S&S Homestead Farm

S&S Homestead Farm is a 50-acre family farm on Lopez Island, Washington, where we raise our own food, and food for others, in accordance with biodynamic processes. Our farm is a place where plants, animals, and people sustain each other. The farm’s closed system maintains a healthy environment and uses minimal resources from outside the farm.

We believe that:

• Everyone should be able to eat healthy foods produced on local farms.
• Our environment can be strengthened by sound agricultural practices.
• People should be aware of how and where the food they put into their bodies is raised.
• Young people should learn to produce food and live sustainably.

Through the S&S Center for Sustainable Agriculture, the farm serves as a classroom, training ground, and resource for educational programs, research, and public events for K-12 and college students, the local community, farmers, and educators. The farm is a teaching and mentoring site for interns and apprentices in the North American Biodynamic Apprenticeship Program. Three of them live onsite at a time.

The farm provides the community with a source of naturally grown meat and produce, as well as eggs, bread, and cheese sold through its 15-member whole-diet CSA. A newly redesigned processing kitchen will be licensed as a micro-dairy for making cheese. An outdoor cob oven is used for baking long-fermented sourdough rye bread made from the farm’s own grain.

Henning Sehmsdorf, who established the farm with his wife in 1970, is adjunct professor with Washington State University’s Center For Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resources. He continues to experiment with sustainability at the farm, most recently with a water catchment system and a 20,000 KW solar system that supplies all the electric energy needed on the farm. Since 2012, he has been a mentor farmer in the apprenticeship program offered by the Biodynamic Farming Association.

Ready for a healthier way to cooking and eating? Bounty from the Box: The CSA Farm Cookbook has you covered.