Button Snail Farm

This is NOT a farm of, or for, button snails. (Although, we do indeed LOVE all snails and love learning about, and with, snails.)

Button Snail Farm is a learning farm where we honor and learn from what’s small, slow, and held in spiral. Our mandala—essence, seed, and vision—is a button held in a snail.

Button Snail Farm is a learning farm for educators, leaders, parents, children, families, writers, artists, creatives, and others (in Minnesota and beyond) who want to experience the spaciousness of small, slow learning and connect with the aliveness of wonder, play, delight, liberation, and love.

Button Snail Farm is alive as a vision and seed of emergence. We are amidst connecting with the land who wants to root Button Snail Farm. We are listening, dreaming, looking, wondering, and trusting… she feels close.

Besides learning, we will also farm with soils of the land. WHAT we farm depends on the land and what she wants to grow. We will listen and follow her lead. Likely, in the first years, we’ll notice what’s already growing, learn from neighbors about what might like to grow, nurture native plants and their ecosystems, and plant pollinators, herbs, and plentiful vegetables.

Yes. Button Snail Farm holds a vision rooted in deep collaboration, interconnection, and reciprocity with human and more-than-human beings. In this early stage of growth, we’re particularly looking for human collaborators with expertise in agriculture, construction, and creative resourcing. We’re also looking for collaborators who share a similar vision for learning and are working in the landscapes of: learning/ school/ unschool/ nature/ forest/ farm/ play/ curiosity/ liberation. Once we know the geographical location of the farm, we’ll be on the lookout for nearby collaborators who offer retreats and hospitality services. We want to support and network with others in Minnesota and beyond.

A learning farm is place where children and adults learn through relationships with soil, sky, water, plants, animals, insects, seasons, earth and spirit beings, wonder, awe, curiosity, and community. It’s a place for learning about the aliveness of learning. Button Snail Farm believes that liberated learning grows from deeply nourished inner soils. Thus, we support learning to notice, wonder, play, unlearn, delight, revise, listen, trust, and connect with the aliveness of curriculum that lives inside, between, and beyond us.

While we share a commitment to learning in relationship with nature, the focus of Button Snail Farm is broader and primarily attuned to the adults who serve children, families, schools, and communities. Learning with Button Snail Farm supports humans who: 1) lead, teach, or desire to create new forms of school (including, but not limited to, nature, farm, forest, and outdoor learning), 2) want to deeply experience the aliveness of learning for its essence of wonder, play, delight, liberation, and love, and 3) yearn to slow down, feel spaciousness, nourish creative seeds, and remember what’s within themselves.

The button of the farm’s learning—its essence—is simple and true in its promise to nourish learning that’s small and slow so children and adults can connect with the button of who they are inside themselves—whole and free. I invite you to explore the pages under the “curriculum” tab at the top of this webpage for the kinds of professional development and personal learning we currently support and will continue to support as part of Button Snail Farm in all stages of its collaborative growth. Although the land for the farm is in emergence, the curriculum of the farm is alive and adaptable, allowing you to engage with its layers wherever you live. Reach out for a conversation about how we might work together.

Small and slow is the essence of learning. It’s not complicated. It’s simple and true. Everything we need is already here, inviting us to notice and wonder as we go into what’s small and play in the spaciousness of its spirals. Small is immense. Slow is connection. Simple is deep. Less is more. When we learn small and slow, we access the depths of our inner knowing, we feel our intrinsic motivations and curiosities, we connect with wisdoms beyond ourselves, and we embody the wholeness of who we are and what we long to express in the world. I’ve been teaching, writing, and practicing in the realms of small and slow for over three decades. You can read more in the archives of Noticing Matters.

Button Snail Farm primarily supports adults, with a focus on adults who teach and care for children. While we don’t offer classes exclusively for children, we do offer programs designed for children with an adult or as family experiences.

Yes. Teachers and other helpers, caregivers, and leaders are a primary audience for Button Snail Farm. Through professional development for educators, including workshops, communities of practice, retreats, and immersive experiences, educators are invited into hands-on explorations and meaningful reflection directly related to their indoor or outdoor “classroom” practice. Currently working with local clients in Pennsylvania and Minnesota. Services available onsite or online.

Yes. While Button Snail Farm does not provide programming exclusively for children, homeschooling families will likely find our resources, curriculum, and experiences to be complementary to the learning they want for their children. Current curriculum for parents who are homeschooling their children can be found under the “curriculum” tab at the top of this page. In the future, Button Snail Farm will host family and child/caregiver learning experiences on the farm.

Button Snail Farm is not a traditional farm school. It lives in the overlap of farm and school, between where we are and what we are creating, including our forms, systems, and understandings of “farm” and “school.” Button Snail Farm exists to nurture seeds of possibility for new ways of learning, school, community, and collaborative farming. We value deeply rooted, reciprocal relationships with land, sky, water, creativity, curiosity, and each other.

Button Snail Farm shares many values with nature schools, including learning through relationship with land, wonder, play, and observation. However, we primarily support educators, learning leaders, and families, rather than operating as a traditional nature school for children. We, as humans, are also nature. Button Snail Farm is a place to explore the relationship between our inner soils and the outer soils we tend (for children, families, schools, communities). The curriculum of Button Snail Farm is well-suited to support professional development for educators, parents, and leaders who work in (or want to start) nature, forest, farm, outdoor, or other creative schools and programs; its layers are rich in opportunities to notice, wonder, reflect, play, and shift pedagogical practice in, with, and as nature. In this way, Button Snail Farm is a nature school that supports others to create nature schools and programs that nurture learning in/with/as nature.

Yes (eventually). Button Snail Farm (will be) a place for weekly and monthly gatherings and experiences on the land with the forest, waters, more-than-human beings, and each other. As soon as we connect with the land who wants to root the farm, we’ll begin weekly Listening Walks outside with the land.

Nature-based learning is a form of experiential learning that grows in relationship with nature, recognizing that as humans, we are also nature. It invites children and adults to learn with the rhythms, patterns, questions, and wisdoms of connection and reciprocity between human and more-than-human beings. Nature-based learning doesn’t move “classroom learning” outside. It supports reflection, revision, and redesign so learning can become more whole, alive, and embodied as the spirals of nature. Button Snail Farm supports those who nurture opportunities for nature-based learning with particular attention to how our inner nature impacts what we seed and grow in the outer nature around us.

Unschooling supports learning rooted in trust, intrinsic motivation, and the aliveness of curiosity. The UN is robust in opportunities for reflection, revision, and remembering. Unschooling, like unlearning, isn’t about less learning, it’s about deeper inner listening and freedom to explore what feels most alive within and around you. Button Snail Farm shares values that overlap with “unschooling” and “deschooling” and offers bountiful opportunities to play and wonder in landscapes of unlearning. If you’re interested in unschooling, take a look at the “Resee School” page under the “curriculum” tab at the top of this page.

Not yet. The land for Button Snail Farm is still emerging. While we are not yet welcoming visitors to a physical farm, you can engage with the curriculum, workshops, communities, and learning experiences that are already alive and growing.