Founded by Eustace Conway, Turtle Island Preserve is an Appalachian Heritage Farm & Education Center . We are a 501 c 3 Non-Profit Organization.
Turtle Island is located in a remote hidden valley at the end of a long gravel road. Our programs are full of lifestyle practices of earlier people from our great grandparent's time and back into prehistory. We orient to the basic foundation of where things come from and where things go. We plant and harvest in our gardens, milk goats, make bowls, spoons and tools of all size and description. We hunt and gather wild foods and medicines and natural resources abounding in our huge natural preserve. We cook on a fire, gathering our own wood. We completely made the many buildings of our farmstead; carved literally from the wilderness.
Accommodations for guests are simple shelters i.e., log houses and primitive tents. We really believe in getting back in touch with the natural world. We use outhouses for our bathrooms and learn to "go outdoors." This is a complete cultural experience not a watered down viewing. When a group comes here it is life changing for them. That is our vision, goal, and success! We get hands on "experiential" activities going whether harnessing a mule or pounding metal at the blacksmith shop or killing a rooster for supper.
Some people mistake a description of primitive living with "roughing it" but actually our ancestors moved gracefully with a balanced rhythm through daily economic challenges. It is the sophisticated "modern man" that, in his bumbling ignorance of earlier natural lifestyles, finds himself truly uncomfortably "roughing it" through his inability and discomfort of trying to exist in his "foreign environment" of nature.
We live, teach, breathe and believe in nature's governing truths. We interact with the beautiful clarifying teachings of nature as we interpret it's story. We are more about doing it than talking about it. We invite you to visit us and experience all that is Turtle Island!
Camps for youth, adults families, schools, scouts and more!
