Life & Work with Laura Lemon of Groveport

Today we’d like to introduce you to Laura Lemon

Hi Laura , thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My husband and I both grew up in farming families but didn’t have much involvement with the farms. We knew we wanted space for a garden, and my dream was to have space for rescued farm animals. At the time we were looking for a house we lived in a pretty awful one-bedroom apartment near OSU campus. We didn’t have any outdoor space so I volunteered at Sunrise Farm Sanctuary in Marysville to get my animal and outdoor fix in. I fell in love with the animal care and it gave me confidence in rescuing animals of our own in the future. We spent 3 months looking at over 50 houses and finally found our current home – a 2 acre property in urban Columbus (near Groveport). It was already equipped with a pasture and a barn, is close to highways and easy to get pretty much everywhere in the city, as well as having a small but clean and updated house. Our neighbor gave us his goat within a month of moving in and the rest is history.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Working with nature is hard work and any of the projects we tackle around the home rarely go according to plan. We are always faced with the challenge of learning new skills and creative problem solving because we don’t have the capital to hire out for everything that needs to be done on the homestead. I think that’s pretty common in the farming or hobby farming world. Some of the biggest challenges are a leak to the water supply to our goat barn and garden expansion. We’ve worked really hard to remove invasive plants from our yard (a work in process) and generally a lot of sweat equity in growing and expanding our garden and getting our house and yard to an “average” quality since it was abandoned for so long.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Our urban homestead is known for its large homestead-style garden that produces abundant food for our family through permaculture growing techniques. We are also known as a plantstead – meaning we don’t raise animals for food. Our animals are rescues that come to our farm to live out their lives. We share our homesteading experience via Instagram and substack to provide accessible gardening education and inspiration for others looking to connect with nature through growing food for their families.

We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
I don’t identify with being called a risk taker, however, there is an inherent risk in growing food. You are relying on nature to work with you, and not everything will grow successfully or abundantly. We run a lot of experiments in the garden to determine how best to grow or trellis certain foods, decide which varieties are best (for us), and just learn about the plants we are interacting with. I use the garden as a tool to challenge not only mine, but others’ opinions and world views, and I think that small acts of resistance like this are a form of risk taking.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://hippiebillyhomestead.substack.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/hippiebillyhomestead