Building Ecosystems for Food: the Niwot Homestead Project

The Niwot Homestead Project is a three-year-old project dedicated to reimaging suburbia as an ecosystem that feeds people a complete diet. The Project held a community meeting on Sunday, March 5th at the Old Oak Coffeehouse to present the concept to the Niwot community, hear feedback and brainstorm solutions.

Amy Scanes-Wolfe grew up in Niwot and attended Niwot High School. After working on a commercial vegetable farm for several years Scanes-Wolfe thought about growing food in a different way.

She said that a couple of years after returning to Niwot, "I really wanted to start farming and having land to play with and I just put an ad on Nextdoor." Rod and Barb responded and offered their yard in an old neighborhood in Niwot. Scanes-Wolfe began working on the existing vegetable garden and the remnant of an old orchard.

"And then what happened is we got pigs, almost on a whim, because a really good friend at Elk Run Farm told me they need to get rid of two pigs this week, 'Do you want them?'" Scanes-Wolfe explained. In January 2022 Scanes-Wolfe started a weekly volunteer day. That has grown into a gathering of 15 people every Sunday for work followed by dinner, now known as the Niwot Homestead project.

Why "homestead" and not "farm"? "The beauty of the homestead idea is we are not just looking at vegetables or meat, we are looking at a whole diet," Scanes-Wolfe said. It includes a vegetable garden but the vast majority of the land provides staple crops, including potatoes, squash and corn. It is integrated with livestock, with chicken and pigs, for the services they naturally provide.

Scanes-Wolfe asked, "How do we create an ecosystem that humans get to be a part of but we are not the entirety of?" She went on to describe the natural progression of plants in an ecosystem.

The first plants to grow after soil is disturbed are weeds. All ecosystems have native weeds. They die back and prepare the land for perennial grasses and flowers. If water is provided, it progresses into shrubland. If there is more water, it becomes a pinewood forest. Eventually it gets as close as it can to a hardwood forest.

"Pretty much 90% of the foods we eat are descended from grasses," she said. "We don't let the system progress into later stages of the succession. The complete ecosystem of the homestead concept provides the staples, vegetables, fruit and nuts from shrubs and trees and food from animals. That idea is called the food forest."

"You can't feed the world that way, " Scanes-Wolfe has been told, but she has done the math. Potatoes and apple trees grow the same calories per area of ground but apple trees drop more biomass and contribute more to the yield of an integrated system. The food forest provides a great deal of food.

"What does it look like to see all of Niwot as one ecosystem?" A 250-acre farm is an expensive undertaking for one person, but in a neighborhood, everyone shares 160 acres. Scanes-Wolfe hopes that this project will grow and integrate with the broader Niwot community.

If you would like to join the Sunday volunteer days or get more information, contact Amy Scanes-Wolfe by email at [email protected].