[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/249825433″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”20″ iframe=”true” /]Twenty years ago, Ben Hewitt and his wife Penny bought forty acres of land in Cabot, Vermont and started their first homestead. In Vermont, the word ‘homestead’ generally refers to people who build their own houses and live self sufficiently to one degree or another…with varying degrees of success. One of the most important characteristics of the homesteaders I’ve known is a deep affinity for the physical world. Knowing how it works, and how to live in it.

Ben and Penny and their two boys are some of the most committed homesteaders in this state. They run a small hill farm and raise ninety percent of their own food. Ben makes a living writing about this life they’ve made. I visited him at his new homestead in Stannard, and we sat and talked by the woodstove that currently doubles up as the cookstove. And we drank some really good beer.

Welcome.

If any of you out there are homesteaders and you have a picture from your homesteading life, I’d love to feature it at the bottom of this page. My friend Robby sent me a CLASSIC, which you’ll see below…and I’d love to add more…

Credits

Ben Hewitt’s blog is HERE.

Music for this show was made by Brian Clark of Calais, Vermont. You can listen to more of Brian’s music HERE.

Robby Porter, Calais VT 1973. Photo by Alex MacPhail…for bettter resolution, click here.

Hunting is an important part of putting meat on the table on my homestead. This is my big game animal. Robin Follette

“Hunting is an important part of putting meat on the table on my homestead.” –Robin Follette

Shivani Arjuna’s homestead, Coulee Meadow Farm

Doug Welch and his oxen, Buster and Bud, in the northern Adirondack foothills.

A Beer with Ben Hewitt

Rumble Strip

A Beer with Ben Hewitt