49 Happy Healthy M in Biocultural Diversity Paradise/Southern Appalachia looking for a lovely lady

I’ve got a nice homestead/microvillage going here. Looking for a woman who really wants to get away from it all and live off the land. I’m 49 with a young heart and an old soul. I’m a tall feller (6’5’’) and athletic. I take care of myself with a simple land-based diet and a tea practice supplemented by medicinal herbs off the land. I haven’t been to a doctor in a decade. I live on 27 acres adjoining an 18000 acre National Forest in the southern Appalachian mountains of Western North Carolina. I have a 100-tree fruit orchard that consists mainly of Appalachian heirloom apples (doing a ton of canning right now!) with a bunch of other fun fruits too and a vegetable seedbank with 2000 varieties. The land also supports an 80-tree tea garden (Camellia sinensis) and a diverse medicinal herb garden with 20 acres of glorious woods and even some old-growth trees. 18 springs and three creeks. A house and a piney-hut and a nice red barn. Little tractor. Full set-up.
 
Interests & background: gardening; acoustic roots guitar fingerpickin; orcharding; old-time country values; foraging; Appalachian and Cherokee Traditional Knowledge; music: old-time, country, blues, bluegrass, Irish, ’folk’, some reggae & rock-n-roll, gospel, Chinese guqin, much traditional & Indigenous music; food preservation; off-grid; medicinal herbs; writing; retired professor; poetry; full-time homesteader; cooking; hiking; river hanging out; art; daoism; spirituality; simplicity; chop wood, carry water; quiescence; meditation; loving Jesus (in a personal way); heavy drinking or drugs not-so-much-to-none; respect for women and the diversity of cultures; 'country gentleman’; southerner who has been around the world; 'old-stock American’--all European ancestors arrived here between 1628-1752 with a few minor Native American lines–Irish, Scots-Irish, Swiss-German, English, Cherokee; walking the path day-by-day

I am an ethnobotanist, anthropologist, agroecologist, poet, musician, and teacher. I love to hike and garden and cook and ferment and write and play guitar and lots of fun stuff. I have multiple potential capacities for making a living off-the-land and a vacant house that has historically been lived in by herbalists and orchardists! We can start a conversation. I’m open to visits and even folks who might want to live and study here without a romantic component as well (I was a professor for 11 years and have a PhD in ethnobotany). I take interns sometimes if it’s the right fit or just folks who want to learn more about plants and land-based living.

jrveteto@gmail.com

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I also should mention that I have a voluminous library that fills up half of the herbalist house and flows into the barn. Probably one of the better ethnobotanical libraries in southern Appalachia. Some of the sections include botany, agroecology, ecological anthropology, cultural anthropology, agroforestry, food forests, agrobiodiversity, Chinese medicine, Daoism, Western herbalism, mycology, Appalachian Studies, Cherokee Studies, Native American, environmental studies, anarchism, poetry, science fiction, agricultural anthropology, foraging, orcharding, sustainable agriculture/agroecology, carpentry, earth skills, alternative power and water systems, art, cooking, fermentation, southern foodways, animal husbandry, and so forth. All this and I'm not even attached to books anymore after 30 years of collecting :)

I'm listing a lot of the structural features of my farm and my engagement in subsistence smallholder gardening-foraging because I figure folks on this thread are going to be interesting in such things, as am I. But I'm also a highly engaged spiritual person. I'm a Daoist who has been significantly influenced by many decades of working with Cherokee and Hopi elders. I really hope to connect with a woman who is spiritual and creative and desiring to get closer to the land. Cheers!