Living off the Land

The house is heated with passive polar energy. The car is only necessary for commutes to and from work. Grocery lists don't need to be taken any farther than the backyard. Welcome to Chert Hollow, the self-sustaining "homestead" of Eric and Joanna Reuter.

By KATE HILL/Missourian
Photos by TRUTH LEEM/Missourian
news@ColumbiaMissourian.com

When a recipe calls for paprika, Eric and Joanna Reuter don’t take the easy route and buy a jar from the grocery store. Instead, they harvest the peppers from their garden, dry them and then hand grind their own spice. They also harvest their own wood, make their own cheese and butter, heat their house with passive solar power and grow almost everything they eat — all in pursuit of a simple, independent life.

What’s at work on their 40-acre fledgling farm is the building of an eco-system — one that functions a lot like the human body: each part plays a specific role to support the overall system. The chickens on the farm act like the immune system, eating ticks that could harm the goats and pests that could damage crops. The cedar trees form the bones, the wood-supplying-structures, such as the raised beds in the garden and the milking hut for the goats.

Welcome to Chert Hollow, where the Reuters, Eric, 29, and Joanna, 30, self-described homesteaders, have joined an ad hoc but growing movement of people trying to live a sustainable life — a back-to-the-land movement for the 21st century.

Traditionally, homesteading referred to pioneers who settled undeveloped land across the great American plains and had no choice but to be self-reliant. A town might be more than a day’s trip by wagon.

Today, opting for self-reliance can mean hard work, low pay and a good deal of inconvenience. But people like the Reuters are making that choice out of concern about the quality of the food they eat and the protection of the planet they share. They are mixing old-school farming methods and philosophies with new-school values and technology to create the 2008 version of homesteading.

And eventually, the Reuters hope it grows from a sustainable lifestyle to a sustainable business. They want to build Chert Hollow into their primary source of income by 2011, producing fruit, vegetables, meat and dairy products not only for themselves but for local farmers markets, restaurants and anyone else who values locally grown, organic food.

“We have to find a balance,” Eric Reuter said. “We’re all dependent on technology.”

They have no guarantee of success and are in relatively small company. According to Gene Danekas of the Missouri Department of Agriculture, the number of organic-certified operations in Missouri is hard to track; farms striving to grow organic foods frequently drop certification or fail altogether. During the last census in 2002, out of 107,000 total farms in Missouri, only 112 were certified organic.
But there are signs that the movement is taking root in mid-Missouri. It is being seeded by people such as Liz Graznak, 32, who works as a general manager at Superior Garden Center in Columbia, a full-service garden supply store that provides everything from plants to landscape design. She got interested in farming during graduate school in Ithaca, N.Y., where she joined a community supported agriculture program. The program’s members pay a fee to a farm or, in some cases, do chores in exchange for fresh food.

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Eric Reuter feeds grass to Dianna, one of his goats at Chert Hollow Farm on Sept. 9. "I don't have to spend money outside, I got milk from goats and meat from goats," Reuter said.


Eric Reuter checks his green mustard plants at Chert Hollow Farm. Reuter grows around 30 types of produce, primarily heirloom varieties with a few hybrids. "I follow organic principles in everything I do," Reuter said.