Brush Brook Meadow, runs along the left side of Camels Hump Rd.. South Meadow, runs along the right side of Camels Hump Rd, bounded by School St. . See maps below for boundaries.
Camels Hump Meadows
AN INVITATION TO BECOME A GUARDIAN
“Land is not a commodity; it is a way of life.” T. Sheridan
You can become a Guardian in one of two ways: through a tax-deductible gift supporting LivingFuture Foundation's innovative transition plan, OR through private purchase of Brush Brook Meadow, approximately 18 acres on the north side of Camels Hump Road, offered for $790,000.
Our goal is to raise the $1.5 million needed to begin implementing the transition plan for LivingFuture's entire 1,296-acre landholding in Huntington, Vermont, presently known as SHO Farm. This transition includes two central goals: 1) The development of a kinship-centered conservation and relational covenant that recognizes a deeper, wider, and durable collaboration between human and nonhuman communities; 2) A collective/cooperative ownership structure (TBD) that extends kinship to a wider community in a durable reciprocal relationship with place.
LivingFuture is a private nonprofit kinship-focussed land conservation foundation whose vision is grounded in the ancient understanding and practice of conservation as presence, adapted to the realities and possibilities of our contemporary world.
We are extending an invitation to expand human presence and participation in this remarkable place as an alternative to selling in the conventional real estate marketplace, while raising the financial resources needed to undertake a thoughtful, responsible, and enduring transition in the Foundation's guardianship of the larger acreage, a guardianship that began in 2003.
Winter Coyote in Brush Brook Meadow
The Brush Brook Meadow (Camels Hump North), Looking East
Two Pathways, One Larger Vision
Private purchase — Brush Brook Meadow North | $790,000
Approximately 18 acres of predominantly open meadow, riparian woodland, and premier food-growing soil both microbially-vital and mycorrhizally-rich, bound to the north by dynamic Brush Brook, are available for private purchase. Brush Brook Meadow offers many opportunities for human presence and relationship, from a home, farmstead, community, blended uses, or other appropriately permitted land-focussed presence within a distinctive rural mountain community.
LivingFuture welcomes inquiries from individuals, families, intergenerational households, groups, institutions, and organizations interested in becoming her new human guardians.
A separate opportunity involving approximately 16 acres of Camels Hump Meadow South abutting the conserved 245-acre Town Forest may also be explored through a mutually-acceptable arrangement, such as a long-term lease or possible future purchase. South Meadow is not included in the $790,000 purchase offering, and does not currently exist as a legally subdivided parcel.
Philanthropic guardianship — Phase 1 transition goal | $1.5 million
A tax-deductible contribution to LivingFuture Foundation supports the financial, legal, organizational, and practical work necessary to transition the larger landscape toward a more widely shared model of kinship-centered guardianship. The work focusses on drafting cooperative ownership structures and a kinship-oriented version of a conservation easement that updates western conservation models to center engaged, reciprocal, sacred relationship.
Philanthropic participation may also increase the Foundation's ability to retain Brush Brook Meadow rather than raise capital through her sale.
As Phase 1 contributions are secured, the Foundation will continue to assess whether sufficient financial capacity exists to responsibly withdraw Brush Brook Meadow from the private purchase offering. Such a decision could occur before the full $1.5 million campaign goal is reached, but would not conclude the larger fundraising effort.
The Phase 1 goal is larger than a decision about whether to sell or retain one meadow. It is intended to support the time, expertise, continuity, and capacity required to begin implementing a property-wide transition that honors the relationships among land, water, wildlife, human communities, and future generations.
A contribution does not, by itself, reserve Brush Brook Meadow or guarantee that she will remain in Foundation ownership.
Brush Brook Meadow: The Land Herself
Brush Brook Meadow comprises approximately 18 acres of predominantly open meadow, riparian mixed hardwood woodland, and year-round flowing water along Camels Hump Road, near the major gateway to Camels Hump State Park.
The northern edge of the meadow is bounded by Brush Brook and her wooded riparian corridor. The brook, her banks, trees, and associated plant life provide habitat and passage for wildlife moving through the landscape to the brook and back.
Old apple trees remain from earlier settlers, while milkweed, perennial grasses and flowering plants, forest edges, and the brook itself support a diverse community of plants, birds, pollinators, mammals, and aquatic life. The edge of the brook was recently planted with red oak, serviceberry, nannyberry, elderberry, hazelnuts, aronia, sycamore, alder, cranberry and other native wildlife plantings.
Beyond the riparian corridor, the land opens into broad fields with expansive views toward the protected surrounding hills and Green Mountains. The meadow's southern orientation provides abundant sunlight and opportunities for thoughtfully situated homes, gardens, orchards, and other compatible land-centered projects.
Physical Attributes and Possibilities
Brush Brook Meadow offers a combination of qualities difficult to find together within a single property.
The land is predominantly open, with extensive frontage along town-maintained Camels Hump Road. Electric, telephone, and fiber-optic infrastructure are available along the road corridor, though buried to optimize the expansive, beautiful view shed of the protected Green Mountains.
We've undertaken professional soils investigations and percolation testing which prove ample capacity for on-site wastewater disposal. The feasibility, location, and capacity of any proposed wastewater system, and the development it would serve, remain subject to applicable permitting and approvals.
The openness of the meadow, its excellent solar orientation, and the relationship between its fields, wooded edges and brook pathways, and rich riparian corridor offer beautiful opportunities for residential and ecological participation.
Possibilities include a primary residence, a multigenerational homestead, gardens, orchards, perennial food production, and other uses compatible with the property's physical characteristics and applicable regulations. The eastern edge has been planted with an oak grove capable of being fire-managed when mature, to anticipate next generation forest composition, and to mimic First Nations' food and habitat treatments.
The specific form of any proposed development would emerge through the prospective purchaser's planning, due diligence, and the necessary regulatory processes.
Twenty-Three Years of Relationship and Care
For more than twenty-three years, Brush Brook Meadow has been part of SHO Farm, an approximately 1,296-acre landscape owned and stewarded by the Foundation for Sustainable Future DBA LivingFuture Foundation.
Throughout that time, the LivingFuture has approached the land as part of an interconnected community of forests, fields, streams, wetlands, cultivated food systems, wildlife, and human beings, respecting the meadow's vital path for wildlife from upland habitats to the perennial brook. Habitats and populations were scrupulously mapped, even the underlying geology was mapped!
Our work has included ecological restoration, agroforestry, perennial food and medicine cultivation, riparian enhancement, habitat care, and an ongoing effort to understand the relationships among the many beings who inhabit and shape this place.
The meadow has never been treated merely as an undeveloped parcel awaiting its highest economic use. She has been cared for as part of a living tapestry, with attention to the relationships that sustain her ecological richness.
That history does not mean the land must remain unchanged.
Living landscapes are continually changing. Ecological succession continues, water moves, plants grow and disperse, wildlife adapts and travels, and human beings participate in these processes through their presence and choices.
We recognize that a new guardian will bring their own needs, aspirations, experiences, and understanding of what it means to live well.
Our hope is to welcome people who see in Brush Brook Meadow an opportunity to create a home and life that honors what is already present while contributing something meaningful to her future.
An Invitation to Guardianship
We use the word guardian intentionally.
Within the legal and economic systems in which we operate, land is owned, valued, financed, regulated, and conveyed through established instruments of Western property law. Those systems provide the practical framework through which a purchaser may acquire legal title to Brush Brook Meadow.
We work within those systems and recognize the importance of the rights, responsibilities, financial considerations, and protections they provide.
At the same time, we understand that the relationship between a person and the land they inhabit extends far beyond these legal structures.
Guardianship, as we understand it, is an ongoing practice of relationship, care, responsibility, and reciprocity. It begins with getting to know a place: her waters, soils, plants, wildlife, seasons, ecological processes, and the many lives already unfolding there.
It includes becoming attentive to the consequences of our own presence and recognizing that our choices influence the well-being of the larger biological community. More importantly, it includes a vital partnership and mutualism, whereby we learn to listen, receive, and give in an ever-changing dynamic that fully meets our needs of 'enoughness' alongside expanding the vitality of our non-human family members.
It also includes relationships among people: family groups, neighbors, growers, friends, collaborators, and future generations.
We are interested in welcoming individuals, couples, families, intergenerational households, groups, institutions, or organizations who find in Brush Brook Meadow an opportunity to create a meaningful life while becoming part of the community of beings already present.
We recognize that each prospective guardian will bring different aspirations and circumstances. Some may envision a family home and gardens or an 'agrihood'. Others may be interested in a multigenerational homestead, an ecological enterprise, a place for creative work, or another form of residential and land-based life.
We do not believe there is a single prescribed way to live well here.
Our interest is in understanding what draws prospective guardians to this particular place, what they envision for their lives, and how those aspirations might find expression within the opportunities and responsibilities presented by the land.
We welcome those conversations.
South Meadow. School St along the base of the image intersecting with Camels Hump Rd. Deep woods included toward the upper right of the image, not shown.
Camels Hump Meadow South: An Additional Opportunity
Across Camels Hump Road lies Camels Hump Meadow South, approximately 16–17 acres of predominantly open meadow adjoining the 245-acre Huntington Community Forest.
Although the two meadows are physically separated by the road, they have long been part of the same larger landscape and share ecological, agricultural, and community relationships.
South Meadow offers a distinct but complementary set of possibilities. Her open ground, solar orientation, road frontage, excellent soils, hillside berm (perfect for an in-ground communal root cellar or wine cave) and proximity to the Town Forest invite ecological farming, perennial food cultivation, agroforestry, orchards, plant propagation, and other productive relationships between people and land.
Camels Hump Meadow South is not included in the present $790,000 offering of Brush Brook Meadow.
However, the Foundation is open to exploring whether some or all of South Meadow might become available through a separate arrangement with a purchaser of Brush Brook Meadow or another qualified participant, depending upon the intended uses and mutually acceptable terms.
Potential Long-term Agricultural Tenure
One possibility is a long-term agricultural ground lease.
Such an arrangement could provide durable access to land for an individual, family, organization, or group interested in establishing an ecological nursery, perennial food-producing enterprise, orchard, agroforestry system, or other agricultural undertaking.
The Foundation could retain fee ownership while granting defined rights of use and occupancy under a negotiated lease, allowing the parties to establish a long-term relationship that supports both the practical needs of the agricultural undertaking and the Foundation's stewardship objectives.
The duration, payment terms, permitted uses, improvements, and other rights and responsibilities would require separate negotiation and review.
Potential Future Purchase
The Foundation may also consider a future purchase of South Meadow, subject to any required subdivision, survey, land-use approvals, and separately negotiated terms.
No hard-and-fast parcel configuration, purchase price, development entitlement, or future conveyance has been established.
Coordinated Stewardship Between the Meadows
For prospective purchasers of Brush Brook Meadow, the Foundation is also willing to explore arrangements addressing the relationship between North and South, including landscape character, views, compatible land uses, and potential connections with the adjoining and accessible-to-the-public conserved Town Forest.
These possibilities are invitations to conversation rather than predetermined commitments.
Any future arrangement involving South Meadow would be subject to applicable law, regulatory review, financial considerations, and mutually agreed terms. No lease, sale, access right, development entitlement, or land-use restriction is guaranteed by this invitation.
The present North/Brush Brook Meadow offering is intended to proceed independently of any future South Meadow transaction.
The Larger Transition at SHO Farm
The offering of Brush Brook Meadow is part of a larger transition taking place at SHO Farm.
For more than two decades, the Foundation has held and cared for approximately 1,296 acres of interconnected forests, meadows, waters, wetlands, and cultivated landscapes.
We are now working toward a future in which the responsibilities, opportunities, and benefits of participating in this place are shared among a wider human community.
Our evolving vision is grounded in a kinship-centered, relational worldview, informed by "Seven R's" of Indigenous Ecological Philosophy:
Relationship. Reciprocity. Responsibility. Respect. Reverence. Representation. Rights.
These principles inform our understanding of land not simply as property or a collection of resources, but as a living community of beings with whom we exist in relationship.
We are exploring legal, financial, and governance structures capable of translating these principles into durable arrangements for land tenure, ecological care, and community participation, while remaining practical and viable within the systems of law and commerce in which we live.
This work requires financial resources, professional collaboration, thoughtful planning, and time.
The sale of Brush Brook Meadow represents one possible source of capital to support the transition, while also creating an opportunity to welcome new human guardians into the larger landscape.
Conservation as Presence
Much of our work at SHO Farm has been informed by an understanding of conservation as an active relationship between human and non-human beings.
We recognize the importance of protecting land and habitat from activities that cause harm. We also recognize that thoughtful human presence can and should contribute to ecological health through habitat restoration, perennial food cultivation, responsible agriculture, attentive land care, and relationships of reciprocity.
Our intention is to explore forms of human habitation and land tenure that allow people to abundantly meet their practical needs while participating as key members in the ecological communities of which they are part.
The future we envision is one in which human life, ecological food systems, wildlife habitat, and enduring land stewardship can be integrated through sacred and healthy relationships.
About Phase 1 Contributions
Contributions to LivingFuture Foundation's Phase 1 Transition Campaign support the Foundation's charitable work at SHO Farm and the immediate priorities of this transition, including organizational and operating continuity; ongoing care of land, buildings, and more-than-human kin; transition planning and implementation; and the professional, legal, financial, and organizational work required to move the larger vision forward.
Phase 1 contributions may be put to work as they are received. The $1.5 million goal is a fundraising objective, not a condition that must be satisfied before contributions can support the Foundation's charitable purposes.
Unless LivingFuture Foundation and a donor enter into a separate written gift agreement expressly providing otherwise, contributions are not conditioned upon reaching the full campaign goal or upon any particular disposition of Brush Brook Meadow.
The Foundation retains discretion to determine the timing and allocation of Phase 1 expenditures among its charitable purposes and transition priorities as circumstances evolve.
An Invitation to Begin a Conversation
We recognize that choosing a place to live involves far more than evaluating acreage, soils, views, access, or the potential for buildings and improvements.
It is also a decision about the experience of daily life, the relationships one wishes to cultivate, the community in which one hopes to participate, and the environment within which those relationships will unfold.
We are interested in hearing what draws prospective guardians to Brush Brook Meadow, what they envision for their lives here, and how those aspirations might find expression within this particular landscape.
Our invitation is extended to people who recognize the possibilities of living in relationship with the land and the many beings who already call this place home, and who wish to participate in the continuing life of this remarkable community.
Brush Brook Meadow — Camels Hump Meadow North — approximately 18 acres — is offered for $790,000.
Additional property information, maps, available soils and wastewater investigations, photographs, and arrangements for private visits are available to qualified prospective purchasers.
We also welcome inquiries concerning possible arrangements involving Camels Hump Meadow South and philanthropic participation in the Foundation's larger transition.
Huntington, Vermont: Reflections from Melissa and Shawn's many years here.
We understand that choosing where and how to live is among the most consequential decisions we make, especially as we're building stronger resilience, interdependence, and real quality of life in our communities and for our families.
We both have found that living in Huntington has profoundly shaped the rhythms of our days, the meaningful relationships we've cultivated with our plant and animal relatives, the food we eat, the beauty we inhabit, and how we commune with family, friends, loved ones, meaningful work, and ourselves. In truth, this place has mentored us in more ways than we can describe.
After living in a (combined) 10 different Vermont communities since moving to the state in the early 1990s, with Shawn working professionally in real estate, land valuation, conservation, and advisory services throughout Vermont and New England, we both appreciate how profoundly different the experience of living in one community can be from living in another. Our perspectives are strongly inflected by a growing kinship worldview, alongside our histories and privilege of living and working with special places (and their human guardians), and our experience of connecting with this singular place over time. So why do we feel that this spot shines beyond others where we've lived?
Our combined experience has shaped our conviction that Huntington is one of Vermont's most comparatively undiscovered places to live, particularly for people drawn to mountain life, a mystic, sacred and pragmatic connection with the land, and a potentially quieter daily rhythm, all within easy reach of the extended necessities and communities that support and enrich our lives.
Shawn has spent decades traveling Vermont's roads, getting to know her residents, Town offices, general stores, studying properties and markets, and experiencing the practical realities of living in different parts of the state. She has come to understand that what makes a location exceptional isn't solely the market appeal or its value as a seasonal attraction, but rather the synergy of its qualities and how they shape the experience of everyday life and the potential for long-term vibrancy.
A Mountain Community Connected to So Much More
"Situated on the western, Lake Champlain-facing slopes of the Green Mountains in southeastern Chittenden County, Huntington has retained the character of a small, rural Vermont community while remaining within practical driving reach of the state's principal concentration of skiing, healthcare, higher education, world class arts and entertainment, excellent professional services, the extended frontage of Lake Champlain, and economic activity"--that's the marketing copy!
Our experience: There are no traffic lights in Huntington. Light and sound pollution are nearly non-existent. The quiet seeps into your bones at night. There is no major travel corridor running through its two villages, no extensive strip development, and no resort-centered commercial district defining the town's identity. Its roads wind through valleys and along rivers, past working farms, meadows, forests, and year-round homes. We watch the butternut squash mature in Burnt Rock Farm's fields along Main Road.
For people who have spent much of their lives navigating heavily traveled roads, stoplights, crowded commercial corridors, and the constant movement and stimulation of more densely populated places, this difference can be transformative.
Whenever we leave for groceries or a weekend away, the experience of returning home is almost a rite of passage. So is the experience of leaving home, traveling to jobs, visiting friends, reaching a doctor, attending a performance, shopping for groceries, or taking an afternoon to explore (yes, we still explore even after living here for almost a quarter century).
We love that we can live within an ecologically-vibrant, rural mountain environment while making easy, 30-45 minute average drives to Burlington, Waterbury, the Mad River Valley, Montpelier, Middlebury, Bristol, Lake Champlain...And Montreal is a beautiful, 2-hour drive away.
We don't mean to paint Huntington as a base camp for leisure and pleasure seeking, but rather as an extended network of relationships that are the beautiful tethers of living at this place in Vermont. The return home holds immense power, but we're in fact in vital, extended relationship with other places that become part of us, part of our mutualistic world--we give to them, and they give to us.
We can get to the University of Vermont Medical Center and a large network of alternative healthcare providers, specialists, rehabilitation practitioners, and wellness services easily--and now that we're in our mid 50's and early 60's, we appreciate this fact more and more.
Burlington International Airport is an easy 35 minutes away. The airport is small enough to be simple to navigate and park, and large enough to get us where we need to go.
The arts flourish here with the Flynn Theatre, and the Middlebury Arts stage bringing in world class performances, and then there are many regional theatres, intimate musical stages, comedy, storytelling + wine tastings, lectures, craft classes... Also what shines for us are innovative and farm-to-table restaurants (throw a stone and you'll hit one), vibrant local food growers, artisan sourdough bakers, vineyards, myriad craft breweries, all embedded within the small communities that make up this part of Vermont. Visiting these places is part of the pleasure. Admittedly, over a decade ago, we used to seek out our cultural scene by flying to NYC for weekends, but we've come to appreciate how culturally rich life is here within a short and peaceful drive (and you can actually park!).
As for recreation, in addition to the extraordinary backcountry hiking, mountain biking, Nordic skiing, strolling and forest bathing available in and around Huntington, the wider region offers alpine skiing, golf, tennis, cycling, boating, kayaking, sailing, paddling, and the many pleasures of Lake Champlain. The ability to enjoy these activities with the spaciousness of the area without having to live in the more heavily visited and highly-marketed communities is another gift of living in Huntington.
Even the experience of traveling between Huntington and whatever destination contributes to the quality of life here. Our usual destinations are connected by roads passing through beautiful countryside, agricultural landscapes, mountain valleys, and small Vermont villages--and we know many of the people and businesses within wide reach. For those who appreciate the journey as well as the destination, the geography of this part of Vermont becomes part of the pleasure of living here. Especially if you have an all-wheel drive vehicle!
We have come to value this combination enormously, and this is perhaps the main point--living in communion with a vibrant ecological and human community while staying connected to larger cultural centers. The ability to participate in a quality cultural and economic region while returning to a home surrounded by mountains, forests, water, and a quieter rural community creates a breadth of choices that can be difficult to achieve elsewhere. Personally, we love working from home, and often find ourselves un-motivated to leave!
An Exceptional Community of Forest, Water, and Protected Land
Here are some facts about Huntington's geography which we have found interesting, and fundamental to its character.
An earlier statewide forestland-conservation study documented Huntington as encompassing approximately 24,415 acres, with about 86 percent of the town forested. The same study identified approximately 7,080 acres held in conservation by the State of Vermont and nonprofit organizations, representing roughly nearly 30% of the town's land area at the time of that assessment.
Back in 2020, the Town acquired the abutting (to us) 245-acre Huntington Community Forest, which is available to the public for recreation, ecological education, habitat stewardship, and community participation. We share a substantial border with the Town Forest, which only increases the opportunities for intact habitat reaching from the heights of land, down to the riparian areas that border Brush Brook and the Meadow.
Huntington also shares in the remarkable habitat of Camels Hump State Park--that's more than 21,000 acres across several Vermont municipalities. The park's protected mountain terrain, forests, streams, and trail networks contribute profoundly to the ecological and recreational character of this region.
The result is a truly unspoiled community where extensive forests, mountain watersheds, wildlife habitat, working agricultural lands, and protected landscapes remain central to the experience of living here. These natural lands are obviously far more than recreational destinations or scenic backdrops; they are part of the living environment within which the community exists. We see them less as spaces of human recreation, and more as opportunities for vital collaboration with the non-humans who reside here.
Shawn observes from her real estate perspective that the presence of this much surrounding natural land is particularly meaningful because of Huntington's location within Chittenden County. It places residents near Vermont's largest regional concentration of services and economic activity, while preserving a strong sense of living within a protected mountain watershed.
While Vermont has many beautiful rural communities, and many places offer exceptional access to forests, mountains, water, and outdoor recreation, fewer combine that depth of nature connection with Huntington's proximity to the greater Burlington region and the extraordinary range of opportunities available across northwestern and central Vermont.
That combination is a substantial part of what makes Huntington so distinctive. While we are torn between maintaining this 'secret', we also want to convey how meaningful to us these qualities are, especially for those interested in living as we have come to, in deep relationship with all the living communities of this place.
A Place for Restoration, Rejuvenation, and a Different Daily Rhythm
Throughout our 23 years in Huntington, we have become increasingly interested in the relationship between our surroundings, our nervous systems, and the experience of well-being.
The sounds, the quality and smell of the air, the movement of traffic (or the lack thereof), the quality of light, seeing the night sky, stars, opportunities for physical activity, the presence of other interesting, engaged people, and our ability to spend time in (increasingly rare) healthy environments--all define quality of life.
For people seeking relief from chronic stimulation, demanding professional lives, lengthy commutes, or the accumulated stresses of modern living, the opportunity to establish a different daily rhythm can be deeply transformative (as it was for us) and appealing.
Huntington offers a setting in which time with nature can (and to a certain extent, must) become part of ordinary life. Stacking firewood, shoveling snow, harvesting wild mushrooms, tending a garden, walking through a forest, listening to water moving through a brook, watching birds and wildlife, observing the changing seasons, or simply spending time in a quiet place can be chosen daily experiences rather than activities reserved for weekends or vacations.
These experiences are not a substitute for medical care or a guarantee of nervous-system recovery. They are, however, opportunities to shape daily life around conditions many people find restorative: time with nature, physical movement, meaningful relationships, a greater sense of spaciousness, and some freedom from the constant stimulation of more densely developed environments.
Shawn, for example, thinks this dimension of location deserves far more attention in the way we evaluate real estate. She is not alone, as there is ever-growing attention being paid to nervous system health in the global conversation about human settlement and human home creation.
For many years, property markets have emphasized square footage, finishes, amenities, views, school districts, commuting distances, and resale value. Those considerations remain important, but they do not fully describe the value of a place to the people who will spend their lives there.
A home is also the environment within which we wake, sleep, create, work, recover, care for one another, raise children, grow older, and experience the familiar and shifting nuances of each season.
For someone whose aspirations include a more grounded relationship with Earth's living communities, a sense of belonging within a tangible human community, and the opportunity to restore balance between professional obligations and personal life, Huntington offers a remarkable setting in which to pursue those intentions.
[reference S's own healing here...was held by the non humans here in that recovery, in the space of place and deep connection that she was able to do the very personal and difficult work of integration and healing. and she knows from exp over the past 6-7 years, it's not a re trend or fad, it's the essence of who we are as part of the greater web of life...blue zones.
Outdoor Life, Local Food, and Community
Camels Hump State Park, the Long Trail, the Catamount Trail, the Huntington Community Forest, Sleepy Hollow, Camels Hump Nordic Ski Club, and the Huntington River provide an extensive range of opportunities for hiking, walking, trail running, mountain biking, Nordic and backcountry skiing, snowshoeing, swimming, wildlife observation, and quiet time outdoors. Shawn can attest, as a former competitive athlete, that no other community offers this spectrum of at-hand opportunity.
For us residents, these are not simply destinations to visit. They're more often the regular rhythm of life, whether through an early morning walk watching the beavers swimming in the wetland, an afternoon ski, a swim on a warm summer day, or a longer excursion into the mountains.
Huntington's agricultural community is central to our own relationship with place. Local farms and community-supported agriculture programs connect many of us residents with the people and land producing our food, making the rhythms of cultivation, harvest, and seasonal abundance part of community life. There's an unspoken generosity here, amongst the growers and gatherers of food, in harvest meals, in trading eggplant seconds and extra seedling plants, in harvest surpluses as gifts, and in partnered harvests and apple cider pressings.
The Jubilee Farm Barn's New Traditions Farm, growing organic salad greens literally around the corner from Brush Brook Meadow offers a growing-season farmstead and community-supported agriculture program. Justin Rich's Burnt Rock Farm, about five minutes down Main Road, provides something particularly special for our Huntington community: a winter CSA, extending access to locally grown food into the colder months when fresh local produce can be more difficult to obtain. Justin offers flats of tomato seconds from their abundant summer crops, too!
Just up the hill is Couching Lion Maple Syrup, producing maple syrup through bird-friendly and ecologically thoughtful forest stewardship and harvesting practices. Beyond the out-of-site bridge that borders the meadow is a longtime family-run medium sized dairy and maple operation, even as dairy's future is unknown due to the rapid closure of small-medium dairies across Vermont. Then there's Pleasant Mount Farm across the brook from the Meadow, where the Racht family sells vegetable starts from their greenhouse every year...as well as Evan Hoyt's maize breeding trials and masa giveaways, multiple community maple sugaring spots (including the Audubon Center), a small vineyard south of us...the foodscape is truly remarkable. Then there’s Beaudry’s General Store, a heart-centered anchor for all of us, just next to the post office!
Together, these farms and producers, all of whom we know in some way, represent an especially appealing aspect of living in Huntington: the opportunity to obtain food grown and produced nearby, to know something of the land and people responsible for it, and to participate in a local food system across the seasons with remarkable ease.
The value of these relationships extends beyond the food itself. They connect us to the people, knowledge, labor, ecological processes, and seasonal cycles involved in sustaining a community. They also create opportunities for learning, exchange, and participation for those interested in cultivating their own gardens, establishing orchards, growing perennial foods, or engaging in ecological agriculture.
Huntington's small scale creates possibilities for knowing neighbors, participating in local organizations, volunteering, and developing generous relationships through shared interests and responsibilities.
There is a meaningful difference between having access to nature and allowing one's life to become more deeply connected with the ecological and human community of a particular place. Huntington offers opportunities for both.
An Informed Appreciation of Huntington's Distinctiveness
Shawn's appreciation for Huntington is shared by others whose professional work has taken them into many of Vermont's most desirable communities, including key participants like Birdseye Building who were involved in the original building project at SHO Farm, individuals who have worked extensively with distinctive residential properties and ambitious architectural projects throughout Vermont and beyond. In our conversations, they also recognize the exceptional character of Huntington and the particular advantages of its location.
We find this perspective meaningful because it comes from professionals whose experience includes a wide range of places where people have made substantial financial investments in creating homes and shaping the environments in which they live.
Shawn's work in real estate and valuation has taught her to recognize the importance of conventional market considerations while also appreciating how much of a property's value to a particular person or family may arise from qualities that are difficult to capture through comparable sales.
The opportunity to live in a beautiful rural mountain community, surrounded by extensive conserved landscapes, with extraordinary outdoor recreation and convenient access to healthcare, cultural life, higher education, and regional services, is one such combination--this from professional real estate perspective.
It's our opinion that for the person, family, or group seeking that particular lifeway, Huntington deserves serious consideration.
For those who want mountain life, a daily relationship with forests and water, opportunities for restoration and rejuvenation, meaningful community connections, and access to the broader cultural and practical resources of Vermont, There are few places that bring these qualities together as compellingly as Huntington.
And within Huntington, Brush Brook Meadow offers the possibility of making that lifeway one's own.
FAQ
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The Foundation is seeking financial and organizational capacity to move toward a durable model of shared custodianship across SHO Farm.
The Brush Brook offering is intended to support that transition while creating an opportunity for new human guardians to participate in the landscape.
While we’ve resisted fragmenting the Foundation’s ownership of the 1296 acres that currently comprise its holdings, we’re sincerely interested in inviting more people into relationship with the land and community.
We’re recapitalizing the Foundation in order to dedicate the next several years to designing and placing the remaining 1260 acres in a kinship-oriented conservation covenant, the 7R Covenant, which centers a relationship of mutual dignity and reciprocity between human and non-human communities.
If we are able to raise a philanthropic fund, we may elect not to sell Brush Brook Meadow, and enfold the meadows into Conservation as Presence, expanding the community of humans tending the land in perpetuity.
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We ARE a private non-profit conservation organization. If we are able to raise $1.5 million in capital, we may retain our custodianship and continue to enfold the meadows within our relational covenant. Since the meadows abut the existing village, they are a natural point of thoughtful expansion of the village, and could become an integrated ecological village setting of small dwellings clustered to preserve the habitat and food-growing opportunities of the meadows.
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We’re answering this FAQ in grant application form and language deliberately, for those in the philanthropic communities interested in the larger parameters of impact and based upon our own proven experience.
The text may be used only with permission. Disclosure: We used AI to organize thousands of pages of our own writings in order to format a succinct grant application.
1. Briefly describe your organization’s work in one to three sentences. Include your primary goal(s), intended outcome(s), and primary beneficiary(ies).
We are a women-led not-for-profit foundation with the mission of land conservation and ecological food systems innovation. SHO Farm (formerly Teal Farm) has been our main project since 2003. For more than twenty-three years, we have practiced relational land care through agroforestry plantings, forest farming, habitat restoration, and the cultivation of food and medicine across the farm's 1300 acres from an increasingly kinship-centered and animist worldview.
Our primary goal is to transition this land beyond our sole ownership into an enduring structure of collective custodianship that can integrate food sovereignty and relational land care across generations. We are designing governance and tenure frameworks by assessing legal and tax tools like cooperative ownership structures, ongoing nonprofit ownership with long-term stewardship leases, and a kinship-based conservation easement—that embed affirmative land-care responsibilities into a durable, yet dynamic legal form.
Our intended outcomes include: 1) Reliable farmer/grower access to ecological food systems rooted in reciprocity, perennial, annual, and forest-based food-medicines; 2) Replicable land transition models for aligned land owners and organizations; 3) Long-term protection of 1,300 acres from fragmentation or sale to a single high-net-worth buyer; 4) Strengthened biological richness, climatic resilience, and cultural stability.
Primary beneficiaries include land custodians/growers, extended human communities, terrestrial and aquatic communities, and future generations.
The broader public benefits from protected working lands that integrate conservation, food sovereignty, and deep intimacy with place. Additional beneficiaries include transitioning landowners, non-profit, and institutional property holders who are seeking alternatives to conventional sale, subdivision or traditional conservation.
Our work seeks to ensure that ecological land care provides economic 'enoughness' during a time of accelerating land conversion, financial strain, and increasingly unaffordable land and housing for food-growing.
2. Briefly describe the need or the issue you are solving. What significant progress has your organization made against these issues to date?
Across Vermont and the United States, land owners and ecological farmers face a structural crisis. Rising property taxes, escalating land values, healthcare costs, development pressure, and limited access to financing for community-scale farming livelihoods are forcing aging farmers and the conservation-minded to sell land that has often been cherished over decades. Even deeply committed conservationists frequently lack succession pathways that allow land to remain ecologically intact while also supporting essential food-centered livelihoods.
Traditional conservation easements often prevent subdivision but do not address livelihood viability, increased costs of living (property taxes), or collective governance. Meanwhile, farmland transitions (in Vermont especially) increasingly favor absentee ownership, extractive timber-cutting, or residential fragmentation. The result is a quiet erosion of land access, ecological continuity, and food sovereignty.
Our organization has confronted these pressures directly. Over the past twenty-three years we have: 1) Transitioned fields from conventional hay production toward perennial and riparian agroforestry systems, increasing biodiversity and pollinator habitat and long-term soil stability; 2) Partnered with beaver-created wetlands to grow food, while enhancing hydrological resilience and habitat complexity; 3) Established perennial nut, fruit, fungal, and medicinal systems that demonstrate forest-based food production at scale; 4) Operated as a wildlife refuge and sanctuary, expanding habitat corridors and protecting biodiversity across 1,300 contiguous acres; 5) Developed rich educational materials and research initiatives documenting regional edible and medicinal species to promote place-based cuisine and food sovereignty via traditional fermentation knowledge; 6) We have preserved the integrity of the land, casting residents as an extended land kinship network vs. agents of fragmentation; 7) We have demonstrated that food-growing systems also act as multi-species habitats and well-being.
The remaining challenge is structural permanence. Without an innovative tenure transition model, even progressive regenerative landscapes remain vulnerable to generational change, economic stress, or market forces. Our current work addresses this structural gap directly.
3. Describe the specific activities and innovative strategies your organization uses.
Our work operates simultaneously at pragmatic, ecological, cultural, and structural levels.
Ecological Strategies: Forest-Centered Food Sovereignty
We cultivate a polyculture of many species across successional layers over the growing season, rather than relying on monoculture plantings. These include: 1) Nut and mast systems (oak, chestnut, hickory, hazelnut); 2) Fruit and berry guilds (mulberry, elderberry, seaberry, aronia, hawthorn, pear, apple); 3) Mushroom cultivation integrated with forest biomass; 4) Wetland foods cultivated in partnership with beaver hydrology; 5) Perennial greens and medicinal understory plants.
This distributed, perennial model increases biodiversity, strengthens soil carbon accumulation, moderates flood and drought cycles, and reduces reliance on annual tillage. It also aligns food production with habitat enhancement rather than habitat displacement. This model also depends on a wide community of growers, gatherers, food preparation and fermentation specialists, and propagators to succeed at scale.
We integrate fermentation, preservation, and regional culinary development to transform forest and wetland harvests into nutrient-dense foods. This expands the economic viability of smaller-volume perennial production to share the harvests in experiential tasting events, community exchange, and through the sale of products online.
(Structural) Innovation: Kinship Worldview-Centered Land Tenure
Our most innovative strategy lies in governance design. We are assessing a number of possible interlocking mechanisms:
Collective Stewardship Cooperative – A multi-stakeholder structure allowing resident land custodians to hold stewardship rights and responsibilities without requiring speculative ownership;
Nonprofit Ownership with Long-Term Leaseholds ensuring that land remains mission-aligned while providing livelihood stability for resident stewards;
Kinship Conservation Covenant – A next-generation easement that articulates affirmative and reciprocal responsibilities amongst human and non-human communities: welcoming biodiversity, encouraging wetlands, cultivating perennial food systems, and working alongside ecological succession. This differs from traditional static preservation by recognizing that active, skillful human presence strengthens land and place far into the future.
These frameworks directly address the tenure crisis facing regenerative farmers and forest guardians. They are designed to prevent fragmentation, reduce individual tax burden through shared structures, and embed relational ethics in creative and credible legal form.
Replicability and Scaling
Our intention is not to create an isolated experiment but a replicable model. We are: 1) Documenting governance templates and legal language for use by others; 2) Sharing our experience linking tenure reform with ecological food/sovereignty systems; 3) Convening land stewards and conservation professionals to refine and disseminate the model; 4) Integrating our biome-wide catalog of edible and medicinal species with tenure design to demonstrate how ecological knowledge and structural reform reinforce one another.
Scaling occurs via transparently disseminating the model, by including its successes and failures. By offering legal frameworks that contemplate self-sustaining financial scenarios rooted in enoughness alongside ecological restoration, we enable other land stewards to creatively transition acreage in any location in alignment with regenerative and relational principles.
Immediate benefits include protected acreage and stabilized stewardship, ie land for farmers. Incremental change includes regional adoption of cooperative or collective tenure. Systemic change emerges as land trusts, conservation organizations, and regenerative farmers adopt kinship worldview-aligned covenant language and collective governance tools.
4. How are beneficiaries or stakeholders involved…?
Our relational land transition initiative is designed around an expanded understanding of beneficiaries and stakeholders. Rather than limiting involvement to legal owners or program participants, this project recognizes all beings affected by land governance as stakeholders—including human communities, future generations, and the ecological systems that sustain life (ie the trees, the water, the wildlife, the soil life, etc).
Stakeholder involvement is therefore embedded at multiple levels; ecological, community, professional, and institutional.
Ecological and Community Stakeholders
At the core of the model is the living landscape herself: forest, soil, water, wildlife habitat, and biodiversity systems. These ecological systems are treated not as passive backdrops, but as active stakeholders whose long-term health guides governance decisions. Management practices prioritize regenerative land stewardship, habitat continuity, and watershed integrity. Ecological monitoring, habitat planning, and long-term stewardship commitments are integrated into the governance framework.
Human stakeholders include current residents, neighboring communities, and future generations. Community members participate in governance structures designed to distribute responsibility rather than concentrate ownership. Through shared stewardship models, long-term leases, cooperative structures, and conservation overlays, participants gain stable access to land while accepting defined stewardship obligations. This ensures that involvement is not extractive but reciprocal.
The model also supports intergenerational continuity. Governance documents are structured to prioritize long-term ecological health over short-term financial gain, giving future beneficiaries a voice through durable covenants and fiduciary obligations embedded in legal frameworks.
Transitioning Landowners and Agricultural Stakeholders
A significant stakeholder group includes aging landowners, farmers, ranchers, and nonprofit property holders who are seeking alternatives to conventional sale or subdivision. The Foundation documents multiple pathways including cooperative models, community land trust structures, nonprofit overlays, and hybrid capital stacks so that landowners can evaluate options aligned with their values.
For agricultural stakeholders, including farmers without succession plans, widows managing inherited land, and family farms facing development pressure, the project offers replicable governance templates and decision trees. Their involvement includes contributing case studies, participating in model testing, and helping refine transition tools so that the framework reflects real-world complexity rather than theoretical design.
Professional Stakeholders
Attorneys, land planners, appraisers, brokers, CPAs, wealth advisors, foresters, wildlife biologists, and ecological designers are essential stakeholders. Many professionals encounter clients seeking conservation or community-centered outcomes but lack structured templates to guide them.
The Foundation will actively engage with these professionals, expanding their resources by sharing our complex case study, process and selected final documents. By documenting alternatives considered — including those ultimately not selected — the project creates a professional resource library. This reduces ambiguity and professional liability while expanding the toolkit available to advisors serving mission-driven landowners.
Land-based practitioners, such as agroforestry designers, regenerative farmers, and permaculture specialists, are engaged to ensure that tenure structures support long-term ecological investment. Their input shapes lease duration, stewardship obligations, and governance participation so that ecological work is not undermined by short-term ownership turnover.
Financial and Institutional Stakeholders
Banks, lenders, impact investors, and family offices are engaged as stakeholders in order to address perceived risk. Relational governance reorganizes financial structure. The model clarifies collateral positions, defines equity layers, establishes predictable operating agreements, and outlines transfer provisions to ensure underwriting clarity.
Financial stakeholders are involved through review of capital structures, assessment of risk mitigation provisions, and alignment with regulatory standards. By translating relational principles into enforceable legal language, the project provides reassurance that stewardship-based governance can coexist with fiduciary and lending requirements.
Institutional landholders, including large timberland managers, conservation nonprofits, and family offices — are engaged as case-study contributors and advisory participants. Their participation ensures the model is scalable beyond a single property and adaptable to different ownership contexts.
Public Education and Open-Source Resource Development
A core, if later outcome of the initiative is the production of a publicly accessible resource library. This includes governance templates, transition flowcharts, legal language examples, valuation frameworks, and capital models. Stakeholders contribute to and benefit from this documentation.
By openly sharing alternative pathways, including those not adopted in the Foundation’s own transition, the project broadens its beneficiary base. Communities, nonprofits, landowners, and advisors nationwide can draw from tested frameworks without bearing the full cost of experimentation.
Ongoing Feedback and Adaptive Governance
By expanding who is recognized as a stakeholder and embedding that recognition into enforceable governance structures, the initiative transforms land transition from a private transaction into a shared public benefit.
5. Desired short- and long-term outcomes…
Short-term (1-3 years)
1) Protect 1,300 acres from subdivision during transition phase; 2)Draft and legally review cooperative and lease structures; 3) Complete kinship-centered conservation covenant language; 4) Convene 10–20 prospective stewards in governance design sessions; 5) Produce publicly accessible templates and documentation; 6) Continuously plant and tend forest edge and pastures with assisted successional nut tree plantings and perennial native food plants.
Quantitative indicators:
1) Acres under permanent protection (1,300); 2) Number of governance documents completed (minimum 3 core instruments) 3) Number of community design/farming participants (5–15) 4) Number of public documents published (3+ templates or case studies)
Long-Term (5-15 years)
1) Fully transition land into collective custodianship; 2) Maintain continuous ecological stewardship without fragmentation 3) Demonstrate increased biodiversity indices; 4) Inspire adoption of kinship-centered easement language by at least 3–5 additional land projects; 5) Contribute to regional food sovereignty through expanded perennial production and accelerated local community engagement.
Evaluation includes financial viability reviews and documentation of replication by peer organizations
Learning cycles include annual reflection sessions with stewards and partners, refinement of governance language, and dissemination of findings amongst stakeholders.
Success looks like a cultural shift towards a kinship worldview that centers on land that remains ecologically intact, food-producing, and collectively tended beyond the founding generation.
6. Additional Context
We are at a generational inflection point. Many regenerative land stewards lack viable succession pathways. Without innovation, restored landscapes risk fragmentation or conversion.
Our work integrates three elements rarely combined: 1) Forest-based perennial food systems; 2) Wildlife refuge-scale habitat protection; 3) Durable collective land tenure design.
By embedding relational ethics into governance documents and legal instruments, we aim to demonstrate that conservation, food production, and community stewardship can function as one coherent system.ription
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The Foundation anticipates considering appropriate provisions addressing water, habitat, wildlife connectivity, landscape character, and compatible land uses.
The precise scope of any binding restrictions has not yet been finalized and would be disclosed and addressed during negotiations.
If we do proceed with a sale, there will be some deed restrictions that run with the land to preserve habitat, wildlife connectivity, water, and visual integrity, while encouraging organic and regenerative practices in this space.
As a wildlife refuge, we will prohibit the use of agricultural chemicals, herbicides and pesticides, and give preference to buyers not intending to introduce livestock.
Buildings will be subject to simple architectural review, favoring classical forms and natural materials that complement the existing village.
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IApproximately 18 acres comprising Camels Hump Meadow North, also known as Brush Brook Meadow, are being offered for $790,000.
The property includes predominantly open meadowland, a wooded riparian corridor along Brush Brook, extensive road frontage, and mountain and hillside views.
The precise legal description and conveyance configuration will be established through the applicable title, survey, and closing process.cription
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No. South Meadow is not included in the present North Meadow offering.
The Foundation may consider separately negotiated arrangements involving some or all of South Meadow, subject to applicable requirements and mutually acceptable terms.
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Possibly. The Foundation is willing to consider proposals for a long-term agricultural ground lease, a future purchase subject to subdivision and other approvals, or another appropriate arrangement.
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Potentially. Ecological nurseries, perennial food production, orchards, agroforestry, and related agricultural activities are among the uses the Foundation is interested in exploring.
Their feasibility would depend upon the specific proposed operation, land tenure arrangement, agricultural qualifications, existing land-use obligations, and applicable legal and regulatory requirements.
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The property presents residential potential based upon its physical characteristics and available soils investigations.
The feasibility of any particular residence, wastewater system, or additional development must be confirmed through applicable permitting and regulatory review.
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Residential development rights have not been established as part of the present offering.
Any proposed residential use of South Meadow would require separate investigation of subdivision, land-use, wastewater, access, and other applicable requirements.
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Guardianship describes an ongoing relationship of care, responsibility, and reciprocity with land and the many beings who inhabit her.
It recognizes that legal ownership provides important rights and responsibilities, while the relationship between people and place extends beyond the legal instruments through which property is held.
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No. We welcome prospective purchasers with different backgrounds, beliefs, and aspirations.
Our interest is in finding mutually compatible approaches to the use and care of the land. Any binding obligations would be expressed through clearly defined and mutually agreed transaction documents, rather than an expectation of philosophical agreement.
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The Foundation has made no unconditional commitment concerning South Meadow's future use or development.
Its ownership, use, and potential availability remain open for consideration. Prospective North Meadow purchasers with particular interests concerning views, adjoining uses, or landscape character are encouraged to raise those matters during discussions.
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Potentially. Philanthropic contributions may increase the Foundation's capacity to retain land and advance the larger transition.
Any decision to withdraw the property from sale would require a separate determination by the Foundation based upon its financial obligations, available resources, and stewardship objectives.
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Contact LivingFuture to request the property information package, available maps and soils documentation, arrange a private visit, discuss potential South Meadow arrangements, or explore participation in the Foundation's broader transition.
All proposed uses, improvements, conveyances, and leasehold arrangements remain subject to applicable law, required approvals, and mutually agreed terms.