The Wild Edge of Hospitality
How a new model of agritourism can help us relearn what our grandparents never meant to lose.
The Remedies That Weren’t “Real”
I was seven the first time I remember getting really sick — the kind where your body feels like it’s made of lead and your throat burns with every swallow.
My Nan appeared with a jar of something amber and thick. Honey laced with something green. A steaming pot that smelled halfway between soup and soil. She’d hand me a spoon and say, “It’ll settle you.”
And it did.
Within a day, the fever broke. Within two, I was back outside.
My mom — a registered nurse — watched this whole ritual with the kind of polite skepticism you reserve for things that work but shouldn’t. She trusted Nan’s hands, but not her methods. If it wasn’t in a bottle with a label, it wasn’t real medicine.
That tension — between what Nan knew in her bones and what my mom had been trained to trust — is the same tension I see playing out across hospitality right now.
We’ve forgotten how to feed and heal ourselves from the land. We’ve outsourced wisdom to convenience. And in just a few generations, we’ve allowed folk medicine, wild foods, and heritage practices to erode into content we scroll past instead of knowledge we carry.
Someone, somewhere called this “The Great Forgetting” — and it’s costing us more than we realize.
What We’ve Lost (and How Fast We Lost It)
By 1944, Victory Gardens were producing 40% of all vegetables grown in the United States. More than 20 million gardens. Approximately 9–10 million tons of food. This wasn’t just patriotism — it was national policy that positioned home food production as essential infrastructure.
The USDA explicitly stated the program’s purpose was to “maintain and improve the morale and spiritual well-being of the individual, family, and Nation.” Even government agencies once understood food production as psychological infrastructure, not just caloric necessity.
Then, almost as soon as that competence proved itself essential, the story changed.
Post-war industrial agriculture, supermarket culture, and globalized supply chains converged to send one very clear message: Food is something you buy, not something you know. Land became scenery. Your grandparent’s know-how became quaint but unnecessary.
Over just a couple of decades, Victory Gardens gave way to manicured lawns. Cellars full of jars became cupboards full of brands. The seasonal rhythm of planting, preserving, and mending got replaced by year-round abundance on shelves.
Research confirms what many of us feel intuitively: traditional ecological knowledge — the accumulated environmental knowing passed hand-to-hand — is eroding fast. Studies show “strong evidence for a lower level of skills among people starting to learn and participate in more recent years.” We’re watching measurable decline across just one or two generations.
What your Nan did by muscle memory now shows up as a trending TikTok. A $200 sourdough course. An aestheticized reel of someone hanging herbs in a spotless kitchen.
The knowledge didn’t disappear. It got outsourced, packaged, and turned into content.
Why Hospitality Is Uniquely Positioned to Reverse This
Here’s what most people miss: hospitality isn’t just shelter. It’s a holding container for transformation.
A farm stand can feed you. A workshop can teach you. A YouTube channel can inspire you. But hospitality can hold you while you actually become someone new.
Guests don’t book stays just to sleep in a different bed. They come because they’re tired, curious, disoriented, celebrating, grieving, on the edge of a decision, or aching for a reset. They’re already loosened. Their habits are already disrupted.
That makes hospitality a high-leverage environment for rewiring. Guests have time. They’re open to novelty. Their nervous systems are softer, making new associations and memories stick deeper.
If a farm stand offers tomatoes and a workshop offers a canning lesson, a hospitality property can offer: “I’ll feed you the tomato, teach you what to do with it, and then give you space to feel how different your body, your mind, your sense of time feels afterwards. And then I’ll send you home with a way to keep going.”
That arc — experience → integration → identity shift — is where forgetting is actually reversed.
The global agritourism market was valued at $8.10 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $15.78 billion by 2030. Farm-stay listings on platforms like AirBnB and HipCamp have increased by roughly 77% over the past five years — about twice the overall growth rate of listings on these platforms.
This isn’t a niche curiosity. It’s a fundamental shift in what travelers are hungry for.
The Wild Hospitality Model: Weeds as Teachers
Wild Gardening Is Not a Battle
We’ve been sold a very particular story about gardening:
It’s hard. It’s a fight. It takes endless effort, inputs, grit, and a permanent to‑do list.
But that story mostly belongs to the cultivated beds and the non‑native visitors — the plants we insist on coaxing into places they were never designed to thrive.
Wild gardening plays by a different set of rules.
We joke that something “grows like a weed” as if that’s a problem, but in a world this fragile, anything that can feed us and heal us with that kind of stubborn abundance probably deserves a little more respect.
The plants I’m talking about — heritage, indigenous, ancient varieties, and the so‑called “weeds” our great‑grandparents knew by name — arrive with something their gentrified cousins often lack: innate resilience. They know how to root into your specific climate, condition your soil, fend for themselves with minimal inputs, and quietly produce more than they take.
They don’t need you to rescue them. They need you to recognize them.
These plants, herbs, bushes, vines and trees are often more nutrient-dense, more flavorful, and more medicinally powerful than the shiny, uniform produce you’ll find under grocery store lights. And here’s the part that still blows my mind: some of them only need to be planted once. One plant, tucked into the right spot, can feed a family several times a year for decades. Not a single harvest, but a recurring relationship.
That’s not romanticism; that’s logistics worth relearning.
So when I talk about “growing weeds,” I’m not inviting you into a life of constant struggle with the land. I’m inviting you to step out of a war that never needed to be waged in the first place — and into a collaboration with the plants that have been here all along, waiting for us to remember what they can do.
So what does this look like in practice?
Start with what’s already growing. The scrappiest bit of your property — the cracks, the fence line, the margin where things grow without being invited.
Weeds are your first teachers.
Pick one plant most people walk past or spray. Learn its name (Latin + local). Share one story: folk use, family memory, cultural context. Add one practical takeaway: how to use it, or how to grow it at home.
That’s it. One plant, one story, one action.
With that single plant, you can:
✔️ Add a small sign or QR code: “Meet plantain: the original first aid kit under your feet. Scan to learn how your great-grandparents used it.”
✔️ Integrate it into a welcome walk — a five-minute “land literacy starter kit while you’re here.”
✔️ Bring it into one menu item or tea blend, with a line on the menu that says why it matters.
✔️ Create a brief staff briefing so your team can answer “What’s that?” with a story instead of “Oh, just a weed.”
You haven’t added a new building or spa. You’ve simply turned existing, ignored land into a living classroom.
From Weeds to Revenue Ecosystems
Here’s where this gets commercially interesting.
Once one plant becomes a teacher, you can repeat the pattern across your entire property — and your entire revenue model.
Food & Beverage as Curriculum
Your F&B isn’t just “local and seasonal” — it’s curriculum you can eat. Themed suppers like “In Defense of Weeds” or “Victory Garden Revival” become ticketed experiences. A 20-minute pre-dinner “walk and nibble” where guests learn 1–3 plants and then see them on the plate creates premium pricing because every item has a why attached.
House vermouth, bitters, shrubs, salts, teas featuring your “weeds” become signature items that justify higher check averages. You’re not serving salad — you’re serving a conversation with the land.
Native Retail: Shoppable Remembering
If shoppable hotel rooms are “buy the robe and the lamp,” your version is “buy the knowledge and the tools to keep practicing at home.” Seed packets, foraging baskets, simple tools, elixirs, tonics, pantry items (vinegars, salts, teas, infused honeys), printed field cards on “5 plants you met on this land and what to do with them.”
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That little sign by the plant isn’t just info — it links to a product you sell or a partner product with commission. Your room directory becomes a “what you can take home from this stay” guide.
Programming & Memberships: The Local Learning Hub
Seasonal workshops for locals and return guests: “Spring Weeds 101,” “Fire & Ferments,” “Victory Garden Starters.” Priced per workshop or bundled as a seasonal pass. A membership model where locals pay monthly or seasonally for priority access to events, special F&B nights, discounts on retail, and a quarterly “what’s in season to learn” guide.
You become their third place — the spot where they and their kids learn how to be in relationship with land again.
According to the U.S. Census of Agriculture, approximately 7% of U.S. farms now offer agritourism services, with many earning $25,000 to $100,000 annually from supplementary activities, and exceptional cases exceeding $1 million per year from integrated farmstay and activity revenues.
This model isn’t just philosophically compelling — it’s commercially viable.
The Psychology of Transformation
David Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory defines learning as “the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience.” The four-stage cycle — concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation — emphasizes that “knowledge emerges through a cyclical interplay between ‘doing’ and ‘thinking.’”
This validates why hospitality environments that create hands-on, multi-sensory encounters with land-based knowledge produce deeper retention than passive information consumption.
Research on transformative travel confirms that “travel can elicit transformative learning by disrupting existing worldviews through encounters with Otherness.” Transformative experiences occur most powerfully “in unfamiliar environments, enhancing personal growth and intercultural competence.”
Place-based hospitality experiences create ideal conditions for lasting behavior change because they combine:
• Continuous immersion (not one-off exposure): The herb you learned about at dinner shows up in the tea station that night, on the info card in the cabin, in the story at the campfire.
• Multi-sensory, emotional layering: You feed it to them (taste), let them touch it, plant it, harvest it (touch), let them smell it on the fire or in the bath (smell), tell a story about it (emotion, meaning).
• Identity shift, not just skill acquisition: A workshop might leave someone saying “I learned about elderberry.” A stay can leave them saying “I’m the kind of person who knows what to do with elderberry.”
That’s branding at the soul level.
The Operational Reality Check
I know what you’re thinking: “This sounds beautiful, but I barely have time to keep the bathrooms clean.”
Fair. So let’s talk about how this works within real constraints.
Start with desire, not duty. If the whisper of “I want to host differently” isn’t there, this model isn’t for you — and that’s fine. But if that whisper exists, you’re not adding a new job description. You’re finding a new spine.
Pick one thing you already care about. For some, that will be weeds and wild food. For others, it might be cold water and nervous system reset, firecraft and outdoor skills, preserving and fermenting, or fiber and handcraft. One theme. One story. One way to help guests participate and take it home.
Start micro. One tiny layer that piggybacks on what you’re already doing. Already serving breakfast? Add a simple table tent with one paragraph about what grew nearby and made its way onto the plate. Already have a campfire? Train one staff member to share a single “fire fact” or short story when they light it. Already stocking local soap? Add a small card: what’s in it, who made it, one way to use it.
You’re embedding meaning into existing touchpoints instead of bolting on a whole new program.
You don’t have to be the expert. You can be the curator and convener. Bring in a local herbalist once a month. Partner with a forager, a fermenter, a craftsperson. Give them the platform; you hold the container.
Your role becomes: make sure it fits your spine, feels like your brand of hospitality, and works with your staffing and seasonality.
The Strategic Moat
Here’s why a property doing this well becomes genuinely difficult for competitors to replicate.
The moat isn’t “we teach about plants.” The moat is the irreproducible combination of your land, your people, your lens — and the body of work you build over time.
Even if someone cloned your website tomorrow, they still don’t have your exact mix of soil, microclimate, weeds, trees, birds, bugs. Your specific edges. The local histories — Victory Gardens in your town, your elders’ stories, the crops or industries that rose and fell around you.
When you build your model around this land, right here, you’re not teaching “plants in general.” You’re teaching this place. The plant walk in your meadow will never be the same as the plant walk on someone else’s hillside.
Your second moat is how you and your team hold the experience. Your comfort level with story, silence, and play. Your particular mix of backgrounds. The way you respond to questions, skepticism, enthusiasm.
Two properties can both offer “herb walks.” One will feel like a school field trip; the other will feel like being folded into someone’s extended family and invited to remember alongside them.
Same format, totally different imprint.
The longer you do this, the deeper the groove gets. Each season, you add stories of drought, abundance, that one hailstorm, the year the chickadees went wild for the seed ornaments. You refine what works. Guests come back and layer their own memories.
By year three, five, ten, you’re not just “a place that teaches about plants.” You’re a place with a living archive that no one else has.
The Permission You’re Not Giving Yourself
If you feel that quiet pull — the “I want to host differently” whisper — you’re already halfway across the threshold.
The rest is just deciding to treat that feeling as strategy, not as a liability.
You’re allowed to care first and commercialize second. Most operators have been taught the opposite: start with ADR, RevPAR, channel mix, then sprinkle some “meaning” on top if there’s room left.
What you’re sensing is an inversion: start with meaning that’s real to you, then build revenue streams that express it. That doesn’t make you naive. It makes you a better long-term strategist, because models built on genuine care age better than models built on whatever sells this quarter.
You’re allowed to be small, specific, and iterative. You don’t have to launch a fully formed “weeds and wild wisdom” resort overnight. Start with one plant, one story, one tiny experiment. Let it be a side current before it becomes the main river.
You’re allowed to host as yourself. Your guests don’t need you to be a perfectly polished wellness guru or hyper-qualified botanist. They need you to be honest about what you love and what you’re learning.
You can say: “My Nan knew this. I’m relearning it alongside you.” Or: “I’m not an herbalist; I’m a host who cares deeply about what grows here.”
You’re allowed to let your care for land, lineage, and guests show up in your business model. It’s not unprofessional — it’s the point.
Where to Begin
If you read this piece and feel that whisper turn into a “yes,” here’s the single smallest, most concrete action to take in the next 48 hours:
Go outside, find one “weed,” learn its name, and write a tiny story card for it.
Step outside on your property and choose one plant that’s growing without anyone’s permission. Look it up. Learn its common name, one traditional use, and one simple way a guest could safely interact with it.
But by the time those 48 hours are up, you’ll have a plant with a name, a story attached to it, and a first draft of how you’d invite someone else into that knowing.
That’s how remembering begins.
Not because we’ve read about it, but because we’ve done it — together, on purpose, with our hands on the thing instead of only seeing it on a screen.
The land hasn’t forgotten.
It’s been waiting for us to remember how to listen.
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Hi ya, I’m Heather. 👋
I’m a hospitality innovator working with visionary, independent owner‑operators across boutique, craft, and outdoor hospitality — the folks shaping glamping resorts, inns, BnBs, landscape hotels, and experiential stays that refuse to blend in.
After nearly two decades moving through cannabis, drinks education, private equity, market research, and agency-building, I landed here: helping hospitality entrepreneurs turn their properties into living ecosystems, not just places to sleep.
I believe in place‑based differentiation, revenue models that reach far beyond the room night, and guest experiences that help people remember something true — about land, lineage, and themselves — not just entertain them for a long weekend.
If you’re an owner‑operator who’s tired of “best practices” that flatten your edge, or you’re ready to build a business model around participation instead of passive consumption, I’d love to connect.
Find me on LinkedIn, and let’s explore the messy, strategic, deeply human work of building hospitality that actually transforms.
Let’s build something uncopyable, rooted in the ground right under your feet.
🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼
