About The Jonestead

The Jonestead sits just outside the beautiful mountain village of Bethel, Maine, where I garden and grow seeds on my small, off-the-grid permaculture homestead. My love for growing things has deep roots, shaped by the people and places that guided me long before I ever saved my first heirloom seed here.

As a kid, I tagged along behind my grandfather, Joseph Arthur, watching him tend his beloved backyard tomatoes with a level of care that bordered on reverence. My mother nurtured the same spirit in me, quietly teaching by example as she started lemon and other fruit trees from seed throughout my childhood. Those early moments stuck with me.

After college, I spent nearly a decade traveling, working, and wwoofing on organic farms across the country. Each place offered its own lesson, its own way of living closely with the land. I was lucky enough to learn from some of the best along the way, including Dennis Carter at the Deer Isle Hostel and Travis Roderick at Living Roots Farm (now Avella Farm). Their wisdom and generosity continue to shape the way I grow today.

Now, at The Jonestead, I focus on cultivating and stewarding cold- and short-season varieties of vegetables, beans, and herbs; plants that thrive in the rhythms of our northern climate. Every seed I grow and save carries a story, and it’s my hope that they’ll continue to grow new ones in gardens far beyond my own.