Twisted Roots Farm

We are a small off grid farm located in a rural area of Cape Breton Nova Scotia and we are looking for volunteers who want to learn and participate in helping us establish an educational permaculture demonstration site. The property is situated on 74 acres with a brook that runs year round and offers amazing opportunities for nature immersion and connection. We eat foods directly from the farm and practice low impact organic farming and homesteading.

Join us this summer for a unique opportunity to tent in the woods, prepare a meal in our outdoor kitchen space, meditate by a babbling brook and walk with goats on one of our many forest trails.

We have many exciting opportunities to experience off-grid living, permaculture design, wood working, soap making, gardening, animal care, goat walks in the woods, and so much more! Perspective volunteers will experience variable weather conditions that exist in Cape Breton, and living off-grid offers volunteers a true challenge of what it takes to live this way. It requires true grit, a little mud, determination, and stepping out of your comfort zone, however the rewards for that intimate connection with food and knowing what we are made of gives us so much in return. Our goal is to work with you, learn with you, share meals, and celebrate a hard days' work as we grow food for the community and develop this human-scale permaculture farm. Our ideal intake day for volunteers is every Tuesday, with a day off on Monday, and the date of departure on the following Tuesday. For those staying longer than a week, days off will be on Monday and Tuesday, however we are flexible with arrival dates and times for those with different travel days. Please message us for avaialblity. This schedule works the best for us as our farm stand and studio are open on the weekends during the summer months and we are therefore not able to welcome new volunteers on those days. It also provides more learning opportunities for volunteers leading up to the busy weekend time. During this lead up to the weekend, volunteers will be engaged in all of our farming activities and projects. On the weekend volunteers will be involved in all the aspects of our interaction with the community at our studio, farm stand and any workshops or educational programs we may be offering at the time of your stay. The volunteer exchange is 20 to 25 hours per week. We typically work in the mornings with a shared lunch and volunteers then have the afternoons off. Weekends are more fluid in hours depending on what is required for interaction with the public. We end our week on Sunday evening with a shared meal and evening gathering to wrap up the work week. Our minimum hosting time is 1 week on this schedule, with 2 weeks being an ideal time to really learn all that we offer here at the farm. We also welcome longer stays, however, we like to have a more in-depth conversation for those considering stays longer than 2 weeks. These extended stays can be an amazing opportunity for more focused learning and truly experiencing off-grid, self reliant living. Our 2023 projects include: - building infrastructure (goat barn, covered tent platforms, outdoor kitchen) - bandsaw mill operation - wood creations (raised beds, cutting boards) - seeding, transplanting, preparing garden beds - soap and candle making - goat walks in the woods In 2017, following our dream of living in deep connection to our food and the Wild, we found ourselves stepping into the role of stewards of an incredible piece of land on the East Coast of Canada. This was a long way away from our roots in British Columbia, yet one of the few places in Canada that was affordable. Our farm is located on the west side of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. This unique property is 74 acres in size, consisting of mixed forest with a stunning year-round brook flowing through this lush, magical landscape. We have cleared approximately 3 acres for our house site, pasture, and gardens. The property is completely off-grid, therefore, we rely on a small solar system for our energy, wood fuel and propane for our cooking and hot water, composting toilets for our you know what, and rainwater collection for domestic, livestock, and garden use. Our internet service is extremely limited and expensive, therefore, we are not able to offer internet to volunteers and cell phone reception is available but not overly reliable. Volunteer accommodation consists of tent platforms, which we are hoping to cover this spring to make them into basic camping cabins. We provide you with a cot, sleeping pad, sleeping bag, and pillow. You will be responsible for cooking most of your meals - along with the other volunteers, using whole, fresh ingredients supplied by us. We will share some meals during the week. If you require snacks or other food items, please provide those for yourself. Our diet includes meat and lard, which we have raised here at the farm, so we are unable to accommodate vegans/vegetarians. There is a covered/screened outdoor cooking area with propane stove top for your use. This area does not have power or running water available. You will be responsible to haul your own water for showers, cooking, and dishes using a wheel barrow. We provide drinking water. Shower facilities consist of an outdoor bucket shower, meaning that you heat the water, pour it into a bucket, and then use a scoop to wash. There are composting toilets available, which will be your responsibility to clean and maintain. Our accommodation, cooking, bathing, and toilet facilities are all basic, rustic, and low impact...yet clean and simple. If you are interested in experiencing a locally-sourced way of living that is deeply connected to place, then our farm might be just the fit for you. A very important piece to note is that due to allergies, we are strictly scent-free. This means that you cannot bring/use any products that contain fragrance or perfume...including everything from deodorant, soap, sunscreen, lotion, perfume/cologne, body spray, hair products, bug spray, shampoo/conditioner...anything! We also ask that you do not bring any bug spray with deet in it as we practice organic farming and do not use such harmful chemicals here on the farm. Please connect with us if you have any questions about this or need ideas of what to bring. All of our practices on the farm reflect our commitment to growing a livelihood that is steeped in supporting the natural beauty of the surrounding land with a focus on creating systems that will continue long beyond our lives. Through the development of educational, economic, and cultural relationships, we strive to raise the social and ecological awareness of individuals regarding the cultivation of their food and their relationship with the Wild Community. We are very blessed to share this farm with Alpine goats, pigs, ducks, and a mix of heritage breed chickens. It's busy and full of life around here! All of these beings add fertilizer to the soil, provide us with meat and dairy products, as well as help revive pasture land through intensive rotational grazing. Creating a closed-loop system is of enormous interest to us as we feel that a dependence on external resources is neither sustainable nor practical. Therefore, we are working towards being able to support our garden systems solely with compost and soil amendments created here on the farm. We are also adding to our pasture each year, with a focus on providing a diverse mix of forage and grasses that will help support our various livestock breeds. We will continue to support other local farmers for our hay supply, as creating flat fields suitable for haying is not our vision. A dependence on mechanized systems does not interest us, and although we realize non-mechanized systems will be slower to implement, we value the simplicity and independence that they offer. Because of this, we also have a deep interest in reviving older farming methods, which is why we hope to have draft animals in the future. Feeding people and farming in deep relationship with the land is a mighty task, and one that requires a village to fully cultivate. We welcome you to come and be a part of this exciting endeavor!