Canada US Vermont · Québec

Where the Northeast Kingdom meets the Eastern Townships

Good land, asking a better question.

140 acres of fields, woods, wetlands, streams and river — a former dairy farm with an old farmhouse and a big old barn. We're turning it into a place for union, growth and celebration. It begins, of all things, with bees.

Beekeepers, start here → WWOOFers & residents

The land

Most of what a farm needs is already here.

Several large flats, wooded edges, wetlands, a few streams and a large river. It was a dairy farm in a previous life. The zoning allows more houses and structures to be built or brought in, connected to municipal water and sewer. There's a zoning process, of course — permits, hearings, patience — and everything we're imagining sits within the limits.

It needs love. That's the invitation, not the disclaimer.

Open flats — the level ground that market gardens, orchards, a hayfield — and homesites — want.
Water everywhere — streams, wetlands and river. Irrigation, and forage that stays green in August. No ponds yet — very possible, very much wanted.
Woods & edges — firewood, timber, sugarbush potential, mushrooms, and windbreak for the hives.
A big old barn — storage, workshop, packing shed, and one day a room with a floor good enough to dance on. We'd like a second barn too — there's room for it, and a use for it.
A line on a map — a connecting parcel in Canada, which is either a complication or the whole point. You decide.

Survey map of the parcel outlined in yellow, straddling the Vermont–Québec border — The parcel in yellow. That thin line across the top is the international border.

Rolling open flats and treeline on the property in autumn — Flats enough for gardens, hives and a stage.

The old farmhouse with its red roof, under mature trees — The farmhouse and barn: good bones, long list.

The river running under leaning trees along a cut bank — Water, woods, and the quiet part of the map.

Where it starts

We start with bees.

Not because it's charming. Because bees are the simplest, fastest way to learn a piece of land — what blooms and when, where the water sits, which flat holds the morning sun, where the wind comes from in February. A hive is a survey instrument that pays you in honey.

Local beekeepers wanted

We're looking to connect with keepers in the NEK and just over the line who'd like to put hives on good, unsprayed ground. You bring the bees and the knowledge. We bring the forage, the water, the winter windbreak, the fencing and the hands.

A few hives, honestly done

Two to four colonies to begin — sited together on a south-facing flat with an east-facing entrance and water within reach. Split the honey however feels fair. Teach whoever shows up. If it goes well, we grow it; if it doesn't, we learned the land anyway.

Then plant for them

Bees set the planting plan: clover and buckwheat in the flats, willow and basswood at the edges, fruit trees where the frost drains, goldenrod and aster left standing for the late flow. Feed the hive and you've fed everything else too.

Talk to us about hives →

Beginners welcome as helpers. Experienced keepers especially welcome as teachers.

Growing

Food is the argument this place makes best.

Start small and real: a few beds that actually get weeded, a cellar that actually gets full. Grow toward feeding residents first, then neighbors, then the market shelf. There's already a home for the surplus — a cafe and market thirty minutes away in Barton, in a three-story building being brought back to life by the same family of projects.

Round hay bales beside a stream at the edge of the meadow — First cut, already coming off the fields.

Market gardens

Intensive beds on the near flat — greens, roots, alliums, brassicas. Close enough to the kitchen that they get looked at every single day.

Fruit & perennials

Apples, plums and pears where cold air drains away; berries, rhubarb, asparagus, herbs. The slow layer that will outlast all of us.

Ferment & pickle

Lots of it. Kraut, kimchi, hot sauce, brine, vinegar, kvass — a cellar of crocks is how a short season becomes a long one.

Animals, modestly

Chickens for sure. Maybe more, once there's someone here every morning who genuinely wants to do the chores.

An outdoor kitchen

Indoor/outdoor, fire and shade, long tables. The first structure worth building, because everything else gets decided around it.

Honey & the shelf

Honey, ferments, baked goods and produce onto the market shelf in Barton — alongside other local growers and makers.

The hayfield at sunset, mountains beyond

Celebration

And then, at some point, a party the size of a field.

Here's the honest version: we don't know what it is yet. An annual gathering, once a year, at the end of the growing season — that much feels right. Music, almost certainly. Beyond that it's an open question, and we'd rather ask it out loud than answer it alone.

One stage, or none?

A hayfield, a barn, a treeline that does the acoustics for free. Live sets, DJs on a dancefloor of grass, sound journeys at dusk, ecstatic dance at sunrise.

A harvest, not a lineup

Everything served grown or made within sight of where you're standing. Bread, ferments, honey from hives you can walk to. The menu is the program.

Two countries, one weekend

A parcel on each side of the line is an odd, wonderful premise for a celebration about union. We're curious what it could mean. Tell us.

Small first

Year one might be forty people, a fire and someone's fiddle. That's a good year one. Bring us the version you'd drive four hours for.

Musicians, producers, sound people, cooks, builders of temporary beautiful things — send us the idea.

Come stay

WWOOFers, wanderers, and people who finish things.

We're opening the gate to WWOOFers and other working visitors — a season, a month, a long weekend. If you want to learn hives, build a kitchen, plant an orchard or run a ferment cellar, there is more than enough here to learn on.

This isn't a hunt for free labor: visitors and residents are paid for work. A few minimal weekly volunteer duties are shared by everyone, residents and non-residents alike. All ages — kids and elders welcome. Part-time or full-time.

Where you'd sleep

The Spartan campers

Several of them on the property — all dry and solid, in varying states of finish. If you're handy, pick one and turn it into a cozy little home. Long-term living possible.

Bring your own

RV, van, mobile tiny house, or a tent in a field you get to choose. Immobile homes become possible later.

Shared farmhouse

The kitchen and bathroom in the old farmhouse are shared. Outhouses and a sauna are on the build list — possibly by your hands.

A small log cabin with a covered porch at the edge of the trees — Room to park, pitch, build — and to see weather coming.

A wide mowed field under a big cloudy sky, mountains on the horizon — One of the small structures already standing.

Skills we'd love on the land

Not a checklist. Bring one, bring none, suggest something we forgot.

Beekeeping
Food gardening
Fruit tree planting
Fermenting (lots)
Carpentry
Plumbing & electric
Land sculpting
Heavy machinery
Solar & hydro systems
Aquatect (waterways, water features)
Tending animals
Cooking & food prep
Retail baking
Coffee roasting & barista
Pottery & ceramics
Somatic practice, yoga, dance
Sound journeys & music
Filmmaking
Event production
Governance & bylaws (sociocracy)
Business development
Bookkeeping
Project management
Something we forgot

How it's held

Long term, the project owns the land — not a person.

I just got the property, so this is genuinely the beginning. I'm not a stranger to community projects — including their pitfalls. I don't have all the answers; I have some ideas and a lot of questions.

What I do believe: the land should end up owned by the project rather than by any single person, and that this can be achieved regardless of the financial gaps between the people who live and work here. Getting there is a design problem we solve together — governance, bylaws, sweat, patience.

— Michael Kunitzky, founder. More background ↗

The family

CanadUS is one of four projects run on the same method.

Curiosity, critical thinking, community action — a Vermont non-profit, a village building, a literacy campaign, and this land.

Non-profit · Vermont

Curious? Be in touch.

Whether you keep bees, grow food, build things, cook, play music, or just want to walk the land and ask what it could be — write. Tell us what you'd want to do here, and roughly when.

Write to us

info@curiosocorp.org