Balancing full-time work as an ecosystem services analyst with Stanford University and the University of Washington, Jess Silver is raising food, a family, and new questions about sustainability, community, and what it means to truly embrace hands-on values on a punk rock farm built by queers.

This episode follows Jess’s lesbian separatist journey through DIY baby-making, climate change research, and queer farming, tracing her muddy path (flapping socks and all) to the off-the-grid community she and her misfit comrades built by hand, one YouTube video at a time.

Spread across 34 acres in Olympia, Washington, the cooperative is home to a small constellation of queers and children, pigs and sheep, yurts, and trees tapped for Bigleaf maple syrup.