Meet Your Neighbor: Amy Scanes-Wolfe

Amy Scanes-Wolfe, Niwot resident and the founder and director of High Plains Permaculture, is passionate about connecting people to their food systems. Even as a child, Scanes-Wolfe was set on becoming a farmer and has opened her community-based farm, the Niwot Homestead, which aims to feed people a local and well-rounded diet, ultimately connecting them back to the source of their food.

Born in South Africa, Scanes-Wolfe moved to Longmont when she was four and later graduated from Niwot High School as the class valedictorian. As a child, she dreamt of becoming a pioneer and could be found pretending to milk a rubber glove "cow."

Scanes-Wolfe studied sociocultural anthropology at Middlebury College in Vermont and became engrossed in learning about the human story. However, she began to worry about the current state of humans and the path they were heading down as the rapidly growing society became further disassociated with the origin of their food. This sparked her passion for bringing about change.

At first, Scanes-Wolfe considered becoming a hunter-gatherer, but realized it may have been impractical, and decided on farming. Later she moved to Virginia, and farming became her passion, but as Scanes-Wolfe put it, "Looking around me, I still felt like what we were doing really didn't look like nature, and it started troubling me." Coming across the concept of permaculture changed that.

Permaculture is the development of agricultural ecosystems meant to model actual ecological ecosystems for a sustainable way of growing food. Scanes-Wolfe never expected to leave Virginia because of the optimal weather for growing food. However, on one trip back home to Longmont for Christmas, she felt strongly that she should stay and connect with her roots.

Scanes-Wolfe became a part of a forming ecovillage and Harlequin's Gardens and ran an ecological landscaping business. Eventually, she felt drawn to starting her own farm through learning and growing as a permaculture farmer.

She began her business, High Plains Permaculture, with the hope of teaching more community and nature-based systems to the community. She posted an inquiry for land use in the Niwot area and got a few responses but felt particularly drawn to one place with an acre and a half of unused land. It was there that she began a small vegetable farm which quickly expanded as she acquired pigs and her responsibilities grew.

Scanes-Wolfe's dream began to grow and evolve into something bigger, which aimed to use permaculture to grow a complete diet to feed multiple people. Noticing the lack of grains in our local farm systems, Scanes-Wolfe sought to grow more of this type of food group to make up for the importation of grains. Her vision is to grow and integrate grains and carbohydrates with vegetables and protein on a community scale. Community is at the center of all this and she relies on volunteers' support to help with the farm.

Each Sunday at 1 p.m., the Niwot Homestead hosts a volunteer day, which has now continued for about three years. In the beginning, there were only a few volunteers, but as it grew, she began hosting farm-based dinners for all 15 to 20 volunteers. Contact [email protected] for more information.

High Plains Permaculture is now in a space of expansion as more locations are beginning to start up with hopes of eventually feeding 80 people 80% of their diet using community-based support.

Coming back home also sparked Scanes-Wolfe's interest in the history of Chief Niwot and the Native people who once inhabited this area. She is a huge history buff and loves to research and write about local history. She has written two books in between working on her farm: Between Grass and Hay, an historical fiction novel about the founding of Longmont, and its sequel, Industry, Temperance and Morality.

Scanes-Wolfe said, "You can't really be a good teacher without constantly also learning and experimenting and growing yourself."