You’d expect growth on a farm, but Shankari and Daniel Goldstein must truly have green thumbs.
“We’ve been together since 2016, and we got our first set of chickens,” Shankari says. “That’s kind of our intro into farming in 2017. … And now here we are, nearly 10 years later in Scottsville with, you know, 257 acres—a much bigger operation than our little, tiny chicken coop.”
Formerly called Waddle Om Farm and now known as Wayfinder Holistics—“We actually changed our name to Wayfinder Farm,” Daniel says—the couple’s operation has diversified over the years.
“We raise cattle,” Daniel says, “and we have red angus, and we have sheep. We do Katahdin hair sheep.”
They also strive to do “a little bit of integration of holistic techniques in the way that we farm,” Shankari says. “One of the things that we do is we don’t focus on a monoculture. We have a lot of different enterprises happening here. … We also have herbal medicine that I grow, and we’ve really incorporated that into the landscape of our property.”
Their vision: “Let’s try to produce something that we can have a sustainable model that’s actually good for the ecosystem and provide food for our community,” Daniel says.
The back 80 acres of the property comprise native trees, perennials, and herbal plants integrated into the landscape. Says Shankari, “It’s almost like a food forest when you’re out here.”