Ready willing and able to share what I've learned in 50 years of organic gardening and farming, body not so much any more. Camping is free for anybody (public space), meals can be on your own or shared if you pitch in toward groceries. I am working only part-time and financing this project from meager funds so please do NOT expect paid employment. I do offer access to my pretty-phenomenal library and brain to be picked, expect one hour of work by my side during instruction and one hour of work on your own after each hour of instruction to demonstrate that you have mastered a lesson. Short and long-term visits equally welcomed but no freeloaders.

I am very open to the idea of creating a formal academic curriculum and/or working with you to develop a SARE or other grant proposal for your own pet project. I'm also a professional technical writer with 25 years of experience in those areas.  And a Cornell Cooperative Extension Master Gardener, former VP of the Northeast Organic Farming ssociation of New York, Inc. (and former member of their organic farm certification board), Usui Reiki Master, Re-Evaluation Co-Counselor, and Trainer of Trainers in Creative Conflict Resolution. I operated my own 20-acre organic farm for fourteen years and lost it to foreclosure in the early days of the economic spiral.

Caution: there is some real work here. We are converting a 3-acre site that's been in sod for 40 years into a productive organic garden just up the road from an EPA Brownfields site at an agricultural chemical factory (our site has been tested and is safe).

Starting an "urban community garden" in a rural space is its own adventure and probably worthy of a Master's thesis in sociology or business. I would consider sharing my home with the right long-term visitor working on something like that, but not with short-term visitors.

The area is full of summer recreational possibilities. Middleport is on the Erie Canal, near Lake Ontario and the Iroquois National Flyway Wildlife Refuge. It is about 40 miles from Niagara Falls, Buffalo, and Rochester.

Right now we have a donated three acres, lots of plants in pots because the farmer's tractor wasn't big enough to flip the sod last spring, a truckload of compost and more to come, about $200-worth of seeds (most of which can still be planted for a fall crop), a committed heavy gardener/light farmer, two volunteer farmers whose tractors are horsepower-challenged, and a town full of people who don't know yet that we're here.

Many other farms, orchards, and a large Amish community are in the neighborhood. Opportunities with neighbors to work with other types of farms and livestock.

From tiny acorns...