About
Mission
To develop, share, and celebrate sustainable solutions to home and community-scale food production, and to demonstrate that through creative natural resource management, the land, as always, is still the basis of our health and wealth.
In addition to experimenting with food production and resource management, Solid Ground Farm works with Rising Appalachia, Solid Ground School and Hocking College to help connect youth to nature in meaningful and practical ways. Our goal is to foster a culture based on interdependence with each other and our natural world.
Vision
Solid Ground strives to become a community and cultural center grounded in the simple belief that we are all- people, plants, animals, and each expression of life- in this together enjoying this collective experience. Encouraging active engagement and participation with our local and global communities, our landscapes and the broader environment, we seek to awaken this dormant sense of interconnection and allow each of us to grow deep in our understanding of our selves and our relationships with the world around us.
Photo by Gabriela Gabennesch
Imagine a farm, a school, a camp, an educational center like no other: fruit and nuts drop from the forested canopy and vegetables rise from the ground; you browse as you stroll along the ridgetop, watching butterflies flit from flower to flower and alight on your outstretched hand; kids catch fish and frogs from a small pond, while others gather chicken eggs, or purposefully stack stumps and logs to build the day’s new playground. As you carry your harvest down the path to the farm-to-table cafeteria, rabbits scurry and surprised woodpeckers take flight. You catch a hint of chestnuts roasting in a wood-fired oven. A group of college students works together at pressing apple cider for that night’s community dinner. The inviting fire has drawn a crowd, and you settle onto a stump while a strumming guitar accompanies the croaking frogs. Stories begin to pass around the circle. This is how a day goes on Solid Ground – one we look forward to sharing with you and with all who visit Southeast Ohio.
At Solid Ground, we are growing connections: between people, communities, landscapes, and economies, as we seek to build an ecosystem based on cooperation, creativity, and meaningful engagement with our world. Through the contexts of a working sustainable farm, a school, a day camp, and a community education center, Solid Ground offers people of all ages the chance to play, to develop meaningful relationships, and to experience the transformative joy of engaging with the natural world. Our projects are participant-driven, utilize local resources, and benefit our neighbors and the world around us.
Help us to inspire and empower ourselves – and the next generation – as we learn through experience that we are all in this together and that, through thoughtful collaboration, we will reach our potential as individuals, global citizens, and participants in the earth’s ecosystems.
Photo by Delia Palmisano