Two years ago, I had the opportunity to experience Woodland Harvest Mountain Farm on a Wellesley Alternative Spring Break and be surrounded by the beauty the land and the owners’ generosity. That week was memorable to say the least: a week of being nestled in the Appalachian Mountains, learning the ropes of a farming lifestyle, and witnessing the unsparing ways that this rural community navigates finances, conservative neighbors, and access to food. Now, COVID-19 has put all of that at risk.

Woodland Harvest is wrestling with the tension between trying to live off of the farm and their dependence on outside support. Amid the pandemic, life at Woodland Harvest is both entirely normal and deep in crisis at the same time. The land remains giving and the farm fruitful. But the farm’s finances, which depend upon outside visitors, are in jeopardy.

Settling in Appalachia for the will to slow down, Lisa and Elizabeth find themselves with an abundance of time throughout these months for what they are best at: farming, family, and reflection.

Sitting across from me on the Zoom gallery view are two hard-working women — Lisa and Elizabeth. In their self-made Appalachian farm, Woodland Harvest, they have just gotten in from their morning animal chores.  Located in the North Carolinian mountains, Elizabeth and Lisa have built a school, farm, and home for themselves, their two teenage sons, and the hundreds? Of visitors who also are drawn to their “dreamstead.”

Elizabeth’s bought the land in 1998, beginning her lifelong pursuit of permaculture practices and self-sustaining living. Permaculture is an agricultural method of intentionally designing harmonious landscapes that maintain diversity, stability and resilience. Since growing up in Louisiana, at the time of the environmental movement in the 1990s, Elizabeth always yearned to live off the grid. Her job as an Outward Bound guide first drew her to the North Carolina mountains. Lisa was a local.  She grew up only two counties away, and a young pregnancy kept her in North Carolina’s Appalachia.

Woodland Harvest Mountain Farm

Their roles as environmental and social justice activists is unusual in West Jefferson, NC. Beyond being two lesbian and progressive women amidst a conservative and patriotic rural community, economic inequalities are obvious to them.

Rural North Carolina is a hardscrabble region, despite its natural bounty.  Many of their neighbors consider the Dollar General their grocery store. That frustrates Lisa and Elizabeth, since their neighbors could be more self-sufficient.  Lisa explains that they have “so much opportunity for food self-sufficiency.” While she doesn’t consider West Jefferson to be an extreme example of a food desert, she does explain that “because of the poverty in our culture, we are in some ways [a food desert], and there is hunger. People are going hungry around here. People shouldn’t go on hungry.”

Even on their thriving vegetable and animal farm, however, even Lisa and Elizabeth worry about access to food. “You know we love coffee here” Elizabeth jokes with a hefty mug of black coffee in her hand. One of many things that they don’t grow is coffee trees. While they have plentiful access to veggies and meat, they still need to make weekly trips to the closest grocery store thirteen miles away for staples like sugar, flour, milk, coffee, and the occasional bottle of wine.

Seeing how they sustainably source the majority of their food, it may come as a surprise to learn they’re living under the poverty line, receiving food stamps that only actually last them two weeks rather than a month. Running a farm is always hard and unpredictable. Since Rarely do they feel comfortable financially, and the past few months has only heightened that worry.

The COVID-19 crisis canceled Wellesley’s Alternative Spring Break annual trip to Woodland Harvest in March 2020. The family relies on visitors and workshops to supplement its income. The cancelled trip, one of three college trips that had been planned, left a deep hole in their budget. Woodland had already stocked up on food in anticipation of what would be a total of forty visitors during the month, what they refer to as “March Magic.”

To make ends meet, Lisa and Elizabeth are going to have to leave the farm for work at some point. They’ve already fundraised to cover their mortgage. But they don’t have enough money to buy supplies, run the farm, and cover their mortgage.  “It’s happening to real people. It’s going to get worse,” Elizabeth says, describing the realities of the pandemic.

A few days ago, they took their first visit to the grocery store in six weeks. Typically, it would be a weekly run, but since they were fully stocked on goods, there was no need. In addition to their grocery store purchases, they got seven more ducklings, four turkeys, nine small Guinea hands and six rabbits. They’re also open to the idea of breeding their goats for dairy. They’ve planted 300 feet of potatoes and close to 200 feet of onions. With their recent planting of plentiful amounts of greens, squash, cucumbers, and asparagus, they are counting on what they can grow on the farm. Their youngest son, Aidyn, has also developed a new talent for hunting squirrels, mastering his great-great grandmother’s squirrel soup that was featured in the New York Times in 1907.

Lisa and Elizabeth’s story makes clear that COVID-19 isn’t just affecting big cities. Rural communities are being hit hard too. Lisa and Elizabeth have built a home for themselves, and they’re relying on their land and passion to help them through these difficult times. As they reflect on their drastically different lives from the 1990s when they met, Lisa proclaims how expansive their love has become.  What sprung from their relationship, she explained, is “the love that we put into our space here at woodland harvest and the space that we create for people like you to come and be.” For Elizabeth, Woodland Harvest and living in Appalachia has had a profound impact, an escape of their past everyday life and a rapidly-moving world: “It saved my life. Probably a number of times. I don’t think I can live in that world anymore.”