A farm and education center featuring programs in off the grid living, farming for year round eating, market gardening, natural building, homesteading skills, primitive skills, community living, and more.
The view from the farm.
MISSION STATEMENT
The purpose of the Mt. Defiance Forest Farm Education Programs is to provide people with the skills to provide their basic needs so that they are empowered to make thier own choices about the lives they live. It is to encourage and support people in living an integrated human life- integrated with the land around us, integrated with each other in community, integrated with our own bodies and spirits. To meet these ends it provides a broad spectrum of skills, incorporating organic farming and permaculture, natural building, homestead skills, ancient lifeskills, and modern alternative technologies, and more...
WHY?
Over the past century, American life has become increasingly fast paced. Many people feel trapped into working demanding hours at jobs they don’t feel passionate about to support a lifestyle of accumulating material possessions they don’t need. Most messages we receive from parents, teachers, employers, etc, reinforce the idea that this is the only way of going about things. This belief has led to an increasingly unhappy and medicated society as well as wide spread environmental destruction.
The purpose of the “Skills for Real Living” apprenticeship program is to show an alternative to this lifestyle.
It is designed to empower people to make their own choices by giving them a wide range of skills to meet their basic needs with less dependence on “modern society”.
It does not preach one particular ethic, but rather integrates primitive skills, organic farming and homesteading skills, and modern alternative technologies. It is about learning how to live and work together, empowering ourselves and our communities.
Throughout the course of the program, apprentices will live and work together on an off the grid farm community outside of Hood River, Oregon. Together we will grow an abundant organic garden, learn various techniques to preserve the produce so we can enjoy it year round, run a market garden and CSA, learn natural building techniques through building a light straw clay building and working with cob, learn and practice various primitive skills like hide tanning and willow basketry, and much more!