Jim Fry

Stone Garden Farm & Museum. Richfield, Ohio. Lots of gardens & orchards. Lots of animals, including sheep, milk cows, beef, pigs, rabbits, dogs, chickens, ducks, cats, many border collies. Large Farm School/homeschool, 40 kids. Lots of our own kids. Farm Share once a week for public. Raw milk for public. One of the larger museums/villages in Ohio, in a period 1820 to 1900. Heritage classes, such as soap making, baking, herbs, animal husbandry, fermentation, lots more. Cuyahoga Valley National Park just down the hill from us. Other parks, within minutes, in every direction surrounding us. Cabins and other accommodations available. We have a very full and fairly busy life. A number of folks here now. We don't charge to be here. We are Blessed and like to pass it along. We've had hundreds of wwoof'ers and others over the years. www.stonegardenfarm.com. www.ohiofarmmuseum.com. www.farmschoolohio.com. www.johnbrownohio.com.

Next tour, this coming Saturday, June 13th, 2026. www.stonegardenfarm.com.

1). Looks like rabbit damage.
2). Unlikely they will grow back as original apple.
3). Unlikely to have a good trunk foundation.
And so on.

Time is far more valuable than the tree. The attempt to save a tree that has already failed may be a waste of time. Go out and get a new tree, with good roots and good trunk and good size. And save several years of time. Have apples sooner. Probably end up with a better tree. My experience is that you will regret trying to save money instead of saving time.

I don't know, I've never counted them. Probably at least twenty or so. Maybe thirty. Maybe more. I just know there's at least one in every shop we have.

We have so many people that come here. It's interesting. Some get bit too heck, others the bugs don't bother at all. For us, much of it has to do with how a person smells. Some smells attract mosquitos, some do not. Figure out what works for you, and you will have far less of a problem. ~~You might try eating some garlic, to start.

Ohio has an extremely helpful law. Agritourism. ~Own land, do some farming/gardening, allow others to come on your land for farm activity, few usual governing rules apply to you. "Allowing" people on your land can be as simple as selling eggs to folks who drive in. If you are an Agritourism "farm", most basically, the only rules that get enforced are: Don't build structures withing 20 ft. of the neighbor's line fence. Have an approved septic system. You can otherwise build what you want, do what you want. Ohio Agritourism Law. Look it up. You'll like it. ---Suggestion. Get together with Chris McC and come visit here. We're in Richfield, 1 hour south of Burton, 2 hours north of Columbus. We're one of the oldest intentional communities in the U.S. We do organic/permaculture/biodynamic gardening. And we have one of the largest museums in Ohio. 1820 to 1900.

Writing about the old days sounds fun. And worthwhile. Here's a couple more, ...

Findhorn (sort of the start of it all) N. Scotland. Eileen & Peter Caddy and Dorothy Maclean. 1962. They really got things eco. moving in the U.K. People from all over the world journeyed to learn from them. Read the early books, not so much what has been written more recently. If you really want to understand working with Earth, they are the ones to learn from.

Helen and Scott Nearing got married in 1947, and started their Forest Farm, in Vermont, shortly after. They published their book 'Living the Good Life' in 1954. It became one of the most important books of the 1970's for all us hippies. They are the American organic/perm grandparents of us all.

Raven Rocks, Ohio. 1970. Started out with 19 younger folks. The original intent, (and still is) was to preserve a really beautiful and dramatic eco. landscape. Eventually most of the 1,200 acres will go to permanent protection. They have done some really neat very ecological projects over the years.

Black Bear Ranch, N. Calif. 1968. Really interesting place. My understanding is that it is still (sort of) chugging along. Quite a leftist community in its day.

~~There's another that wasn't really a community. But it functioned like one. Thousands (and thousands) of people from all over the world traveled to Twylah Nitsch's land, and The Wolf Clan Teaching Lodge. Non-family people were always living there, but they mostly came to learn. Twylah was the Granddaughter of the last of The Great Seneca Medicine Men. She knew more than anyone else on the continent of the Old Ways. ~Ancient Traditional Wisdom & Prophesy. She was quite the incredible person.

--One thing about a number of these. They were friends with the Fairies and Faeries, and Big Foot and Little People. There are whole other worlds that most folks don't seem to know about, -or even deny. It's too bad. (It's actually something I've been a bit at odds about, with this group here. There seem to be quite a few (management type) people who somewhat actively oppose recognizing or talking about Nature Spirits and such.) You'd have to be willing to talk/write about such things in order to really understand these communities.  

"Survivors". That's a funny way of putting it. I've never thought of being a survivor. We just keep plugging along. Far as I know, there aren't so many left of those early days. We mostly got old and died off. When I first wrote about this, I should have said there were hundreds of communities, maybe more. Lots and lots anyways. But founders died or sometimes moved on, and communities withered. Or folks changed priorities as they aged, got families, got jobs, got an itch to move. Or changed politics or sometimes religion. And split up. There were some fun places, gone now. I miss 'em.

Anyway, the oldest here is 77 and the youngest is 1 1/2. There's lots of kids, which is either killing the old folks off, or keeping us young. Don't know which. But, having young children does, at least, keep your thinking younger. I almost never talk to anyone about the "old days". Just mostly talk in a language I don't even mostly understand. New words. New ways of thinking. Or doing. Sometimes I'll listen to music, Beatles or Zep, or the Floyd, and the kids will think it's horrible. Shocking sometimes. The best music in the world, ever, and the youngers don't like/appreciate it.

~~~In any case, the point is, .... something about change. Communities are great. Living in community is great. But they change as time goes on. And you really need to pay attention. Or things just don't go on anymore. At one time, for 20+ years or so, we collected truckloads of clothing and food and furniture and even cars and drove them all over everywhere to various Reservations. 70 semi loads or so. At other times, we had the largest organic/perm gardens in N. Ohio. We had a heck of a lot of Farm Share members, and we supplied many health food stores and co-ops. We used to host various gatherings of up to 350 people for the weekend, in Ceremony for Solstice and May Day and such. Now we milk cows and run a very large Farm School/homeschool for kids from all over. And we teach lots of homesteading skills classes. It used to be we got more long-term folks. Now we get many wwoof'ers. And of course we do more Mid-Wife'ing now. Change.

So, I suppose, we have done a lot. We're still here. If someone wants to ask any questions about how to get along with farming, gardening, goof balls living together, living poor, living well off, midwifery, animals, history, old damn tools, writing books, whatever, ask. And I might even feel like talking some more.