what if the small work of how we live each day could transform the world?
elisa rathje’s work here on appleturnover looks at frameworks for approaching the socio-ecological challenges of our times with our own hands, here at home, drawing on practical, lived experiments to illustrate the possibilities in essay-poems, short films, audio recordings, interviews and the like.
sign up for a weeklyish small work to your inbox and pop by for more pieces posted to appleturnover as they emerge.
elisa rathje lives, writes and films the small work at appleturnover, a small farm on a small island, about ways of living that regenerate a symbiotic self, household, community, biosphere and planet.
she’s a multi-disciplinary artist, garden-farming smallholder, unschooling parent, essayist, independent filmmaker, goatherd, biomimicry designer, simple living philosopher, experimental podcaster, traditional skills mentor, sometime composer, swing dancer, frugal hedonist, small adventurer and substitute grandmother.
to get right into elisa's philosophy and practices you might enjoy this interview with ‘accidental gods’, this chat with ‘reskillience’, or check out these articles.
watch elisa’s films here;
follow appleturnover on instagram here,
book a farm stay at appleturnover here,
and ask about learning with elisa, here:
appleturnover is home to a pair of little milk goats, a couple of geese, a flock of chickens and runner ducks, a small unschooled family of artists, writers and filmmakers, as well as a charming farm cat.
the micro-farm is part walled kitchen garden, part silvopasture. all 1 ½ acres of this century-old heritage apple orchard are filling up with a forest of food, fibre, fodder, fuel and medicinals, with ponds, a root cellar, a tiny summer house, an art studio/farm stay, espaliers, grape arbours, composting toilets, hazelnut greywater mulch beds, hidden rainwater catchments, untilled potagers and a creek running through a thicket.
focusing on traditional skills, beyond-sustainable living and creative responses to everyday life in an era of socio-ecological emergency, elisa explores slow, simple approaches to becoming resilient at home and in our communities (for elisa, that’s on salt spring island in the salish sea.)
appleturnover offers up an immersion in a regenerative pattern for being that brings home how we get our needs met, in collaboration with the intelligent living systems we live thrive within.
free subscribers get all the written + recorded small works.
if you find that elisa's work supports you to co-create the world you want to live in, upgrade to a paid subscription to the small work. in addition to all the written + recorded small works, get access to a monthly behind-the-scenes farm tour, originally filmed starting in 2023 at appleturnover farm + farmhouse thanks to founding patron support; and a download of the collected small works in three volumes, the journal of small work*; as well as your name in the credits of future films and books. be the first to get invited to events at the farm.
this is community supported activism. it allows elisa’s work to be openly available to all - thank you ever so much!
