our Modern Homestead
Our own homestead is a place for us to play, to build, to learn, to grow, a place where we dream up ideas and t hen get to create them. Things look wildly different here from year to year, as we continue to build and to garden, it is exciting, our life’s work.
Our site is a steep northeast slope, and in the beginning there was no level ground, and it was entirely wooded with scrubby growth, brambles and the like. Over the years we have been terracing the hillside to create various level areas for growing and gathering as well as utilizing the slope for additional planting areas. All of our walls and staircases are made with recycled granite and they wind and curve, flowing through the landscape and connecting various pieces of exposed ledge. Our front potager garden features a brick patio area that wraps around the side of the house connecting the front and back garden. We exposed and cut down the ledge to make this essential passage from front to back. The front potager is a lovely space to sit in the garden. A yew hedge frames in this space, over time it will create a “walled” garden. Probably our most iconic feature is our field stone root cellar in our back family garden, it combines both function and form and is central to the design of our family space. Our front terracing has come along way in the last year, a series of curving walls with stairs through them, creating a hillside meadow garden leading up to our fruit and veg garden.
Above video: Early Fall 2020.
Below Photos: Late Summer 2021 & Early June 2023
