By Leaf Myczack of Broadened Horizons Teaching Farm
Part of our outreach and education work was to take our farm’s name as our mission statement. In 1980, when I first met my wife, Cielo Sand, we both agreed that life should be filled with a healthy curiosity of the Earth’s natural order so we might live in harmony with the rhythms of this very biologically diverse Earth planet. It wasn’t long before we began the “Broadened Horizons Project” which has sustained our experiential learning and teaching pathway to this day.
After leaving our subsistence farming camp in central Tennessee, we built and lived aboard our 30 foot sailing ketch that we used as a vehicle to monitor the Rivers and watersheds from the Ohio River to the Florida Everglades. We named our hand-crafted vessel, “Broadened Horizons.” Our Earth awareness horizons were truly broadened by our fifteen-year deployment as one of the first RiverKeepers in the United States.
As RiverKeepers, part of our outreach and education work was to take teachers, reporters, politicians, and patrons out on the water to experience first hand what we were seeing everyday. We also gave countless presentations to government agencies, public hearings, radio talk shows, schools, civic clubs, and environmental organizations across the Southeastern U.S..
We lived on our boat fifteen physically and emotionally demanding years while being over-exposed to toxic pollution discharges, uphill battles with government agencies, and a growing dismay that our culture seemed oblivious to the rapidly accelerating harm that we humans cause our rivers, forests and the entire life support system. It seemed clear to us that our time had run out for further meaningful action in this way.
We returned to the gently sloped land along the Tennessee River to heal our bodies and spirits. We were gifted eleven acres of land so depleted of topsoil that even “scrub” vegetation refused to grow. This became the first “Broadened Horizons Teaching Farm” where we began healing ourselves, renewing our spirits and began our eco-tourism workshops which were held that first year.
The reclamation process presented multiple opportunities to look at land and agriculture in ways that would benefit the farm and overall earth ecology. Over a period of nine years, multiple young people came to the farm to help, to learn, and to grow in earth awareness.
In 2012, the Broadened Horizons Farm had been transformed into a thriving ecosystem supported by eleven ponds we had dug in the brick-quality clay soil.
In 2013, we were invited to moved our entire farm operation, milk cows, chickens, seed, tools, and our teaching farm sign to our present location in Floyd County on Laurel Creek Rd. This land gift was partially in harsh scrub but also growing a diverse wooded area. The land is steep, without a nearby river, and certainly no ponds. It’s one spring is at the very bottom section of the farm. The perfect place for a teaching farm!
For 10 years we have been holding ecotourism workshops and open-houses here for the public, free of charge. Our motive is to share the answers our curiosity revealed in hopes of broadening the experience of our community that would include earth protection measures that cost only a sense of gratitude and a willingness to give back to this life supporting planet.
We have learned that doing a thing well is sustenance for the spirit. Leaving our small acreage in healthier shape for the next generation is not only our vocation, it’s the right thing to do.
Broadened Horizons Teaching Farm is located at 705 Laurel Creek Road NE, Pilot, VA 24138. Learn more about their work here.