Located at 2,100’. 8 miles inland, on a Southwest facing mountain top, we are a noncommercial, off grid farmstead, in Northern Mendocino County, California. Making Art, Music, & Food together for over 30 years, & Homesteading since 1989. We have a small dairy goat herd, chickens for eggs, fruit trees and vines, and a diversified garden that provides year round food production. With a focus on organic, open pollinated crops, intuitive permaculture, and natural processes, our work includes; animal husbandry, cheese making, soil building, seed saving, garden & forest management, building projects, & of course, music & art. Tanya+Joshua+Nature+Animals+Garden+Life= Art & Music. In the Beginning: Growing up in the suburban San Francisco Bay Area, we both had, and fondly recall, early experiences in the surrounding hills and coastal areas. The foothill habitats of the coastal ranges, offered both the intimate experience of untrammeled nature, and, a vista of the of the impending urban sprawl that threatened it. Early memories of the scents and sensations of these forests and meadows imprinted a love of our home region in both of us. We met each other while attending a unique high school- in the waning days of California’s educational excellence, and progressive experimentation. Our alternative school ‘with-in-a-school’ offered all the resources of a well funded district, combined with the freedom and flexibility to design our own education, to meet our individual needs. We both credit any success we claim in life, to this phenomena, as authority questioning, independent thinkers, we surly would have become public school casualties had we been forced to continue our education in the usual way. I credit my early interest in food growing with a small seminar style field trip, Where we met John Jeavons and toured the original research garden of Common Ground on a hill above Palo Alto. Coming of age, we could not hope to find affordable housing in our home town, and so began a slightly miserable life style of wage earning, edge dwelling creativity in the cheap seats of the Peninsula. I had briefly attended Art school in San Francisco, while Tanya trained as a chef. This had turned into working at restaurants, copy shops and cafes, leaving us wondering, how we could possibly ever live our dreams. Eventually desperation lead us to escape. Packing away and selling off our belongings we headed for Mexico, and new horizons, new experiences, inexpensive opportunities, and Montezuma’s revenge. Traveling the length of Mexico by train was a trip to remember- winding slowly from the volcanic heights of Mexico City to Oaxaca in a vintage American Pullman sleeper, was romantic but the whole experience, the heat, the language barrier, stress & illness found us beating a retreat after only a month. http://hermohme.com/reform.htmlhttp://www.johnjeavons.infoshapeimage_3_link_0shapeimage_3_link_1

Life as Art                   

At this point, one may well ask:

‘But, what about the goats?’



It becomes obvious to me that this could take a while. I want to avoid both the blithe, shallow skimming tone of popular profile writing and the tedious, blow by blow, model of Web logging,(I also refuse to use the common vernacular contraction) that has caused anybody with buttons and fingers to consider themselves writers, or worse, designers! It seems clear to me, because of the pressures on my time, that this will be an episodic event. The story slowly emerging, the significance gradually growing, as I portray what I know best: living a life of truth and consequence. Welcome to it.   

  PART 2.       PART 3.       NEXT

Bringing it all together.

Confessions of a neo-Luddite.


This project is a new direction for me. In the past I have been driven to create and “publish” small works of thought and image, but I have assiduously avoided acquiring digital technology. for a number of years I had regular essays published in a small newsprint periodical, ‘Greenfuse’, that continues to be produced using actual cut and paste technology- scissors and glue. It is increasingly difficult to explain my reluctance to embrace this ubiquitous medium, I think, that, in it self, is a partial explanation. Being a fringe observer of the digital revolution, distinctly not an “early adopter”, offers a perspective on this cultural phenomena that may be lost by those enthralled, and enmeshed with, and within it. I will, no doubt, offer more on this subject in the future, but for now, my current task is to redefine the paradigm of “web-site”. I have a web-site, only because a generous friend is offering it as an option to me- just weeks after acquiring my first, second hand, (I’m told nearly archaic) computer. I have begun teaching myself how to operate it as a tool that serves my need to create, and my desire to share my observations, and experiences with others. I plan to maintain an honest perspective, free of hype, & hope that I can build an offering of interest in a way that maintains my outlier status, yet offers material of interest to those seeking inspiration and information from a world of nature, culture, & wonder, from the ragged edge of civilization.

©2012 Joshua Golden/ Partners in time