Our Story

It all started when…

we realized that we couldn’t restore healthy ecosystems on the land without integrating ourselves and our community fully into the functioning of those ecosystems. It was a flash of insight gained when Peter was deep into researching the history and ecology of our native Oak Savanna ecosystems. Native Americans had been managing the landscape specifically for Oak Savannas for millennia - a sensible thing to do considering these savannas produce a much higher volume of food - fruit, nuts, and meat - than an unmanaged native forest. Frustrated with modern ecosystem restoration techniques that focus more on chemical warfare with so called “invasive species” rather than the establishment of a functional ecosystem context, Peter realized that the only way to truly restore functioning oak savanna ecosystems, was for human beings to integrate themselves within those ecosystems, as keystone species - just as Indigenous Americans had - and procure their food directly from those ecosystems. In our modern market economy, the only way we could figure out how to afford the luxury of personal ecological integration was through the creation of a farm - to produce and sell the fruits of our ecosystems. And Mastodon Valley Farm was born.