After moving out of Los Angeles with his family nearly five years ago, actor Ian Somerhalder has turned his focus to more gratifying endeavors, showing there is more to life than Hollywood.
The “Vampire Diaries” star and Reed share a passion for the environment and a sustainable way of life, and have found that farming and producing their own food has been far more rewarding.
“What my parents taught us very early is, if you look around, there is a balance in nature. If you give back as much or more than you take, then you will find an enormous bounty of health and happiness and success and all these things that people want and dream,” said Somerhalder.
He stressed the importance of teaching their two young children strong values such as building strong connections within the community and respecting nature.
“That’s what we teach our kids and our friends teach their kids, is to be respectful of the balance and really appreciate that balance and live that balance,” he said.
“And with that balance comes boundless harmony and boundless food and energy and fun and all those things that we want, but you can’t just take and take and take. It doesn’t work.”
Somerhalder noted with success comes failure, and it’s a valuable life lesson he’s learned through farming and hopes to instill within his children.
“You learn some of the things that you try and plant may not work, but other ones do, and then you get into this system of when the kids are involved and you and then your community’s involved, and then you find yourself living this really cool sharing, bartering system with your neighbors.”
Somerhalder does not have regrets about the lifestyle change, and while he enjoys the craft of filmmaking and acting, being self-reliant through the simpler pleasures in life is what truly makes him and his family happy.
“People have some corn, and I’ve got beans. And it’s just very cool. It’s like the way it used to be done, and it feels far and I’m not trying to sound like sort of incendiary or anything, but to me, it’s far more gratifying and feels way more elevated than being all fancy, which is fun too, but at the end of the day, this is where the rubber meets the road and it’s connective.”
For two years now, the actor has partnered with the pet food brand Nutro to bring awareness to the importance of preserving soil.
The company launched its $5 million “Greater Ground” initiative back in 2022 to help train and support growers in the implementation of healthy soil practices.
“If you think about it, you have [a] 100-plus year-old pet food company that really wanted to invest and lay down even deeper roots with their farmers and say, ‘Hey, listen, we recognize that there are amazing, healthy soil practices that you can utilize, but it’s a little daunting to make that transition. It’s hard and a little scary to think about that. We’re gonna hold your hand and we’re gonna help you,’” Somerhalder said.
He continued, “That is huge. To have a legacy pet food brand, that has the wherewithal and the foresight to deploy those types of resources to do that. It’s a statistical anomaly.”
