Primeterra Plan a visit

Arlington, Washington

48.19° N, 122.12° W

Primeterra Land, under restoration.

Twelve working experiments in water, soil, stock, and craft, carried out on one piece of ground in the Stillaguamish valley.

Read the contents The land
A suspended tree tent seen from below, slung between pines.
FrontispieceA tent hung in tension between three pines, off the ground and out of the wet — the simplest kind of shelter.

A nonprofit land project in the Stillaguamish valley, working in water, soil, stock, light, and craft.

Est. MMXXIV

We did not find untouched land.

This ground was worked long before we arrived — logged in passes through the last century, drained where it held water, grazed until the grass thinned and the blackberry took the edges. None of that is a reason to walk away from it.

Primeterra is a small nonprofit and a working parcel in Arlington, Washington. We run twelve projects across it. Some of them produce food, fuel, or fencing. Some of them are experiments that may fail in public. All of them are documented, and all of them are meant to be copied.

We are not attempting to restore this land to a state it held before people. We are attempting to leave it more capable than we found it — deeper soil, cleaner water, more species, more people who know how to work it.

12 Projects running on the parcel
05 Disciplines water, soil, stock, light, craft
01 Watershed the Stillaguamish
48.2 Degrees north western Washington
II

Contents

Twelve projects. One parcel. Read in any order.

I

Water & Terrain

  1. 01 Keyline Design Retained water 01
  2. 02 Ram Pumps Continuous water lift 02
II

Soil & Carbon

  1. 03 Biochar Water-holding capacity 03
  2. 04 Silvopasture Forage 04
  3. 05 Black Soldier Flies Protein feed 05
III

Stock & Yield

  1. 06 Goat Milk Milk 06
  2. 07 Pack Goats Freight capacity on foot 07
  3. 08 Guinea Pigs Cold manure 08
IV

Light & Energy

  1. 09 Solar Envelope Design Passive heat 09
  2. 10 Syngas A combustible gas from low-grade wood 10
V

Enquiry & Gathering

  1. 11 Quantum Biology Better questions 11
  2. 12 Van Life Gathering Skills exchanged 12
The work, in full
The measure of a working landscape is not what it takes out of the ground, but what it leaves there.

— Working principle

03 — Residency

Four to eight weeks, and a room with a woodstove.

The residency exists because the land is better understood by more than one kind of mind. We host makers, writers, builders, and growers for four to eight weeks at a time. You bring a project. We supply the ground, the tools, and the quiet.

About the residency

A skid-steer excavating the basin of a new pond in a brushy field, a worker standing by.
Plate iiiA pond is dug before it is filled — the kind of work a resident arrives in the middle of.
04 — Letters

Notes from the parcel, four times a year.

What was planted, what failed, what the water did. No newsletter theatre. Sent when there is something to report.