Homestead Camp
This action-packed session will build campers’ confidence, character, skills, and muscles, while having a ton of fun with some of Ekone’s most dynamic and talented campers and staff!
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Homestead Camp is designed especially for those who love to make things with their own two hands, and want to learn the traditional arts and skills of homesteading. Our projects will center around the necessities of ranch life and DIY skills, including things like harvesting and preserving food from the garden, identifying wild medicinal and edible plants, making salves and herbal remedies, sewing and leatherworking, milking goats and tending to pigs, chickens, and other livestock, putting in hay and firewood, making pasta, sausage, bread, and other goodies from scratch, and of course lots of sleeping under the stars, swimming in the pond, playing games, and all the usual Ekone magic!
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Campers will also have the opportunity to work on the Homeplace, a sweet gathering spot in the woods first begun by Homestead campers in 2018.
**Note that Homestead Campers will not ride horses, leaving more time for all those homestead adventures!**
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If you haven’t already, visit our main About Camp page
to get a feel for our camp philosophy, history and the scope the Ekone Summer Camp program
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Please visit the Apply Here! page to find out how to sign up!
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Lead Staff for Homestead Camp
Liz Coppola
Liz has a special understanding with chickens, but she understands horses and kids pretty well, too.
A dynamic leader and longtime staff member, Liz first came to Ekone as a camper in 1995 and hasn’t missed a summer since. She is most known around the ranch for her love of all things related to homestead living: fixing things, building things, raising goats, pigs, and poultry, cooking and preserving food, putting in firewood, driving the tractor, having ever more Supreme Adventures in the woods, reading voraciously whenever there's time, and laughing loud enough to be heard from the other side of the ranch! Liz has lived year-round at Ekone since 2013, and is now the Operations Director, as well as supporting many weeks of summer camp and other programs. Before coming to live at Ekone full-time, Liz spent six years managing a small pasture-based livestock farm on Vashon Island, WA, raising dairy cows, pigs, sheep, and poultry for the Seattle farmer's markets.
Liz grew up in SE Portland, and graduated from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she received a BA in Media and Cultural Studies, as well as working at the college’s farm and CSA. She is also certified in Wilderness First Aid.
pronouns: she/her
Alyssa Eckert
Alyssa is our resident Craft Queen and a loving goat mama.
Alyssa has been coming to camp for the past four years. She never got the opportunity to come as a camper, but is now making up for lost time! Alyssa loves to explore the relationship between arts & crafts and the natural world with the kids, and to wander in the woods learning about the different plants and critters in the area.
When not at Ekone, Alyssa spends her time pursuing her own art, playing with her plants and exploring a new found love for cooking. Her favorite Ekone activity: Evenings milking the goats!
pronouns: she/her
Amalia Silverheart
Famous for her infectious enthusiasm, Amalia dives ALL the way in to all things summer camp!
Amalia first arrived at Ekone as a camper in 2012 as and instantly fell in love with a certain grey cat. She then found that she loved the land and the people so much that she had to come back, and eventually got to know the horses, too. She loves to introduce campers to the woods, the plants, and the shyest of animals, and to guide them in handcrafts and storytelling. When she’s not at camp, Amalia likes to read, knit, sew, draw everything she sees, and practice martial arts. After graduating high school and taking a gap year, she ventured to Earlham College in the fall of 2019 where she plans to study Public Health and Sustainable Agriculture (and take a bunch of art classes!).
Her favorite Ekone activity: Just one? A trail ride followed by a clean-up dance party followed by music in the dusk.
pronouns: she/her
For a taste of Homestead Camp, check out this slideshow from 2018:
