Wayback Farm has been a traditional homestead with all-natural, biodynamic practices since 1981. We work towards fitting into and onto our finite beautiful blue planet and reversing  carbon dioxide climate change on our 110 acres of fields, gardens, and preserved wild forests. Come study rural living and being at peace with our green growing earth.  Start up now with greenhouses, seedlings, and spring woodlot work. Wayback is in Midcoast Maine, seven miles west of Belfast, which is right on beautiful Penobscot Bay - the ocean!  Come practice sustainable living, permaculture, beyond organic gardening with a base in biodynamics, and raise all natural livestock.  We have room for another intern for the 2013 growing season.  We are also looking for longer-term serious interns for this growing season through next winter, as well as enthusiastic spring and summer working visitors. Learn how to stack a good compost pile and become food secure!

Over the years, over 150 interns, visitors and year-long interns have lived here or had working visits, including high school and college students fulfilling requirements for hands-on practical experience. The farm has one longer-term, rustic, off-grid intern log cabin with a complete kitchen and a couple smaller, more basic cabins for short-term stays.  The farm and buildings are well developed and our systems functioning robustly.

The farm includes woodland, hay fields and pasture, two jersey milk cows, pasture feeder pigs, chickens, a large solar greenhouse, an apple orchard, cider press, barn, cabins, and a processing summer kitchen. There are field crops for grains, beans, and roots, mixed vegetables (annual and perennial), and a small household herb garden (culinary and medicinal).  The gardens are for as complete as possible home-grown food as well as larger scale food systems, such as grain and fodder production.  There is a root cellar for storing crops such as apples, beets, onions, carrots, potatoes and rutabagas. We completed the ice house this spring and have cut ice from the farm pond for our dairy cooling.

We use small tractors plus human-powered and hand tools. The farm is off the grid and we use a few small old-fashioned solar panels for our home.  This means a simpler, more down-to-the-basics style of living.  Please feel free to ask us more about this.  Last fall we were joined by two Jersey cows Elja and Lena.  We also currently have laying hens.  Other animals include beef critters, meat birds, and pigs.  Vegans may find this difficult.  We are very excited to be running the new sawmill this summer and fall and finishing the processing barn (cider mill, grain mill, seed cleaners, as well as a loft for storing planting and harvesting tools).  Interns should expect to participate in carpentry and farm building projects. This spring Paul is installing the wood-fired radiant heat in the summer kitchen and finishing up the ice house in the basement. Other projects include a brick chimney and fireplace for the bake oven/smokehouse. This is an excellent opportunity to become proficient with mortar and bricks. Local Maine homesteaders/ farmers/ craftspersons could even do this project as a workshop. 

This is our thirty-second anniversary of apprentices and starting the Wayback Farm. Apprentices can expect to become skilled at all aspects of gardening from starting seeds to transplanting, tending, weeding, harvesting, wildcrafting, helping with our small household herb garden, maple syruping in March, seasonal orchard care, and animal husbandry.  Other projects include green and homestead building projects (especially finishing our cider mill-grain barn), woodlot management (for firewood and lumber), and using the sawmill for homestead buildings and systems, such as a new equipment shed.  Lots of projects involving hands-on alternative systems, carpentry and mason training, building with farm lumber and earth materials. Paul is a master carpenter and mason and has thirty-plus years’ experience building and farming.