In Memory of Sari

This homestead carries her name — the Sari Memorial Homestead — because almost everything written here grew from something she taught. Sari passed in 2016 from a brain aneurysm. It was sudden, and it was far too soon. But the life she shared didn't end with her; it lives in the skills, the meals, and the way of living she passed on.

What she taught

A Whole Way of Living

Sari introduced me to the things this site is built around. She brought me into agriculture and the satisfaction of working the land. She taught me to cook — really cook. She took me camping and fishing, and onto the snow to ski and snowboard. The five pillars of SMHomestead aren't an abstract content strategy; they're a map of what she gave me.

She could taste a meal once at a restaurant and recreate it at home from memory — better, usually — and never write a thing down.

That was her gift in the kitchen. Sari could sit down to a dish at a restaurant, pay attention, and then recreate it from memory in her own kitchen — often improving on the original. She cooked by instinct and palate, not by recipe cards, which made every meal feel like a small act of generosity.

Carrying it forward

Rebuilding the Recipes

Because Sari rarely wrote her recipes down, much of her cooking lived only in her memory — and in the memory of those who ate at her table. Part of the mission of this homestead is to rebuild those recipes: reconstructing her dishes from memory, taste, and trial, and weaving in her grandmother's recipes that came down through the family.

As we recover and test them, we'll share them here — so the meals she made from memory can be made again, in other kitchens, by other hands. It's slow work, and some of it is guesswork. But it feels like the right way to keep her close.

Real skills. Real land. Real life. — all of it, because of her.