In My Backyard

Homesteading is so Yesterday. And Tomorrow.

by Carl Frankel and photographs by Kelly Merchant, April 27, 2010

Sometimes being a food snob changes everything.

Since buying their three-acre Stone Ridge property 11 years ago, visual artists Allyson Levy and Scott Serrano have turned it into an oasis worthy of a photo spread in Horticulture magazine. They’ve planted a host of fruit trees and other edibles, including exotics like ginseng and Siberian kiwi. They’ve put in a cranberry bog, a lotus garden, and even (cue the music from Little Shop of Horrors) a bog for carnivorous plants. They tap their maple trees and raise chickens. They make teas and soda from sassafras and wintergreen and forage throughout the seasons for ramps, wild asparagus, berries, and more.

Tired just thinking about it? Then you’re not Levy or Serrano. They recently purchased eight acres across the road with the goal of planting a diversity of nut trees there. Pecans, almonds, Korean pine.

So what’s with the two artists? Are they, like the trees they’re planting, nuts? No. There’s a fine line between passion and compulsion, and Levy and Serrano are treading it with palpable delight. This isn’t a hobby they’re pursuing, and it’s not a shallow and disposable “lifestyle,” either. What Levy and Serrano are doing runs deep. “Sometimes this seems overwhelming,” says Serrano. “But when you’re really passionate about something, as we are about our land, it doesn’t feel like work.”

It was their palates, of all things, that launched them on this way of life. “We wanted what we couldn’t find in stores,” says Serrano. “Blackberries, for instance. When blackberries are ripe, they start to disintegrate. That’s when they’re supposed to be eaten. You can’t get ripe blackberries in stores.”

Now it’s not just homegrown blackberries these self-described food snobs enjoy. They have a cornucopia of straight-from-the-garden delights to savor—and their friends do, too. “I recently brought some of our Georgia Belle peaches to a dinner party,” recounts Serrano. “People couldn’t believe how good they tasted. Everyone there wanted to buy the tree.”

Levy and Serrano are part of a small but growing contingent of people who are discovering the joys of living off their land. Whatever you call it—“homesteading,” “pursuing economic self-reliance,” or simply “gardening a whole heckuva lot”—collectively they are blazing a trail for the many people who sense that their more conventional lives are out of whack and yearn for a more grounded and environmentally sustainable way of life.

There’s a basic precept at work here: If you want to lead a more grounded life, try living closer to the ground.