Salmon Creek Farm is a sanctuary of precious riparian and coastal redwood forest habitat, on Central Pomo land, established as a counterculture commune in 1971, now a long-term living art project shaped by many hands, a sort of queered commune-farm-homestead. In April 2025 our non-profit Salmon Creek Arts will be start offering year-round programs on the land. Check the calendar and sign up for our email list for the latest. And come stay with us in the mean time, our last season of retreat rentals runs through March and there are still a few openings left.



photos by Iwan Baan

Salmon Creek Farm is a place to be slow, to take a deep breath and a step back, in both solitude and sociability. It is a place to be embodied, with hands in soil enriched with your compost and humanure, sprouting seasonal organic foods, watered from the spring. You tend a warming fire with wood from the land, sheltered by cabins crafted with scavenged materials, furnished with local finds, no plastics in sight, feeling small under giants that live for millennia.
We aim to continually expand the views and voices informing the place and broaden the range of folks coming to the land, lowering barriers wherever possible to those who feel drawn to visit. As a queer owned and run space, it has a special sense of sanctuary for those who often don’t feel safe or welcome in rural spaces, especially BIPOC and LGBTQ+ folks. In 2024 a land-based artist fellowship will be inaugurated by the non-profit Salmon Creek Arts, which will gradually take over programming, and eventually ownership, of Salmon Creek Farm. (Subscribe, Donate, and Follow)


🌎  Salmon Creek Farm

cabin stays


11/19/24 UPDATE: still a few openings this season, go to inquiry page to see availability/request and we will respond in a day or two...

For just a few months this year we are offering one or two week cabin stays, on and off from late September, 2024 through March 2025This is an opportunity for curious folks to visit and support us, with proceeds going towards on-going maintenance, repairs, and projects as we expand the offerings of our new non-profit Salmon Creek Arts. There are designated queers-weeks and a chef-in-residence when there is interest.


This is time to slow down, become familiar with the place and it's rhythms, to quiet the mind, and really be present on the land. This may be a time to take a step back for some critical distance from daily life, a chance to create something new, or even a pause from projects and productivity altogether. Come with an intention for how you want to ‘spend’ your time.

Once on the land we put everyone on a whatsapp party line, where the community can be directly in touch with each other, to announce meals, invite each other over, ask for help with something, organize an event, say “hey I’m going to town if anyone needs anything,” etc. On Monday mornings we lead a comprehensive 2 hour tour of the entire property, including visits to all cabins and a hike down to the creek. This also serves as a chance to meet the group and a critical / compulsory orientation to life on the land (outhouses, compost, wood stoves, etc). The resident land steward and host makes everyone feel safe, welcome, and at home.

Chef Gerardo Gonzalez is starting up the SCF food program this year and occasional weeks will include breakfasts and dinners at SLUGS (Dawn Cabin). Gerardo and his community of rotating chefs-in-residence bring intention, vision, and love to the table with delicious daily plant-based communal meals. In the spirit of self-reliance and communal care, guests take turns pitching in from dishwashing to food prep - also a great opportunty to learn from the amazing chefs coming through.

Price is total for one/two weeks:
  • Solo at Salmon ($900/$1500)
  • Solo or couple in 1 bed at Moonlight, Walden or River ($1100/$1800)
  • Solo, couple, or 2 friends in 2 beds at Cedar ($1800/$3000)
  • Solo, couple, or 2 friends in 2 beds at Rainbow ($1600/$2650)
  • Up to 3 friends, or 1 or 2 couples, 3 beds at Dawn ($2400/$4000)
  • Plus occasional weeks with SLUGS chef in residence $410/person/week

  • Arrivals exclusively Sundays 1:30-4:30.
  • Departures before 11am Saturdays.
  • Full SCF tour/orientation 10:30am Mondays.
  • Full payment to book.
  • Email 2024(at)salmoncreekfarm(dot)org with questions.

Read about life with the land at SCF if you haven’t stayed with us before.

︎ inquire ︎




🔥 Salmon Creek Farm April 2025 
Ceramics Wood Firing Workshop

 

︎ CERAMICS wood-firing workshops
In partnership with our Albion neighbors Cider Creek Collective. An immersive, collaborative month long workshop making objects using primary local materials: native clay, salvaged wood as fuel for the kiln, our own hands, and the natural time of elemental processes. Accommodations at SCF and weekday workshops at Cider Creek Collective. Open to *all* levels.

Tuesday, April 1st to Tuesday, April 29th 2025 (4 weeks)
Price is total for single, couple, or group - not including $1600 Cider Creek workshop fee:
︎︎︎ Solo at Salmon ($2100)
︎︎︎ Solo or couple in 1 bed at Moonlight, Walden or River ($2250)
︎︎︎ Solo, couple, or two friends in 2 beds at Rainbow ($3700)
︎︎︎ Solo, couple, or two friends in 2 beds at Cedar ($4200)
︎︎︎ Solo, couple, or two friends at shared cabin, in 1 of 2 separate bedrooms at Dawn ($2100/@2500)
︎︎︎ Group cabin for up to 4 people in three beds / two bedrooms at Dawn ($5000)

We encourage couples & groups to apply. Each person applies separately but would be accepted as a couple/group. Read about life at SCF before applying!

︎ Applications open January 2025 ︎




Life with the land


Location
We steward 33 acres of second and third growth redwoods two miles from California’s Mendocino Coast, 10 minutes from Albion, 20 minutes south of the village of Mendocino, and 3 hours north of San Francisco. Living here under the coastal redwoods is very humbling, and SCF is an especially good spot to feel your small place in the big cycle of life on earth.

Grounds
Old logging roads and foot trails criss-cross south facing slopes from sunny meadows, gardens, orchards, communal outdoor kitchen, and dance deck on top, to eight furnished hand-crafted commune cabins each nestled in their own nook of the woods, across a ravine that bisects the land to abandoned off-grid cabins, and finally down to Big Salmon Creek in the valley.


Seasons
Tending a cabin fire is big part of daily life during the shorter days and cooler nights from September to April, staying warm and dry with wood we harvest from the land (though just two miles from the coast we rarely get below an occasional frost at night). The winter is a special time on the land for lovers of lichens and funghi, as the rains bring bursts of exuberant life to the forest floor. In spring the orchard fruit tree blossoms are popping while we prepare the gardens and start seeds. Summers days can bring chilly dramatic fogs rolling in and out or warm sunshine, usually staying in the mid 60’s and rarely getting much above the low 70’s. In the fall we gather seeds to sow the following season and press apples which we transform into our own apple cider vinegar.



Questions of quotidian domestic life are fundamental at Salmon Creek Farm. What are the local and global implications? It can also be very sensual living this close to the seasons and the land...

︎ ANIMALS: For many reasons SCF is strictly vegetarian. Many carnivorous visitors have found it to be a helpful place to experiment with a fully plant-based diet for the first time.

︎ FOOD: We eat with the seasons and aim to grow, forage, and preserve as much of our own food from the land as possible and invite everyone eating from the land to participate in that seasonal process.

︎ WASTE: We do not provide receptacles on the property and guests are responsible for their own ‘trash.’ We strive for zero waste, shop for minimal/no packaging, and compost zealously.

︎ HUMANURE: All cabins have cute outhouses with sawdust lined humanure buckets that are emptied regularly to nearby compost sites where it transforms into the richest soil on the land, and after a few years is spread around as mulch at established fruit trees.

︎ WATER: Our water is collected from a spring on the land where it is filtered and pumped to the top of the ridge where it is stored, treated, and gravity fed to all of the cabins and gardens.

︎ HEAT: To stay warm from October through April we burn wood sustainably harvested wood from the land which we chop and cure throughout the year.

︎ SHELTER: Our cabins were all constructed with scavenged wood, windows, doors, and fixtures in the early 1970’s. We have continued in that spirit, also working with wood sustainably harvested and milled from the land.

︎ FURNISHINGS: Local thrift stores have been the source for most of the cabin furnishings, with a special focus on ‘natural’ materials like woods, canes, ceramics, cottons, wools, etc. and promoting the re-use of local materials and products that still have life.

︎ PLASTICS: Just no. But once you try to completely eliminate them from your life, you realize it’s virtually impossible these days. 

As the climate is changing, we change, and as with everything, we do what we can, just trying to move with intention in the right direction...

Salmon Creek Farm Editions:
Our 2024 Seed Community




🌎️ $35 plus shipping, sales within US only, edition of 500.
🌻 Features 24 varieties of greens, grains, flowers, edible cultivars, and native wildflowers hand-collected over six months by the SCF community.
🌱 1/4 ounce packets contain hundreds of seeds and includes cute SCF bandana with sowing instructions.
💌 Packaging designed & illustrated by @companion_____platform.
🐚️ All proceeds to Salmon Creek Arts programs.




Featuring 24 varieties of greens, grains, flowers, edible cultivars, and native wildflowers collected by hand at SCF: 

Borage, Calendula, California Poppy, Chard, Chrysanthemum, Coriander, Common Poppy, Daisy, Fava, Fennel, Kale, Lavender, Lemon Balm, Mustard, Nasturtium, Nicotiana, Nigella, Primrose, Sneezeweed, Squash, Sunflower, and Sweet Peas


A portion of our annual plants are left in place to dry up, set seed, and die back. A garden that values only living plants is a denial of reality. The story of a plant continues long after moisture stops coursing up through its roots, stems, and leaves. As the plant dies and dries, seeds hang out in the sun and wind, gradually ready to disperse, as the desiccated plant material breaks down to the ground creating mulch and cover for new life. The resulting complex seasonal landscape welcomes death into the center of the garden as the foundation for new life to come up beneath it. We see this in our Northern Californian landscapes that turn from bright April greens to warm October ochres. Throughout the summer and fall we follow the birds who tell us which seeds are ready, as we watch the feeding frenzy migrate from plant to plant.

This is not a careful and precise commercial seed mix — rather a crazy reckless cacophonous variety, gradually collected by a group of friends week by week, seed by seed. It includes crossbred mystery varieties, inert materials, and seeds with widely divergent suggested sowing seasons and methods. But we appreciate the nature-like casualness, echoing the wild careless broadcast of extravagant seed abundance that most plants perform — some of which germinate, take root, mature, and go on to set seed themselves.

We hope you keep the story going and the cycle spinning by saving your own seeds to disseminate and share with friends.






Thanks to SCF community seed foragers: Ryan Amador, Ryan Bush, James Cherry, Ethan Christopher, Joseph Issac Cohen, Raphael Martinez Cohen, Bobby Doherty, Gerardo Gonzalez, Fritz Haeg, Max Hershenow, Gaby Hornig, James Kipp, Henry Koperski, Aurel Nagy, Abdiel Perez, Seth Prestwood, Frank Traynor, Paul Sepuya, Ethan Skaates, Gustav Wezerek, Samuel Wilkes. (let us know if we missed anyone?!)

Seed packaging designed and illustrated by Lexi Visco + Calvin Rocchio of Companion—Platform and printed by Paper Chase Press.