Lodestar Gardens Learning Center

“How primitively can you live and still be healthy, and most importantly, happy? . . . Do you simply want the peace, privacy and beauty of living in the country, but do not have the desire to build, develop and maintain an energy system, or grow your own food?”

Barbara Hockabout, How to Dissolve the Matrix with One Cauliflower

For the Reader who favors stories over lists, read our latest post: How to Dissolve the Matrix with One Cauliflower. For the Reader who prefers a highly-abbreviated synopsis of what Lodestar Gardens has been up to since the last update posted in 2022, we offer this thumbnail sketch:

• We continue our commitment to a regenerative lifestyle and look to expand it by incorporating more biodynamic measures into our food growing practices. 
• Our commitment to local homesteading education is sustained in our Lodestar Grassroots Food Co-Op, now in its 14 year of operation. 
• We continue to offer public farm tours a few times a year, and impromptu tours for groups of 5 or more. Schedule a Tour.
• We continue to write homestead-related articles for our local magazine and have a newsletter that comes out regularly during the market season and occasionally during the rest of the year.
• We continue to host volunteers in training programs such as WWOOF and Job Corps.
• In the summer of 2025, we started a new free market open to any resident of Apache or Navajo Counties who wishes to vend without fees or restrictions. Unfettered by fees and regulations, we exchange, sell, barter, and get to know our neighbors. 

These activities are life as usual at Lodestar Gardens. What makes the past four years very distinctive is our Earth Tribes Project. For the past three years we have worked with two artful craftsmen to build a large dormitory to house students in our Homesteading Apprenticeship Program (HAP) to be launched in 2027. We all learned much about alternative building materials and were humbled by the whole construction process in which we participated.

May 26-30 of this year we will host the Earth Tribes Retreat which will serve as an introduction to and an overview of the HAP program. After 25 years of homesteading and sharing our experience with others, we feel the most potent way to model a regenerative lifestyle is to train a small cadre of passionate homesteaders who will go out into a world of dissolving systems and practice living more authentically. HAP students live on property for six months and are immersed in homesteading life and education. This program is unique for its depth, length, and breadth of curriculum. Read More About HAP.

So, yes—we’ve been too busy with these things to keep our website updated, until this year when lovely volunteers will help us keep this communication alive and updated frequently. Thanks for bearing with us as we once again design and experiment with another educational format.