Welcome to Garden Of Life Community Projects!

Stephanie from Stephanie Holistic Coaching grew up in the South of France where life is known for the Provençal cuisine and for the delightful scents of lavender, rosemary, thyme, garlic, basil, and freshly pressed olive oil. She grew up having a vegetable garden, cooking homemade food, while knowing about the benefits of eating fresh whole foods and herbal plants. When she moved to the Carolinas in 2010 she really wanted to grow her own food again, and expose later on her children to gardening.

As the years went by she practiced growing in pots, bought a tower garden for her backyard, along with a compost bin, and learned about the importance of compositing. She was wondering how she could improve her gardening skills and find locally better soil quality, until one day in Fall 2020, as she was looking on an online gardening group where to buy organic bay leaves plants to use in her cooking, she received a message inviting her to harvest as much as bay leaves she wanted, located in South Charlotte.

Upon her arrival, she and her family were welcomed by two wonderful and generous people named Susan & Charlie. She witnessed a backyard reconverted entirely into a vegetable garden. If you are familiar with the Carolina's type of soil you know it's all red clay. This garden had none of it. It was squishy as she was walking on it, spongy, rich in black soil, and covered with an abundance of food growing. She was amazed about the outcome and deep inside wanted to know more about their growing techniques. She left from that place with her trunk full of grocery paper bags filled up with bay leaves (enough for the next 50 years at least), but also with turmeric plants, holly basil plants, raspberry plants and more. Not knowing yet at that time... It was the beginning of their friendship.

A year passed by when Stephanie reached out to Susan to ask her about a gardening question. From that conversation Susan invited her, her family, and some of her homeschooling friends to come visit their new homestead farm located about 1h away from Charlotte, NC. 

Since, along with being passionate about functional holistic health, wellness & stress reduction, Stephanie has been developing a community of like-minded people wanting to learn about gardening, health, wellness, nutrition, cooking and about supporting each other. It is why Stephanie has created Garden Of Life Community Projects! 

“Little Peace of Heaven” is a homestead farm located about 1h away from Charlotte, NC, and 20 minutes from South Mountain State Park with beautiful waterfall hikes, part of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Our homestead is an organic permaculture farm using the wisdom of ancestral practices with Composting, Permaculture, No-dig and Biodynamic Gardening!

In a nutshell, our passion on the farm is really about composting and the various ways of converting organic matter into natural fertilizer to condition and improve the land we are growing our food on.

Why Composting?

First, composting helps reduce the amount of garbage that is thrown away in the landfill everyday and helps decrease greenhouse gas emissions. Then, it helps support sustainable gardening and farming practices by recycling organic waste.

Furthermore, composting helps enrich the soil health with nutrients that support beneficial microorganisms. By doing so it promotes various benefits. For example, it helps increase the soil organic content, improves its texture, optimizes fertility, and also helps establish a proper root system for better soil drainage. 

Overall, using composted matter in the garden helps stimulate and nourish the ecosystems of the soil by providing nutrients, moisture, and habitat for a huge range of organisms living in the soil. Which is crucial for promoting plant growth and maintaining soil fertility.

Last but not least, using compost in our garden beds also enhances plants' resistance to pests, diseases, and also unexpected extreme weather for example. All together, it helps the plants and the soil to respond quickly and more effectively when facing Mother Nature’s challenges.

To sum up, composting is a major pillar to grow a vegetable garden, indispensable to nourish soil health and optimize the nutrient density of the food we want to produce. If you are learning about gardening and want to grow your own food using a more organic and ecological approach, join us during private tours, held a few times a year, to introduce you to the various techniques, the whys, the mindset behind the growing and way of life, and have hands-on activities! During these events we will also talk about homesteading, whole food, food processing, and farm to table cooking lifestyle! 

To be informed about the events happening at the farm and when to join with your family, children, and friends… Follow our social media platforms @GardenOfLifeCommunityProjects featuring what we are doing at “Little Peace of Heaven”.

Planning on visiting us? Please fill up and sign the "Waiver and Release of Liability Form" further below on that page!

We are looking forward to seeing you!

Susan & Charlie

We are Susan and Charlie. We live in our homestead farm we named “Little Peace of Heaven”, where we are growing as much of our food as possible using regenerative growing practices. The soil is like the gut of the Earth and we believe it is imperative to bring back the soil’s life to nourish the plants that therefore nurture our body.

In 2012 I taught a class in cancer fighting foods. The research I needed to teach the class reignited my passion to improve our health. I was a registered dietitian and the food service director at a local hospital. Our hospital did outreach programs designed to educate people about current health issues. They approached the clinical dietitian manager to provide a lecture on the role of nutrition and health. We teamed up to educate people and give them hope that simple changes in their diet could reduce the risk of cancer. I also had a cooking demonstration of 3 menu items they could cook in less time than it takes to eat out. It was the only lecture in the series that was standing room only. This experience sparked the desire to build a vegetable garden with more nutritious food, and minimize processed foods.

In 2015 we purchased a 12 acre farm to grow our own nutrient dense foods, with the goal to turn the clay soil into black gold. Upon Charlie’s retirement, in 2018, we started building our home, and prepared the soil before moving in in 2020.

Today, we love being able to grow delicious rich food that has not been exposed to any herbicides or pesticides. Our yields have doubled each year and the quality and flavor of what we are growing is incomparable; bringing us back in time to the way our ancestors did before the use of chemicals. The joy of loving the land and learning the ways of Mother Nature is truly awesome and challenging at times, but always rewarding.

We don’t sell any produce. We grow for ourselves and we enjoy sharing what we have learned through the years with our family, our friends, and there children; and with anyone coming to the farm interested in improving their health and learning about how to grow their own food using ecological approach and different techniques of composting for delicious organic food by using permaculture.

We officially started the Community Garden from scratch in Fall 2022! New to permaculture and no-dig gardening, I was able with my family to have hands-on experiences in growing our own vegetables using the different techniques of composting, gardening, with an ecological approach to regenerate and nourish the soil through the seasons!  

Thank you so very much Susan & Charlie for your expertise, your guidance, your support, your help, your kindness, and making this community project happen! It won't have been the same without you! And thank you to anyone who joined us on this journey during the past years to volunteer! 

Along with discovering the "Little Peace of Heaven" Homestead Farm, you and your family will have the unique opportunity to experience right on site, and develop your own gardening skills while learning the mindset behind permaculture, no-dig, biodynamic gardening, and composting as a team and as a developing community! 

Following the gardening workshops you will be able to use the various techniques at home in your own garden with more knowledge and confidence in what to do while using local resources and sustainable methods, inspired from the wisdom of ancestral practices! 

Contact us and join us for a tour, or gardening workshop days!

Happy Growing! 

Stephanie
@GardenOfLifeCommunityProjects