About Earthworks Farm

Welcome to Earthworks Farm! My name is Rachel Shaw, I have two children, and a lovely husband. This is our adventure. It is an adventure about food, about home, and about how the two things are the same. 37 days ago, we moved from a lovely apartment in the suburbs of Boston, to a passive solar house with 6 acres on the side of a mountain in Hampden County. It's been a big change, and yet it feels right deep down in my bones. So far, most of our time has been about finishing the house (which certainly wasn't before we moved in). But our ultimate goal is to grow most of our own food, while treating our home, our land, and our animals with respect and kindness. We view ourselves as stewards here, and wish to leave this land richer and healthier than when we found it. I have plans for gardens; vegetables, culinary herbs, medicinal herbs, and dyestuffs. I have plans for animals; chickens, ducks, goats, sheep. I am full of big dreams - days of cheese and bread making and evenings of spinning wool from my own sheep, winters filled with the smell of wood smoke and stock bubbling on the stove, and summers filled with the taste of tomatoes and rows of preserved fruits and vegetables. Some of these things are already a part of our lives, and some are not. Like all dreams and plans, there may be little resemblance to reality, but we will allow our lives to grow in this place. We will work with the earth, and not just on it. This is a place for dreams, those which have become reality, and those which have not yet come to fruition.