Hi! I’m Lindsay West and I am the human behind
Potter On The Farm
Potter On The Farm is my way of bringing together some of my passions; pottery and plants, craft and conservation.
I’ve been working with plants for over 25 years as a gardener, landscaper, native plant enthusiast, forager, budding herbalist and land steward. Since 2022 we have been farming native woodland medicinal herbs and small batch nursery plants on our mountainside property in Swannanoa, Talus Slope Farm. Our offerings will grow and change with the seasons, just as we all do.
I began working with clay in 2010 at our local community college, and fell in love with wood firing and salt glazing while working towards my degree at UNC Asheville. Upon graduation in 2015 I set up a studio and home with my husband, Matt, and in 2020 we built a wood fired kiln. I make durable, stoneware pottery to be used in the home, out in the garden, or at a potluck with friends.
Building the kiln
A labor of love.
Our kiln is a catenary arch, cross draft wood fired kiln. Matt and I built it together in 2020 with the support of friends and family. Before that, there were many years of preparation; collecting salvage brick from kilns we took down, cleaning the bricks (cutting and grinding wood ash and salt glaze off of them) and organizing them by size, grade and heat rating, a whole lot of land prep, and for Matt, designing the kiln to work with our property and our goals.
We built the shed with mostly salvage wood, and we harvested the trees for the posts from the kiln site. We took care to save as many plants in our path as we could possibly put back into the ground, and we inoculated trees we had to cut down with mushroom spawn, which was a whole lot of fun! We burn mostly cord wood from fallen trees around the farm, Pine and Tulip Poplar mostly, and some Ash since we’re losing them to the Emerald Ash Borer.
Here are some pictures of the build, and the work leading up to it..
