In 1951 Emil Klohe was prospering (along with most of post WWII America), and decided to purchase a piece of heaven in the Catskill Mountains. Emil and Frank Braun, a buddy from his German Club, came upon a nice 25-acre lot in the town of West Shokan, NY, that had been farmed for generations by the Eckert family. Located in Watson Hollow and running up the south side of Hanover Mountain, the land had been a low orchard at the bottom with mostly upland pasture, and woods kept as sugar bush where it became too steep on the bluestone ledges. Mine Hollow Brook flowed through the old orchard and crossed the Bushkill Stream at the bottom corner. The lot was divided in two and the men flipped a coin to see who would get the brook; Emil won.

    Emil acquired a small Arrow aluminum camping trailer and parked it by the brook, where it still stands today. On weekends he would come up from New Jersey to enjoy the fresh mountain air, meet up with his German-American community friends, and mow the lower field with his scythe. With only weekends at his disposal, however, the task of maintaining the pastureland higher up the mountainside proved impossible, so the area above his trailer slowly returned to woods.

    After Emil’s death in 1988, my father Egon Klohe and I followed in his footsteps, driving up from New Jersey to spend weekends camping out in what was once the upper field and exploring the bluestone ledges. These experiences with my father, along with my love of trees and reading My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George, made this land incredibly magical and precious to me. I would find myself daydreaming in class (and later at work) about living on this special piece of the earth.

    As we grew up, my brother Paul and I spent many weekends camping with our friends at that spot. After we lost our father in 2008, our shared dream of building a small cabin there felt even more imperative. My brother was fortunate enough to acquire Mr. Braun’s half of the original plot, which included a house built in the 1970s, so the 25 acres were recombined. Our occasional weekend trips became every weekend. We focused on fixing up the original logging road that wound up the ledges so that it could accept year-round vehicular use. Then, with the help of my fearless girlfriend Anneke Schaul-Yoder, the dream of a small cabin became a reality.

Beginning by building a camping platform at the base of the ledges above the upper field, we camped where we worked. We used the trees that had been cut to widen the road, milling them with our Norwood Lumber Mill. Guided by Jack Sobon’s books on timber framing, we slowly accrued old and new hand tools and set to work. After dry laying a 10’ x10’ foundation using stones from around the site, we got to work on the hand cut joinery. Building this small experimental structure was such a pleasure and education that we took our time and savored every moment. Yes, we could have slapped it up in a month, but we chose to do it the way the early settlers did it. The skeletal structure was erected without a single nail, just oak pegs, all of which were made by Anneke. We hand ripped the 1 ½-inch sheathing and floorboards to fit; not until it was time to do the siding did we cheat, using a Skilsaw and generator.

The more time we spent there the more it felt like home, and time away from it became more painful. Before I knew it, my dream of living on my grandfather’s land was coming true. The dream was also beginning to morph. Anneke and I were growing more and more of our own food in our suburban New Jersey backyard, and I was devouring literature on homesteading and farming (Mother Earth News, Backwoods Home Magazine, Eliot Coleman, Joel Salatin, the Nearings, Sepp Holzer, Masanobu Fukuoka, Toby Hemenway, Bill Mollison, Geoff Lawton, Ben Falk, Jack Spirko, Acres, permies.com, etc.). More than simply living on my grandfather’s land, I began to wonder, could I make a living off the land and help other people lead healthier lives?

This was a new pattern of thought for me. Until this point, all I had wanted to do was to live a self-reliant, detached, and selfish life on my side of the mountain. As I learned about non-industrial methods of food production, however, I became obsessed with clean food. Watching my loved ones put their bodies at unnecessary risk by eating chemical-based food products made me angry. At this turning point I decided to go forward. I sent an email to Stefan Sobkoviak of Les Fermes Miracle in Quebec after listening to an interview with him on Diego’s Permaculture Voices Podcast. I asked him for an internship and was accepted. The following summer I worked with Stefan and Frank Teuton at the farm, and I took Geoff Lawton’s online permaculture course and soaked up as much as my brain would hold.

I came to farming and permaculture via a circuitous route. While dairy farming is a part of my mother Carmen's family history in the Cantabria Region of Northern Spain, I was not fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to learn on the family farm. I come from a family of talented hands and gifted minds living in the suburbs of New York City. However, I was fortunate to grow up in a loving home where my dentist father taught me to use my hands and my university professor mother taught me how to use my mind. During weekend home improvement projects with Dad, I started to learn how systems work. Evening book discussions and weeknight operas with Mom instilled in me the value of beauty and most of all, curiosity. They empowered me to be confident in learning not only new skills, but new ways of thinking. My farming education began later in my professional life; I spent my first twenty years of work in automobile repair. At the age of seventeen I was very lucky to be accepted into a five-year, European-style apprenticeship with old-school masters working on high-end luxury cars on the outskirts of Manhattan. Thankfully these skills, combined with the management and small business experience I gained there, afforded me a significant amount of confidence and independence. My years working for Wolfgang and Mary Ritter were wonderful; I couldn’t have asked for a more caring and supportive family to have worked for. They, along with my highly skilled co-workers, had a great influence on the businessman I am today.

I was spurred to go to college in the wake of the 9-11 event, which left me awestruck by my own ignorance. While working on cars, I was able to put myself through Rutgers College and earn a Bachelor of Arts. I studied world religions and biology, preparing for a possible medical career until my senior year, when  I felt the pull to ecology while taking electives. Bowing to societal pressures, however, I decided to stay in the car business so that I could settle down and buy a small house in my hometown of Leonia, NJ. I didn’t know it then, but ecology would resurface in my life ten years later when I sold my house, paid off my debts, quit my job, moved off the grid into a tiny house, and started Emil’s Agroforest LLC.

My goals are to do what is best for the land, my family, and my community in my father’s and grandfather’s honor. I want the people in my community to have access to the best medicine there is; good food.  I want to live out the remainder of my years helping this land recover from being raped of its topsoil by overgrazing and erosion, turning it into a resilient, beautiful work of edible art that will provide security and bounty for generations to come. This is my calling. I’ve been feeling the pull for as long as I can remember, it just took me this long to see it and to put it all together. I have been so very fortunate thus far in my life and I want to give back to the earth and its people in this way.