About
A nonprofit with one parcel, twelve projects, and a preference for showing the work rather than describing it.
Primeterra exists to demonstrate that degraded land can be made productive again without being simplified — that a property can produce food, fuel, and material while gaining species, soil depth, and water-holding capacity rather than losing them.
Mission
To practise and document regenerative land use — water management, agroforestry, small livestock, appropriate technology, and craft — on a single parcel in western Washington, and to make the record of that work useful to anyone attempting the same on their own ground.
We are not a certification body and we are not selling a method. Some of what we do will not work here, and we will say so when it does not.
Method
Draw before you dig. Every intervention on this parcel begins on paper: a survey, a contour map, a shadow study, a plan at a readable scale. Paper is cheap and mistakes on it are reversible.
Start small, finish, and measure. A half-acre that works teaches more than ten acres that are stalled. We build one system at a time and keep notes on cost, labour, and outcome.
Prefer the repairable. If a machine cannot be fixed with what is in the barn, it is the wrong machine. This applies to pumps, buildings, and software alike.
Publish the failures. A project that only publishes its successes is advertising.
Values
Ancestral practice, held honestly. Hunting, gathering, burning, and rotational grazing are not nostalgia; they are techniques with long records. We use them where they work and we credit where they come from.
Land as a member, not a resource. The parcel has its own interests — water, soil, species — and a design that ignores them will fail on a long enough timeline.
Craft as infrastructure. The ability to weld, sharpen, graft, sew, and build is not a lifestyle accessory. It is what makes a place independent.
Open doors. The work is worth more shared than protected.
The three of us
Everything here is done by a very small number of people.
Akuma Osito
Founder & land steward
Designs and runs the water systems and the records. Took the parcel on with a contour map and a borrowed laser level.
Liz Limon
Horticulture & residency
Runs the orchard, the nursery, and the residency calendar. Keeps the planting plan honest about what survives a wet winter.
Zoraida Figueroa
Livestock & community
Manages the goats, the poultry, and the gathering. Welcomes anyone visiting the parcel.
Primeterra is a Washington nonprofit. Board minutes and annual accounts are available on request.
We are one valley over from most of the advice.
What works in California does not necessarily work here, where it rains forty inches a year and the frost comes late. We are trying to write down the local version.