Dennis Hillier

Thank you for the kind words and encouragement!

We are looking to establish a good foundation for a long term relationship, Sarah has long expressed an interest in having a woman join us as a wife to both of us. Looking for someone that is willing to work on having a good balance between work and play as well as working together to sustain ourselves.

Hey there fellow permaculture enthusiasts, spring is finally here and worn out already as there’s lots to do. We live in rural Vermont and steadily working towards our goals with our small homestead, before we met I had grown and sold trees as a hobby and now we have evolved a bit in our journey and would like to build a strong foundation with a woman of a similar mindset.
Sarah has had a curiosity and interest in having a non traditional approach to a relationship, we are fairly private people but an alternative lifestyle appeals to us both.
A little about what we are looking for in a person, we value honesty and good communication skills as both of us come from difficult pasts and we work hard on our personal development and try to be positive. As we get older we would value someone that likes to share the load and have someone to lean on when life throws you a curveball. Working together on projects would be something that you enjoy and learning together and growing together would be important to you. You would find it easy to love those that acknowledge our imperfections and we will look past yours as well. Raising animals and growing vegetables, preserving our food and making our own medicine would be something that you’re interested in doing.
We have an old farmhouse on a small piece of land and generate some income from our native plant nursery. Working towards goals of producing herbal teas, salves and establishing an internet presence are on our to do list and we are actively working towards making this a reality.
We are open to age ranges and all we ask is for honesty and a desire to live a healthy lifestyle while engaging in a long term relationship, a take charge woman that is open minded would be a good fit. We are an alcohol free household but 420 friendly within reason, Oh and please have the ability to relocate if we have a good vibe together and decide to take that step, take care.

Hi Anne, we advertise on Facebook marketplace, Craigslist and get referrals from a few of our regular customers. We find the biggest challenges to be lack of consistency and trying to prepare what we need to grow a couple years in advance. We have done a little shipping to test the waters and we get a handful of requests usually weekly, trying to have more of a presence online seems logical but it’s a time commitment and outside of our scope of what we want for our business. We had one bad experience with an order being lost by USPS and another severe delay resulting in damage to the plants and honestly it wasn’t something we wanted to deal with on a regular basis.

I think if someone was trying to keep a small footprint with Jerusalem artichokes or had limited growing area they could be container grown. I know that digging some up in the fall and putting them in a refrigerator they keep for a week but for our needs we are targeting 500 lbs of good storable root vegetables for the winter so we are growing more beets and turnips based on their keeping ability

I feed leaves, stalks and tubers in the spring and then mostly leaves during the summer on a daily basis. We feed tubers in the fall but haven’t had good luck storing them so we feed them until the ground freezes

For me personally I think the colony setting made me feel better than having them in cages but from a safety and handling standpoint it’s not ideal, I think the accidental breeding is also a negative factor that results in to many losses and having to deal with more rabbits than intended or needed

The Jerusalem artichoke will spread about 2-3’ in diameter per year in good fertile soil. I have mixed feelings about planting it as it started out in a corner of the big garden with twenty tubers and six years later it’s gotten out of control and requires a lot of effort to manage it. The rabbits absolutely love all parts of the plant and it’s pretty easy to pull up or cut a big amount every morning. It doesn’t store very well so we use it strictly during the growing season.

We live in Vermont and we have associated with twisted tree farm and edible acres in the early years of creating a small home based nursery. I think if you’re open to using the internet and social media with this type of business then there’s potential. I started this before I met my wife and probably have sold a thousand trees and lots of native plants, investing in infrastructure along the way. Honestly I have kinda wanted to quit a couple times and then kept trying, we love it but we don’t have a website and a shipping system in place and rely on local customers. It’s sometimes difficult to work very hard for five months and only see $1300 in the bank after expenses with two of us working on this. Some years we do alright and other times we end up donating plants and not being very profitable. We’re going to try the farmers market route probably and get set up to take digital payments, one of the reasons we haven’t gotten into the internet realm is we want to help others with small properties be self sustainable but it’s not very profitable for the time involved.