SONDER | noun
The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.
We’re in it for the shared stories and the communal dinners. The pigs raised on pasture around the corner. Trading soap bars for sourdough loaves. Homegrown salad. Preserving the flavors of summer berries for a spread on winter toast. For our neighbors and our community. For the sense of being a part of something great, and the hard work necessary to live a life worth living.
this is what ‘farmstead’ means to us.
nourishing our community with fresh produce + herbal medicine
meet your farmer, Em
how it began
Em moved out West in 2014, chasing big mountains and rivers and a more temperate climate than the Maine coast she grew up on. After working many years in food service, she started to volunteer through WWOOF in 2018 at Apricot Lane Farms in California.
After a winter volunteering, she moved back to Oregon to begin an internship program with Rogue Farm Corps at Mahonia Gardens in Sisters, Oregon in the spring of 2019. Over the next few years, Em would continue to work this acre of mixed veggies and herbal medicine, from intern to employee.
After three years of studying and learning the ways of growing in the high-desert, she and her partner moved to Bellingham.
Sonder Farmstead was born out of a dream for organically grown produce and herbal soaps. Em began farming at Cloud Mountain Farm Center’s incubator land in the spring of 2021 and after two seasons, has moved the farm to the South Fork Valley, in Acme, where she lives with her partner in their tiny house.
HOW WE FARM
Sonder Farmstead is an off-grid, solar-powered, half-acre market garden. We are well-fed and operate by the world of hand powered tools. The farm is tractor free, focusing on soil health, crop rotation and biodiversity. We grow over thirty varieties of veggies and sell at our local farmer’s markets, a few restaurants, and offer a season-long CSA.
We are officially Certified Naturally Grown! This is a really rad way to let the folks buying our produce know that we’re serious about growing to organic standards. Our seeds and inputs are certified organic, and we don’t use any sprays or synthetic chemicals. We apply these same principles to the makings in our apothecary.
Growing food and making organic goods for our community is what it’s all about.
