Small Axe Farm’s inception began in 1999 when Heidi Choate and Evan Perkins were sitting together as a young couple, discussing how they wanted to live in this world. They decided that night they wanted to live close to the land in a self-reliant lifestyle, true to their values around combating climate change. That was the true beginning of their homesteading and then farming. From that point on, even though they were living in apartments with little money and didn’t own land, they were already becoming the people they aspired to be, learning skills, gardening wherever they could, and taking steps toward the life they wanted.  After saving up and buying raw, steep land and building a small homestead, they started farming commercially in 2009. They have been farming for 15 years now and have worked hard to create a farm and a life that fulfills them. The plan is to continue farming in the future, but they may have to adjust as they go. The primary goal is to live a good life close to the land.   

Small Axe Farm is in Barnet, VT, on one acre of no-till, off-grid land and is a certified organic, certified Real Organic farm. The farm sits high on a hill, with an average 15 percent grade. The main driver in living this way and farming was a response to the desire to do something about human-caused climate change and to help be a model for charting a better course for society.  

“Although we built our farm to do what we could to mitigate climate change, we also built our farm to weather the extreme climate change we knew was coming. Early on, we saw our society’s unwillingness to deal with this issue effectively. Because of that, we have designed our regenerative farming system to deal with the increasing frequency of droughts and floods that have been occurring at greater rates every decade. This same design also allows our family to make a living from the land. We couldn’t just design a farm that maximized profits without considering the changing climate. We have managed to create a profitable farm that has been able to weather four major rainfall and flooding events in the last 14 years and several spells of historically unusual drought as well.” 

 No-till farming on a hillside without using large equipment means they need to put in a little extra work daily. Still, that additional work allows them to have a resilient system that is much more able to manage the ups and downs of climate change and the nation’s turbulent economy. Check out their website for more details about Small Axe Farm’s regenerative farming practices. 

“We love working with nature and meaningfully contributing to our community and our local economy through what we buy and what we sell. We live a life with the freedoms that one can only attain through personal responsibility.” 

Heidi and Evan’s guiding philosophy is to farm in concert with nature. They try to disturb the natural world around them as little as possible with their farming techniques. Along with keeping soil disturbance to a minimum, they allow big, wild pastures to grow around their fields. The forest surrounding the farm fields is being managed with an emphasis on deep forest habitats and a mixed-age, mixed-forest habitat, with a goal of climate resiliency.