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.
ONE FARM / FIVE LIVING PRACTICES
Biodynamics
We approach the farm as a living whole—building fertility, attending to rhythm, and developing the kind of relationship that lets us work consensually within nature.
Animal Agriculture
Icelandic sheep and honeybees shape the farm alongside us. They feed the soil, open niches for new life, and provide food and fiber as companions in the work.
Native Orcharding
We cultivate native fruit and nut trees as enduring food systems—building orchards that belong to this place and become richer, more resilient habitats over time.
Woodland Medicinals
Beneath the canopy, we tend plants such as blue cohosh, goldenseal, and American ginseng—learning how careful cultivation can support both medicine and woodland ecology.
Working with Water
We watch where water wants to move, then use check dams, earthworks, and living systems to slow it, spread it, and welcome it back into the ground.
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FROM DARK HOLLOW RIGHT NOW
What the season is offering.
A few things currently available from the plants, animals, and work of the farm.
No goods match that search or view.
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?
