About Us
“Without community, there is no liberation”
-Audre Lorde
Sweetwater Hill - A community hub for resilience and justice.
Nestled in the rolling foothills of the Berkshire mountains, a small group of people and animals live adjacent to acres of roadless forest. Stewarding 160 of those acres, humans live alongside the land and it’s wild residents such as bear, deer, bobcats, moose and fisher cats. Community members make art, study, sing, play instruments, throw pots, dry herbs, work wood, syrup and honey…
We look forward to providing you with a place where you can belong just as you are, a sanctuary to retreat into and a learning laboratory for empowerment.
Values are the foundation of Sweetwater Hill activities.
- Community – Support human connection through gathering.
- Learn – Build rural living, sustainability or wellness skills in our learning laboratories.
- Sanctuary – Provide space for rest, ritual, movement, or connection with the natural world.
- Equity – Share and redistribute resources and provide access to the land and the barn.
- Play – Invite healing through art, music and creativity on the land.
We hope new frameworks for collective action and liberation will grow out of these values.
We are…
- Grateful for you and all the movement workers and creators who came before us, who accompany us and who guide changemaking around the globe.
- Shaped by our teachers and our collective decades of experience as educators, builders, healers, trainers, artists and tradespeople.
- In process, as we acknowledge the unearned privileges granted to us through whiteness, financial resources, physical ability and so much more.
Meet the Team
Pandora
(she/her)
Jaylin
(she/her)
Mel
(any pronouns)
I’m a Healing Arts practitioner, and theater artist with Southern Appalachian roots. Influenced by Robbie McCauley and Augusto Boal, I see theater as a deeply personal and political tool for changemaking that can be harnessed for our collective liberation and communal joy. As a co-steward of this land, I seek reciprocity with the earth and with you. As you explore Sweetwater Hill, I invite you to deeply restore, to play, and to allow your imagination the freedom to thrive.
India
(she/her)
I tend the land, barns and infrastructure at Sweetwater Hill. I am a builder and animal lover originally from St. Croix, and I have worked at just about everything under the sun. I love to bring humor, joy, and dancing to my days on the land.
Bella
(She-ish)
Community Partners
We are interested in community partnerships and would love to discuss your ideas with you.
Sweetwater Hill is blessed to be in relationship with many values-aligned organizations. We want to learn from, lift up and contribute to the thriving of our communities as is exemplified by these powerful local organizations.
Hilltown Land Trust
140 of the acres we steward are protected by a conservation restriction through an alliance of partners, spearheaded by the Hilltown Land Trust. We work closely together to monitor any changes on the land and HLT provides support such as coordinating volunteers to help us maintain trails.
Native Land Conservancy
Together, we are creating a Cultural Respect Easement on these 160 acres. As the Native Land Conservancy describes it, “a Cultural Respect Easement is a legal agreement that guarantees Indigenous people cultural access to land in perpetuity. We are deeply honored to be on a journey of learning and co-creation with the Native Land Trust and Hilltown Land Trust.
The Performance Project
The Performance Project celebrates and empowers communities through art and theater with first generation youth. Periodic retreats to support their performances happen here in our barn..
Light House Holyoke
We love and respect the incredible work of transforming education that is happening at Lighthouse. Staff and student meetings and retreats in the barn help incubate ideas and programs.
Land and People
Indigenous Stewards
This land has been a site of sanctuary, ritual, hunting, medicine and indigenous wisdom for centuries.…..
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The Pocumtuc, Mohican, Nipmuc, Nonotuck, and Agawam peoples inhabited this land before the violence and forced removals inflicted by white settler colonists.
We understand that trust-building, reparations and direct political action are ways to live into our values of liberation and healing. We invite you to join us in supporting Nipmuc-led initiatives like Pequiog Farm and No Loose Braids , and to learn about the Hassamanisco Nipmuc Band, the Chaubunagungamaug Band of Nipmuck and their people living and making change in Western Massachusetts. Land Reunion Commons is one place to learn more about relational repair and land return.
We invite you to connect directly with the Indigenous community in the region and learn more about Indigenous knowledge and land stewardship.
The Neighborhood
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In 1820, due to intensive resource extraction and the economic engine of raising sheep, there was an advertisement for these now heavily forested acres being sold as a “good grass farm”.
At one point, there was a stagecoach road from Boston to Albany that navigated through this land, and the old farmhouse was a tavern used by those passing through.
There is a record of a fatal 1826 stagecoach accident that happened very nearby at the base of Bascom Hill. We currently find wagon wheels and other evidence of horse travel through the likely route the road traversed.
When Westhampton was first settled by Europeans, the hills around us and across the street on Northwest Road, “people used to drive their pigs to the area to feed on the nuts that dropped from trees(acorns, hickory, walnuts, chestnuts).”
Northwest Road used to be called Shack St – “shack” being an old English word meaning “nuts or grain scattered on the ground”.
When we gather acorns to feed our pigs each autumn we connect with this unique local history.
Land and Watershed
We sit in the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains, the ancient edge of towering mountains..
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300 million years ago, there were mountains here as large as the Himalayas. Ever so slowly, the mountains eroded into beautiful rolling hills.
14 million years ago, these hills nestled along the threshold of Lake Hitchcock, which stretched from Rocky Hill, Connecticut, to St. Johnsbury, Vermont. The lake was created by the melting of the Laurentide Ice Sheet. The famously fertile soil in the area is a result of the sediment left behind from Lake Hitchcock. The Connecticut River Valley is our watershed.
Our beloved brook – Roberts Meadow – and our many hillside rivulets all flow to the Connecticut River.
Our Story
After visiting on a wintery day and seeing moose tracks in the snow near the house, the current stewards purchased the land in 2015. We acknowledge that under colonialism and capitalism, extraction and exploitation have led to concepts such as land ownership and land purchase. As the current title holders, we approach our roles as stewards with reciprocity and regeneration, not as “owners.”
At that time, there was a little barn and a 1780’s farmhouse in very poor condition sitting on twenty acres. We poured a year of hard work and love into a historical restoration. A few years later, 140 additional acres were acquired and reunited with the homestead.
In 2019, 120 of those forested acres were protected in perpetuity as part of the Brewer Brook Conservation Area. The conservation area is a collaboration spearheaded by Hilltown Land Trust that includes Kestral Land Trust and the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, resulting in a public trail along Robert’s Meadow Brook.
Since 2020, we constructed the big barn, equipment shed and a house. The majority of the construction was completed by community members living on-site. In addition to those unknown to us from the decades of prior inhabitants, two babies have been born here since 2015.
Currently, we tend a large homestead garden, keep bees and chickens, make maple syrup and raise, slaughter and butcher two pigs per season on site.
Connect with Us
We invite you to schedule a conversation to discuss your needs and ideas.