Diversified Crop Production And On-Farm Hospitality

Saturn’s Return is an Inn and diversified production farm that draws from all ecosystems on the property—wetlands, forest, and agricultural land—to yield vegetables, cut flowers, perennial food crops like nuts and berries, and pastured livestock. They offer guests the opportunity to eat from the land, to experience regeneration, and to get as involved (or not involved) in the act of growing food as they please.

Owners Emma and Wiley are just wrapping up an overwhelmingly successful first year of operation. They have enjoyed a year full of guests, retreats, tours, and dinners at the farm. They’ve proven the market demand for—and their own ability to deliver—opportunities for people to fall in love with a regenerating and nourishing landscape.

In the last year, Emma and Wiley have been busy renovating, hosting, and farming while at the same time rebuilding the ecological abundance on the land’s 42-acres. They’ve been planting trees, growing vegetables, and raising animals in contextually-appropriate ways that rebuild the land’s ecological cycles and natural resources.

The business is currently outperforming revenue projections, and spending far less than projected expenses—even with planned closures to make time for renovations to the inn that will provide guests with elevated accommodations going into next year.

Note: Emma and Wiley’s farm was previously known as the “San Juan Center for Regenerative Economy,” (SJCRE) a temporary name that has now evolved into “Saturn’s Return.” While the name has shifted, the farm, goals, and participants are all consistent with the SJCRE project listing.

Use of Funds

Saturn’s Return opened in the spring of 2023. Their opening coincided with their first Steward loan campaign to refinance the purchase of the property. During that first campaign, Steward sold $1,767,800 of the total $2,863,800 loan in loan participations to our lender network. The remaining $1,096,000 was held by Steward Regenerative Capital (SRC).

Since the close of that campaign, interested lenders from Emma and Wiley’s personal and local networks came forward and participated in the loan for a combined additional $505,000—further reducing the amount held by SRC.

Given the continuing interest from lenders to support the work at Saturn’s Return, we’ve decided to offer the remaining balance held by SRC to our lender network. This will enable more people to join the campaign to support Saturn’s Return while freeing up more capital in SRC to support new projects.

Regenerative & Sustainable Practices

In order to fit within the unique agro-ecological niche of the NW islands and mitigate the expense of importing inputs, Saturn’s Return utilizes a broad range of regenerative practices to invest in the farm soils and ecosystem:

• After establishment, garden beds will be managed as “no-till”

• On-site compost production and vermicomposting of food scraps from the inn’s commercial kitchen will scale to meet farm needs and ideally yield surplus for sale

• Alley cropping and agroforestry combine the benefits of perennial fruit and nut production with annual rows of vegetables and flowers

• Pastured poultry and other livestock will graze the agricultural lands adding diversification, disrupting pest life cycles, and improving soils

• Licensed seaweed harvesting adds the most local possible form of micronutrients to agricultural soils and contributes to a “closed-loop” farm model

• Riparian plantings and restoration work along the Garrison Creek watershed will protect the spawning grounds (on the farm property) of the island’s last population of native cutthroat trout

• Diversifying the farm business with on-site hospitality and events contributes to a more sustainable bottom line and the ability to pay living wages to farm staff