The Agrarian Future Is Here: Judith Horvath on creating homesteads and compelling agricultural communities

What if the future of housing isn’t high-rises or cul-de-sacs—but homesteads, gardens, and walkable villages where food is grown just steps from your door?

In this episode Neal sits down with Judith Horvath of Fair Hill Farm—a former corporate professional turned agroecologist who’s helping reimagine how we live, grow, and build community.

Judith’s journey began humbly with a few backyard chickens and tomato plants—but after facing resistance from her suburban HOA, she chose to go all in. Trading suburban restrictions for rural freedom, she and her family embarked on a bold journey into homesteading, permaculture, and regenerative land design.

Now, more than a decade later, Judith is not just growing food—she’s part of a modern back-to-the-land movement. From backyard transformations to agri-centered community planning, her work helps people reconnect with the land and each other in deeply nourishing ways.

Tune in to hear her powerful story, lessons learned from the land, and her vision for an agrarian future that brings resilience, health, and connection back into our homes and neighborhoods.

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The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast is an independent show exploring the people, projects, and capital reshaping how land gets used and communities get built. Two organizations grew directly out of this work, and they're worth knowing:

Hamlet Capital finances and advises on projects that integrate agriculture and conservation with mixed-use development. If you're building one or looking to invest, let's talk.

Latitude is a real estate brokerage representing sanctuary properties rooted in nature, beauty, and meaningful living.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:08

I think our youth today, they're they're not just helpless, I think they're hopeless. And I think that agriculture, especially regenerative agriculture, because it helps save the world. I mean, it it saves nature. And I mean, they all want to make a difference and want to make a dent in the universe. I think that holds the promise for them to set their sights on something that's concrete and it's real and it's worthwhile and it's and it's noble and it's the good thing to do.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Welcome to the Regenerative Real Estate Podcast, a show about human environments and how they can be used as a force for good. Conversations that educate and inspire people looking for a different way to do real estate. I'm Neil Collins, and on this episode, I'm joined by Judith Horvath of Fair Hill Farm, a former corporate professional turned agroecologist who's helping transform everything from backyard homesteads to entire neighborhoods, all centered around agriculture, regeneration, and a return to the land. Maybe with a few backyard chickens or a couple of tomato plants on the porch. That's exactly how it began for Judith nearly 15 years ago. What started as a humble homesteading hobby took on a whole new meaning after she was laid off from her job. There was just one hitch. Her suburban HOA wasn't exactly thrilled with her chickens. After being told they were illegal, Judith had enough. She packed up her family and moved to the countryside, trading HOA bureaucracy for wide open space and a steep learning curve. In the years that followed, Judith dove deep. She became a permaculture landscape designer, launched product lines under her brand Fair Hill Farm, and began guiding others who were ready to leave city life behind and build homesteads of their own. Today, Judith's work has expanded beyond individual families. She's now helping shape entire communities, places where food, nourishment, and connection are woven into daily life. As you'll soon hear, Judith brings warmth, wisdom, and a deep sense of purpose to everything she touches. She's an inspiring guide for anyone feeling the pull to reconnect with land and with what truly matters. So with that, let's get into it.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

These are my curtains. These are my Googie 50s pattern curtains.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

No, they're shabby chic. They're amazing. It sounds like you're you're remodeling though. That's what you had said right now. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 3:27

This is actually an unfinished space. First of all, I want to say thank you for having me on here. I'm so pleased to talk to you again. And this is this, I'm I've been looking forward to this conversation for quite some time because I think we've got a lot of fertile ground, pun intended, that we'll be able to cover here. But yeah, we've just finished building and converting a uh a very leaky, ancient, completely glass, uh reclaimed materials greenhouse and enclosed it and turned it into what is now going to be my studio and workspace for my farm and regenerative agriculture business and my consulting and then my own podcast recording. So it's really quiet and it's a really nice big space, but it's not quite done yet. So for now, I've got drapes and Owen's pink and recycled door in the back. So I mean, I can put on the blur filter, but I like to keep it real because, you know, in the even in the midst of tall tumult, you know, you still have to, you gotta carry on. You know, people understand that everyone's had construction of some sort in their house. So yep, I've got it in my studio, and here we are.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

I love it. And and you're in Ohio, right?

SPEAKER_02 4:33

Yes, I am. I am in central Ohio, about 30 miles southeast of Columbus, which is pretty much in the middle of the state.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

Awesome. So one of the things that I wanted to get into, Judith, is like we can talk agri hoods and and things like that, but you have a really interesting story. And I actually found you from another podcast, and I can't remember what it was. It might have been like the good dirt or something like that. And it was like, Yeah, I was on one.

SPEAKER_02 4:57

Oh, they were so fun. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Yeah, that was a great interview. And I'm just like, I love this story. And it's it's a story that I I find I'm addicted to that developmental pattern of um, you know, I was doing one thing and then these life circumstances happened, and now I'm doing something completely different. And I would love to really pick it up wherever you like to tell that, your own arc of your journey.

SPEAKER_02 5:21

Yeah. Um, I was always a nature nerd growing up. I mean, I went to school for biological sciences and life sciences, and then life took a lot of different turns, and I ended up in tech of all things. I don't know how, but anyway, I ended up in tech. And from there, it was a series until I had found myself in operation support in different industries and corporate life. And it was fine. I mean, paid great. I was very good at it, but I was always doing management operations and making sure that things were running smoothly. At the time, my husband and I had just moved to Ohio. It was right around the Great Recession in 08. And I had gotten laid off my job, and we were really barely scraping by on one's salary because we were used to dual income family, and uh we were afraid we weren't going to be able to pay the mortgage, and our kids have these allergies and everything. So almost through necessity, I ended up homesteading. I didn't know it was called homesteading at the time, but that's exactly what it was. It was uh suburban homesteading. You know, you you learn how to lead labels. I had to actually take a class with the Feingold Association, like this little seminar to learn how to read labels, which was crazy. It like once you realize that you have to take a class to learn how to interpret the words that are on the back of the food ingredients or the package or whatever it is that you're eating, it starts the thought process really rolling. And for me, one thing led to another. And next thing I knew, I realized that after extensive testing, my kids were not allergic to any food. They were allergic to the things that were in foods. So it was dyes, BHA, BHT, TBHQ, red number 40, yellow number five, yellow number six, disodium EDTA, uh, vanilla, not vanilla, but vanilla, which apparently is a wood pulp processing by product that tastes like vanilla. I don't know. So anyway, there's a whole bunch of different things that they were very sensitive to. I mean, these were back in the days before you could get clean foods, before anyone was really aware of the danger of additives. And I'm tearing up my backyard and I'm turning it into an organic garden, then I get laid off, and we're eating, we're we're eating out of the basement because I went a little bit crazy, like canning and everything. And we had six hens in the backyard for, you know, clean fresh eggs and everything. Next thing I know, I'm getting busted by the homeowners association because I had illegal backyard chickens. It was this whole thing. So anyway, we dug ourselves out of that financial hole. I got a new job, and we decided that we were done living in suburbia and we're going to move to a farm. So, fast forward seven years, and I was very successful at work, but I was very unhappy because I lived on a farm, but I was working off farm and commuting to work every day. As much as I love my coworkers and everything, I was really starting to kind of have my heart pulled into because I felt this pull towards more farming and more agriculture. And then a miracle happened. We had a pandemic. And there I was working from home. I had to turn my dining room into an office because my husband had the upstairs office and we were both on conference calls and we could hear each other, and our co-workers are starting to know each other, like through like wild noise in the background and everything. It was very inconvenient. So I ended up taking over my dining room, and everyone's life was upside down in the pandemic. So there I am in the dining room, and I'm looking out, and I can see our front pasture, and I just see the sheep moving around because we've got hair sheep. I noticed that I was learning things about them that I had never known, even though I'd had them for, you know, seven, eight years. I was noticing things about them and their movements and their behaviors. And then at lunchtime, I could go outside and I could take care of them. I didn't have to commute an hour in and an hour back. And I realized this is very productive. So with this extra time, I started a goat's milk shampoo bars and soap business, and I started doing some garden planning on the side. I was like, I never want to go back. Well, after two years of this, I was like, I'm not going back. And I had the opportunity for an exit at the end of two years, and I took it and I decided to bet on myself. And it has just been learning curve straight up ever since, which brings me to where I am now. And I am in a completely different world, even though I'm physically sitting in the same spot and my life is so full and I'm so happy. And that's that's where we got here.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

I love it. I think there's so many people out there that I talk to that are in those jobs and they want to be really creating their livelihood based on their land and on their place. If my wife had it her way, she would do that in a heartbeat as I'm watching her like tin the orchard outside. And I was looking at our calendar and I'm like, she's got a lot of stuff that she needs to do today. I'm surprised she's doing that. But I'm curious, what what was that vision? Was it do you wanted to work with the land? Do you wanted to work with other people to do something similar? Did you have an idea of what those initial inklings felt like to step away from your job?

SPEAKER_02 10:34

Yeah, I did. When we purchased this farm, it wasn't a farm at all. It was a neglected rural property. And we created this farm from the ground up. There was not a single flower, there was no fencing, there was the barn was falling down with no back and no door. I mean, there were, there was no infrastructure whatsoever. Broken water, it was, it's, it was a fixer upper, which is why we could afford it. And the work that I did, my friends would come and they would visit and they would say things, or I would, you know, send out pictures and I would give them updates. And they were living vicariously through my improvements and watching this. And they're like, this is amazing. You need to write a book. You need to, you know, this is this is like movie material and this is this is an amazing journey. And I started getting this flood of, well, what do you think about this? And could you show me that? And could I buy one of your goats? Or, you know, I need some help with sheep, or can you help me plan my garden? And I realized that there was an unmet need for people who are interested in agriculture to get the support of someone else who didn't come from an agricultural background to say, hey, you can do it, you can figure out this terminology, you can learn the lingo, you can understand the the the quirks of sheep and goats and things like that, and learn how to process your own chickens and plant your own food and be okay with failing at, you know, your orchard after four times. Whatever the case may be, there was this hunger for someone else who could speak, business speak in suburbanies. Because only one percent of the population is farmers. And of that one percent of the population that's farmers, another teeny sliver came from outside of agriculture. And a teeny sliver of that is regenerative. And so I'm like a sliver of a slice of a subsection, and it's it's it's sort of an unusual thing, but I think the people who are getting into agriculture today, they don't realize they're in it. They are homesteading, or it's like the fastest growing, hottest hobby right now. It's the hobby that feeds you in tough times. I think it's awesome, but there's a real need for inspiration and encouragement. But the biggest thing is it's so easy to get burned out, making unforced errors when it comes to getting into agriculture because it is so difficult to just pick it up and run with it. It takes years to learn. And again, mentors are in short supply. So I saw that need and I decided to go in and fill that.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

What did that look like? How did you start to put the blocks of a business together?

SPEAKER_02 13:12

I started by going to homeowners festivals and just talking to people and walking around, visiting booths. I also started a podcast talking about my own experiences. And in meeting people through the podcast and seeing patterns, it helped me understand where there was an unmet need. And it was really around land planning. I mean, they have this romanticized vision in their mind of the way that the land can be, which I did. You know, I was fortunate. My husband and I were fortunate enough, we're dual income, we were able to make it happen and self-fund it. I mean, we're not wealthy, but you know, we didn't have to choose between, you know, feeding ourselves or feeding our animals that month, you know, wasn't that tight. And we also had stepped back on our expenses when we moved to our we knew we we were going to be doing ongoing expenses because we were going to be doing so many improvements. And so we intentionally purchased and decided to live below our means, which is, you know, turned out to be good. But the point is, in that process, I learned that it is very easy to make a $10,000 error. It just is. And it's it's tough to come back from a $10,000 error or a miscalculation or things go slower than you thought, whatever. I was fortunate in that since I was working off farm until recently, I paced myself in my planning to be really, really slow because in my mind I only had evenings and weekends. I wasn't able to do any of those full-time disposable income and evenings and weekends. And that was it. And so I did a small slow plan. And what I found out is that that probably is the speed that would work for most people, even if they're able to work on something full-time. So I help people to plan for their success and lay out incremental steps and a uh a viable roadmap that's going to be achievable because the number one problem is burnout, like I said, and saying this isn't what I thought, they're unhappy, and they have to leave that dream behind. They have to leave this pastoral life that they want to build. When in fact they could do it if they just had been able to plan differently or have someone to help them plan. But I think a lot of people say, Oh, I'll figure it out. How hard could it be? Um I'll figure it out as I go. I'll learn on the job. And maybe you can, but uh, it doesn't have to be that hard, you know. So why set yourself up for that extra struggle and expense if you don't need to? So my clientele are typically people who recognize that at the outset. Either they're like, oh, this isn't what I expected. I need to bail myself out, or I know I'm in over my head, but I've got a lot of incentive and I've got a lot of drive. I just need someone who's gonna kind of like, you know, have a hand on my shoulder and steer me in the right direction, say, buy this, don't buy that, don't go crazy here and do these other things first. Order of operations is also important. And I think a lot of people get excited and they get the animals first, but then they don't have the fences finished or they haven't planned for growth. So it's just sort of stuff you are able to advise others on after time in the tractor seat, you know, after just making those mistakes yourself.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

Where do you pick up with a client, Judith? I'm curious if if you are noticing a trend and work with those clients that are on the similar trajectory of like we are leaving our suburban lifestyle. We want to find more of a homestead, a little bit larger of a land, and and it's a blank canvas. Or are you working with folks that are actually landed? You know, they they got the chicken and the sheeps and the goats, but they don't have the right infrastructure and they're kind of pulling their hair out. What does that look like?

SPEAKER_02 17:07

Yeah, I meet them where they are. Because there's no two, there's no two farms that are the same, there's no two lives that are the same, there's no two situations that are identical. And so one of the things I'm very happy to be able to offer my clients is bespoke help where they are. If I don't think that I can help them or our work style doesn't mesh, I'm not gonna take that on because I don't I want them to be happy. I don't just want their money, I want them to be happy, you know, because that's the whole point. That's why I do it. I do it out of love. And I think it's the right thing to do for the land, I think it's the right thing to do for our culture and our society and our children and and and and clean food and health and everything. So I want there to be a good match. So I really do my best to take every situation as a, you know, a bespoke solution. So whether they're still in suburbia and they're wishing for forward, or they've got an empty lot next door and they're in a city and it's an urban environment, or they're looking for land and they have three million dollars to spend on land and they want me to help them find something, I'm up for it. And whether they want a homestead or they want a you know, doomsday bunker bug-out, you know, location in Idaho, or whatever the case may be, uh I'll listen to it and I'm like, yep, I can get behind that, and then we tackle the problem and we we find a solution and we move forward.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

How many people do you think share a similar story of wanting to understand their food sources? This is an interesting thing that I'm I'm really trying to circle right now with a lot of the work that we're doing, which is around like what do people really want? What motivates them? Is it a thing, an object? I want that house, I want that land, I want that lifestyle, or is it, you know, I I really want to know that I can feed my kid quality food? I I really need safety and security. Or what are you seeing, the motivations of people trying to make this transition in their lives?

SPEAKER_02 19:08

I've seen it change through the years. I mean, back when I was the suburban homesteader and the only person who lived in suburbia was coming in with, you know, straw in my hair and stuff in the mornings. It was a hobby for me and it was interesting. But my own situation was born out of what I felt to be a need. Now, as the years have ticked by, I have seen a lot of additional motivators come in, concern for the planet and you know, global warming and things like that. I've seen people who have their own physical health, which is impacted, declining, they're just not well, they have some sort of a health emergency and they want to get healthy. And so, of course, they turn to food and nutrition, and one thing leads to another, and you start learning how to read labels, and you know how it goes. I explained it. Because I always ask people this question like, you know, why are you doing this? You know, what's your motivation? Because I want to understand where they're coming from and what they want to accomplish. Otherwise, they're not going to feel successful, and I can't give them what they want. It won't be a match. And the biggest thing in the past five years, 10 years has been their kids. It has been the health of their children, whether it is autism spectrum disorder or some other autoimmune problem or allergies or severe health situation or mental health or whatever the case may be, that seems to be a very powerful motivator that does not discriminate across socioeconomic status or culture or gender or anything. Like everyone wants their kids to be healthy. And when you have a kid that needs a special diet or they have other problems, it's frightening. And those parents, they're dialed in. I mean, it's it's all hands on deck and they're trying frantically sometimes to do things even outside their own comfort zone to make their child well, to secure their future health. And it's interesting because when you have a child who is profoundly autistic or nonverbal or medically handicapped in some way or whatever the case may be, the next thought after that as a parent is yeah, I can take care of my kid, but my kid's gonna need help forever. And when I'm not around, then what's going to happen? I don't know the answer to that. So I'm gonna try and be as healthy as I can be too, to live the longest possible. So it kind of extends to the parents. So it seems to be a combination of a lot of different motivators. And then after COVID, I think everything blew wide open. Geez, now with RFK Jr. at the head of HHS and Maha, and a so much more information coming out about vaccine injuries and other health problems and the autism epidemic. And uh nutritional problems, nutrient density, you know, critical problems and additives in food and things like that. I think that there's so much attention on it now that people are really starting to say, hold on, wait a minute, what is going on?

SPEAKER_00 22:27

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SPEAKER_02 23:51

I do. Even if it's just with other parents who are, you know, parents of autistic kids, for instance. I think in the past five years, certainly since COVID, there has been uh a craving to get back to uh proximity. And I think also that with uncertain political times and socioeconomic turmoil, there is a desire, especially amongst families, to be in a place where you know your neighbors and you can count on them and you have that physical community around you. I I think societally we have gotten away from that, you know, this town you grew up in, you know, you know your neighbors and and your family lives sort of nearby. I think that there's something in us that is sort of craving that return to that benefit of community. It's not just a little blip on the radar. This is a big thing that I am seeing. Everyone that I talk to about aggro hoods, because it checks all these boxes, you know. And everyone that I talk to, I explain what an aggro hood is. They're like, oh my gosh, that's amazing. I would look, I would move there in a second. And oh, is there one available? And oh, where are you going to be building? Whatever the case may be. There's so much enthusiasm with that strong emotional visceral response in a positive way when you explain the concept. There, there's some there. I mean, like, that's exactly what people are looking for. I think we just can't build them fast enough, but we have to execute them properly. Otherwise, we cause other unintended consequences, you know.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

Well, I don't I don't actually think that they're legal in a lot of places across the country. I this is the challenge. Well, because we run into so much uh regulatory hurdles and zoning issues that um I'm gonna model my my own life here. Like I I love the energy of the city whenever we lived in Portland and we lived on a corner and it was really vibrant. Like we put our backyard table out in the front yard and knew all the neighbors. We moved to a small farm. We do biodynamic farming on five acres here on Woodby Island. And I don't know my neighbors really well. They they kind of want to be on their little plot and they want us over here, and maybe we'll we'll give a a wave whenever we see each other on the road, but that's about it. And I can tell you that is not how I want to raise my own son. It it becomes really isolated, and all of a sudden, like if you want to actually go in and do farming and agriculture or even a really big garden, you're getting crushed by the amount of work that it takes. And then if you have youngsters running around and they want to go do something and they want to have kids to play with and they can't access that, all of a sudden it's like, wow, we need community here. Yeah. We need to figure out how to have other people live on the land with us. And we ha predominantly have a single-use zoning across the country in so many different municipalities that are saying you can have one house on this acreage, and maybe the minimum is an acre or five acres or 40 acres. But if you want to create a cluster of homes to share the space with, you can't do it. You know, we're we're marginally getting better in some areas where you can actually put an additional dwelling unit on the property. And now it seems like there's municipalities that are like, we'll we'll let you do what's called a planned residential development so that if you've got 20 acres, you can cluster, let's call it five to 10 homes in in an area. So we're moving in this direction. I just I don't find that we can do agrihoods in all these places that that people would want to do them from that. But a lot of the work that I've been doing and uh certainly on this podcast is saying, look, how do we actually work with what we have? How do we lean into advocating for this typology, this orientation to our policymakers and and things like that, so that we can actually create community around vibrant living and resilient spaces and bring people together.

SPEAKER_02 28:15

Yeah. So what I'm hearing is that entitlements is seems to be your big hurdle on different land plots. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 28:23

I I think that that is just a fact of the American landscape for so many different places is that we have zoning restrictions.

SPEAKER_02 28:35

That's true. Um, and I I not all places are going to be open to having a development come in, right? There's plenty of townships that are anti-housing development, whether it's an agrihood or it's, you know, a high-rise apartment building or whatever, whatever, or just like your basic tracked housing, whatever the case may be. There are going to be communities that have those officials in those positions who enforce those zoning laws because that is their mindset. It is what it is. Pick a different community. There's going to be other land, other places. But I can tell you with the one community that I just um one of my partners was just working with up in uh Mahonean County, Ohio, where we have a piece of land. It is uh 168 acres, I think. 168, 160 some acres. Let's say 168 acres. We're gonna be using about 90 of it for the farm, and then we're gonna have about 120 homes on the rest of it. And when we went and spoke to the township, they listened and they listened to the concept. And when we explained how we wanted to preserve the culture of the town and then offer food and services to the other residents, and there would be a small medical element, there would be an event center, an educational area, and then there would also be actual food production, you know, with the CSA and everything. And then obviously it would be phased in. And then as long as the housing was not going to be out of scale with everything else, they saw this as an opportunity for agritourism income, good housing, good uh community, and serving external communities, besides, you know, obviously the tax base and everything, but they were thrilled because the piece that they really liked is that we had done the research on the family that had previously owned this defunct big big dairy farm. And that was a beloved family in that area. And so when we came up with a plan that honored the history of that piece of land in the plan, they said, wow, that family would really have been happy with this concept because, you know, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And so I think that one of the keys to success is not just charging forward, but also honoring the past, you know, and paying deference to that legacy of that family who made it possible to have that big piece of land that's going to be developed. I haven't really worked on little projects where you have 10 or 20 acres. So the the small projects I've worked on have been individual homeowners wanting their homesteads. So I can't really say that I have done small projects, but it has been master plan, central plan communities. And there hasn't been pushback.

unknown 31:33

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:33

But to be fair, we've chosen the land because there wasn't pushback. You know, so I mean, is you don't know what you know before you know it, but um that's a big piece of it, choosing the land wisely based on the local vibe and the culture and those township trustees, how open-minded are they?

SPEAKER_00 31:51

There's a lot of wisdom in what you're talking about right now. And I I want to underscore this for the listeners, because uh there is an elephant graveyard worth of projects that did not actually get entitled that tried to come into the community to say, look, we we're gonna have a farm, we're gonna we're gonna continue the name on, but it's it's a name only. It is a suburban development with a tiny little patch of of a farm over there. And it is clearly, we're just gonna maximize as much of this land coverage as possible to put front-loaded garage, two, three bedroom, two-bath homes or larger. I think what you're talking about, 90 acres preserved as open space and agricultural land out of 160, is phenomenal, right? Like you're going in the right direction. And it's those projects that can actually weave the narrative of like, hey, this is our intention and it matches the site plan. That's where I see a lot of risk getting lowered in terms of the municipality saying, yeah, okay, we're on board. We'll rezone or we'll we'll work with you on your PUD application. And I think that's one of the areas that if you can take that approach, the demand that you're talking about that we're seeing is so high and so undersupplied that it almost amazes me that there's not more people that are saying we have to do this.

SPEAKER_02 33:30

I think it's also important to vote in your local elections and choose your township trustees and your town council and your zoning commissioners wisely. Get to know them because those decisions that they make can truly affect not only your property values, but they can affect future opportunities for development in your town. And in this day and age, I cannot say that unequivocally, the best solution is no more development. Like that's a mindset that I think the day of that mindset has passed.

SPEAKER_00 34:07

What's the purview that you have on these aggrohead projects? Do you come in as a designer, as a consultant? Do you work with the site design, or is it just around agricultural operations? What does that look like for you?

SPEAKER_02 34:21

Yeah. Um, my area is around agricultural operations, getting the right farmers in to run those operations, and also planning them from a business standpoint with my 25 years of business management operations and uh fiscal stewardship for budgets and stuff, making sure that it's going to be uh fiscally sustainable, coming up with those business ideas, not just pure farming, but also an educational, experiential, and agritourism um element, an event element, all these additional um streams of income coming in and these stacked agricultural enterprises, four, five, six, seven agricultural enterprises on the same piece of land, which really drives the profitability. And so this agricultural element inside these communities is not just an amenity or something that's kind of, you know, a curiosity in the center. It's a working, breathing heart center of the community, and it pushes its the culture, it is tied in from all different elements. So where I come in is I make it fiscally viable, I find the right people to run it. And then I also help with the cultural outreach into the community to make sure that so many of these different elements are brought in from a cultural standpoint into the everyday life so that the lifestyle that we advertise is a real thing. It's not just something on a brochure. We can actually offer that experience to the people who come in and live there. That's what I come in and I do the planning for.

SPEAKER_00 35:50

Let's go a little bit deeper on that cultural aspect because I do think that we are at the point in time that a lot of people are they're seeking out this lifestyle, but they still are at that point of I like to be able to see the farm, but I'm not necessarily wanting to go out and get my hands in the soil on the farm. So how and and I'm not saying that I'm not trying to throw shade on people that are like that. I could certainly uh put myself in that category in a large instance, but it's it's the farm as the amenity, the lifestyle amenity. It's over there. I like to see it. Like how do how do we start to bridge this cultural gap to really integrate it so that it is there's a deeper relationship with place and the resident?

SPEAKER_02 36:41

I think you want to make it appealing for the kids to stay there. I think that's how you start building your generational presence. But you also have the sense of permanence, right? So if you create a community that fosters that multi-generational living and that sense of permanence, that's when you start to really build something permanent. And you get that deep culture, you get that history, you got the people who know each other and grew up together, and then they got married and people know each other. You get that small town sort of relational history and stuff like that. But that being said, all generations are not going to instantly jive with the agricultural element, especially since you know, my generation. I'm I'm in my 50s. We we didn't grow up on farms for the most part. Again, only 1%'s in agriculture now today. And we're three to four generations removed from anyone who was on a farm. And so I didn't grow up on a farm. My mom didn't grow up on a farm. I didn't learn from her. Like some people had like a grandparent that had a farm or whatever, maybe, but for the most part, that's not us. So to expect that we're going to come into this community just because we've built it, they will come and then they're gonna participate too. I think that's an unrealistic expectation. But what we can do is we can make it really interesting for people to visit, really interesting for young people to decide to join, and very, very engaging for the children. Because I do not think that in the future the agrihood is as it exists today, at the place yet from a cultural standpoint where they're in their final iteration. But I think that leapfrogging over today's problems and starting to help the kids of these families get back in touch with what the heck is nature? What's it like to run around with bare feet? I think our youth today, they're they're not just helpless. I think they're hopeless. And I think that agriculture, especially regenerative agriculture, because it helps save the world. I mean, it it saves nature. And I mean, they all want to make a difference, they want to make a dent in the universe. I think that holds the promise for them to set their sights on something that's concrete and it's real and it's worthwhile and it's and it's noble and it's the good thing to do.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

I love that. This is such a warm blanket to me. And I'm gonna lose like a probably a quarter to a half of our audience here that are really into like the web three meets regeneration. I remember at a conference, there, you know, these different regenerative communities are getting pitched of and one of them really stood out of you can stay for a month or a minimum of a month to a maximum of a year. And then you've got to you take your token and go somewhere else to another community. And I just, you know, it it it's one of these things that really baffle me. I'm like, wait a second.

SPEAKER_02 39:41

Like if you're dating your community, maybe, but not if you want to live with it. Don't we all want a more permanent match? I mean, come on.

SPEAKER_00 39:50

Yeah. Oh, I mean, it got even better than that. It was like you're gonna find your right community by listening to like everybody's gonna listen to this music and you're gonna sort yourself out by the the type of music that you really like. And if you're whoever was pitching this um at South by Southwest, and if if you're on here, I'm sorry that your project has become um my my bad example. And it's so funny because uh my wife was telling me, I think she was reading a book called Barefoot Biodynamics, that the way that you create community is that you don't move. Um you're you're rooted and you stay there. And I think that's that's connecting, you know, the children to the elders, to the folks that are trying to put food on the table and they're responsible to hold everything together and why I love these kinds of communities that not only do you have that ecological integration, but you have the forethought to on your master plan to think about how do we connect different home typologies so that there is the smaller units for the aging parents that they can go in the back. It's universally designed. You know, maybe the main house has the kids in it with the 30, 40, 50-year-olds. And then you've got a different home typology of like you can accommodate a more transient population with town home rentals or something like that, that you can kind of come and go. Uh, so I have totally drunk in the Kool-Aid on just mixed-use, agricultural-based, resilient communities. And it's so fun to hear that people like yourself are working on the cultural aspect of that. Because I think it's it is the next frontier of evolution of these master plan communities.

SPEAKER_02 41:36

It really is. And it's funny because when I have traveled to a bunch of these different agrihoods and I've spoken to the developers, the people who envision them, the people, the farmers who are working them, the uh the people who work there, uh run the CSAs, uh, you name it. I've spoken to many of these different people, even some of the master planners. And what I have found is that the people who moved into these agrihoods were not the people they expected. That's the thing that was across the board. They expected that there would be this socioeconomic group, this cultural group, this age group, and there would be, you know, a couple little divisions and 30% this and 50% that. Nope. They were wrong. There were people of all cultures, all ages, all ethnic backgrounds. If they were able to afford it and if they were able to like get housing in there, they wanted to go in. And that is the thing that they found was that the people who moved to the agar hoods were, I know the words overused, diverse, but they were truly microcosm slices, vertical slices of the population across all the different gradients that moved there. And so that speaks to something else being the reason that people want to move to agrihoods. There's something else. It's not just cultural, it's not generational, it's not monetary, there's something else there. That was the first thing. So I really started noodling on that and going, okay, well, you know, what what is that? And from my experience, my own opinion, it seems to be this desire to return to a life that is a little bit slower-paced and a little simpler and more concrete and real, less virtual. And so, what's that unifying factor? Healthy living, real work, agrarian lifestyle. Okay. The second thing that I determined when I went and I looked across all these neighborhoods was the lack of engagement. Everyone appreciated the farm. They all spoke fondly of the farm, but maybe the CSA only had like a four to five percent participation rate. Why is that? You know, so I did a lot of research into that and really started noodling about ways to make sure that that farm wasn't just a clearly delineated. Different colored middle of the donut. You know what I mean? It can't be like every other community. And then, oh, by the way, instead of being a golf course in the middle, you have a farm plot there. It needs to be much more integrated than that. It has to be beloved by the people. And there has to be ways to draw them in. You can't force them to pay in. That doesn't force participation. They need to be drawn in. And that means you gotta be a little bit touristy. When the grandparents come to visit, when the when the cousins come to visit, when the people, the prospective home buyers come to visit, when the local community comes to visit, there has to be something cool and something interesting. So we're not gonna have just sheep. We're gonna have a shepherd who also has working sheepdogs. Okay, those dogs cost $12,000 apiece. But have you ever seen a sheepdog work? You cannot buy that experience anywhere else, right? So that's just one example. So there's gonna be there there has to be a lot of um thoughtful creativity in building culture, usually through uh experiences and or animals. There's also got to be opportunities for research and development. So you're gonna have dollars and and students and people coming through and rotating through with or making discoveries, and that's exciting. So it's not just a touristy thing, it's it's you know, furthering science and understanding. That's important piece. And then the important piece is it needs to be something that is auditory and tactile and whatever, because again, you have to address that big group that we talked about who has sensory issues and they're neurodivergent. I have seen kids who are neurodivergent absolutely blossom in agricultural settings. They seem to have superpowers when it comes to animals and plants. They can connect with animals and plants that they don't seem to be able to connect with other humans. And I think that we're doing them an injustice by not giving them a space to explore that.

SPEAKER_00 46:00

That's powerful. Yeah. Makes me think of the telepathy tapes if you haven't tuned in.

SPEAKER_02 46:05

Oh, I sure have.

SPEAKER_00 46:07

Man, yeah. Great storytelling there for anybody that hasn't hasn't listened to that. Uh Judith, this is really fascinating. I, you know, I think we're we're definitely drinking out of the same philosophical well. And it's fun to hear people like yourself just deepening it, grounding it, providing this expertise that I think is needed of how do we actually level up and get better and continue to work on on creating the next level aggrihood experience out there. And it's an open frontier. It's this is a really call towards the audience of like if you're drawn towards this conversation, it's still such early days. And you know, sky's the limit. I I'd love to to figure out how to plug your business, your podcast, give people a more concrete route if they are interested to get in contact with you.

SPEAKER_02 47:00

Thanks. My website is www.fairhillfarm.com. My podcast is Fairhill Farmstead Life, where I don't just talk about agrihoods, I talk about regenerative agriculture and adjacent entrepreneurs. So I haven't actually even had any agrihood people on or any real estate people on. I've had like, like I said, a bunch of farmers or other inventors or other like cool things, whether it's someone upcycling clothes or someone else making knives out of scrap material or, you know, a biostimulant manufacturer and developer, whatever. So it's a little bit different than what we're talking about. Um, if you want to get in touch with me and you want to have me uh do some consulting for you, I am a certified permaculture designer and uh you heard all the rest of my story. The best way to get in touch with me is by going to my website and filling out a contact me form. You can make an appointment with me there and uh get a little chit-chat, or you can shoot me a message, whatever the case may be. And uh that's where you can find everything. I'm on LinkedIn, Judith Horvath. Um, I'm not terribly active on other social media like Instagram or whatever. So I'm I'm a little bit more in the business world, so I've kind of stayed there. That's where I'm comfortable swimming, and um that's the best way to find me. Yeah, if you're looking to do a homestead or uh something else, regenerative agriculture or permaculture, meaning, you know, land planning or things like that, and obviously agrihood, then let's talk. I'd love to hear from you and hear your plans.

SPEAKER_00 48:30

Let's close this out with a fun personal question. What are you really excited about coming up in your garden right now?

SPEAKER_02 48:37

Oh my gosh. I just planted Clary Sage yesterday. I have never grown it before, and I'm really, really excited. And then after I planted it, I realized I went back and read and it gets 40 inches tall and I put it in a raised bed like a ding-dong. So I'm trying to decide if I want to move it or wait till it gets enough to move a piece or whatever. But I am really excited over my Clary Sage of all things because I'm looking forward to making some tea and frying up the leaves and really using it because it's a great medicinal herb.

SPEAKER_00 49:03

Ooh, fried sage leaves. Yes. That's a new one. I can't wait to try it.

SPEAKER_02 49:07

Crunchy and salads, can't wait!

SPEAKER_00 49:45

But I don't want this to be a one-way conversation. I'd love to hear about the projects and ideas you're working on. The best way to connect with me is on LinkedIn, just search Neil Collins. And if my team at Hamlet Capital or Latitude Regenerative Real Estate can help bring your vision to life, whether it's buying or selling a home or developing a community integrated within a farm, do not hesitate to reach out. Let's build something meaningful together.