the natural world. It’s another thing to test what’s possible. Curating tree crops, calling in ruminants, housing bees, or re-installing the missing pieces that have disappeared from the landscape over time. All while enjoying useful, nurturing gifts from the land.
That is the work at Dark Hollow. It creates a place to try things, watch what happens, learn from mistakes, and share what comes from the practice.
Biodynamics
Working from the realm of life, crafting humus, building an intuition for rhythms and chaos. Developing the kind of relationship that allows us to see the farm as a living whole and work consensually within nature.
Agroforestry
Growing food among trees, grazing animals in woodland, planting perennials, and setting the stage for biodiversity and resilience.
Animals & Bees
Icelandic sheep and honeybees help shape the farm. They feed the soil, open niches for new things to emerge, provide food and fiber, and work as companions to co-author the land.
Native Foods & Medicine
Spicebush, sassafras, sumac, pawpaw, goldenseal, cohosh, mushrooms, and other useful plants of the woodland.
Making & Measuring
Wool, honey, spices, teas, biodynamic preparations, chromatography, experiments, handwork, and simple ways of looking more closely.
The Land
Water, erosion, soil, habitat, trees, and the slow work of helping a place experience the human traces it needs to become more alive.
AN IDEA AT THE CENTER OF DARK HOLLOW
Leave a Trace
A trace will be left. The question is whether it takes life away or creates the conditions for life to flourish.
A planted tree is a trace. So is a check dam. Compost. A sheep path. A building. A meal. A tool. A child learning the name of a plant. A woodland changed so that it can feed people while still being a woodland.
The best human relationship with nature may not be simply to disappear. The deeper challenge is learning how to belong here, and how a human presence might leave something richer behind.
Leave a trace. Not a scar… but a gift.
PRACTICE PARTICIPATION
Ideas blossom when you interact through the sensory world. Holding and beholding, becoming a part of the breath that fills your nose, and through intricate work.
Workshops
We hold occasional classes and gatherings around biodynamics, grafting, native foods, woodland cultivation, fiber, farm skills, and learning by doing.
Goods
Honey, wool, preparations, spices, medicinal plants, and other useful things that come from the work of the farm.
Writing
Stories and essays about nature, farming, technology, Anthroposophy, community, and the question underneath it all: what kind of life gives meaning?