At 34, Sarah brings an eclectic background to her new role. She's been a librarian, a farm apprentice, a hospice volunteer, and most recently, managed a food co-op in Columbus. The thread connecting it all? A passion for helping people find what they need, whether that's the right book, the ripest tomato, or a peaceful place to call home.

Finding Marietta

Sarah discovered SILK Homes while researching intentional communities online. "I was looking for co-housing situations, ecovillages, anything that wasn't conventional apartment living," she explains. "SILK wasn't exactly what I was searching for, but it turned out to be what I needed."

She visited Marietta in September, fell in love with the historic river town, and when the innkeeper position opened up, she knew it was meant to be. "Marietta has this quality—it's small enough to know your neighbors but cultured enough that there's an art scene, a college, actual bookstores. It's rare."

The position of innkeeper at SILK Homes is part property manager, part community cultivator, part general problem-solver. Sarah maintains the physical property, screens potential residents, coordinates maintenance, and most importantly, helps foster the kind of intentional community that makes SILK different from ordinary rentals.

My job is to create conditions for connection, then get out of the way. People don't need orchestrated community—they need the space and permission to build it themselves. —  Sarah Mitchell

Homesteading Dreams

Sarah's personal passion is homesteading—not off-grid survivalism, but practical self-sufficiency skills integrated into modern life. "I want to know how to preserve food, mend clothes, keep chickens, grow vegetables. Not because I'm preparing for apocalypse, but because these skills connect me to life in tangible ways."

She's already planning expansion of the Marietta property's gardens, organizing a community canning workshop for next summer, and has introduced her chickens (Harriet, Louise, and Joan) to curious neighbors who'd never seen eggs that weren't store-bought.

"We've lost so much practical knowledge in just two generations," Sarah reflects. "My grandmother could preserve an entire summer's harvest. She made her own soap. She knew which wild plants were edible. I'm trying to relearn what she considered basic life skills."

Hospitality as Practice

What makes Sarah particularly suited to innkeeping is her understanding of hospitality as spiritual practice. "Creating welcoming space for others is its own form of service," she says. "When someone's had a hard day and they come home to a space that feels cared for, that matters."

She's known for small gestures—fresh flowers in common spaces, a basket of garden tomatoes left with a note, remembering that someone mentioned needing to borrow a particular tool. It's the kind of attentiveness that makes a house feel like home.

Residents are already noticing. Marcus, who moved in two weeks after Sarah started, says: "There's a warmth here that wasn't in other places I looked at. You can feel that someone cares about the space and the people in it."

Sarah's vision for the Marietta property is simple but profound: "I want this to be a place where people can explore who they're becoming without judgment. Where trying to live more intentionally is normal, not weird. Where community is available but not mandatory. Where home is both refuge and launching pad."

With her blend of practical skills, genuine warmth, and deep respect for both solitude and community, Sarah seems poised to make that vision real. Marietta is lucky to have her.

A New Chapter

What's remarkable about Sarah isn't that she has all the answers. It's that she's comfortable with the questions. She admits she's still learning the rhythm of innkeeping, still figuring out when to step in and when to step back, still discovering what intentional community needs from its steward.

"Some days I feel like I'm making it up as I go," she says with characteristic honesty. "Then I remember—that's actually what everyone's doing. The difference is just being intentional about which direction you're making it up in."

In the month since Sarah arrived, the Marietta property has started to feel different. It's subtle—fresh muffins appearing in the common kitchen, a note about the first frost reminding residents to bring in sensitive plants, a community calendar that somehow just materialized on the bulletin board. Small gestures that add up to something larger: the feeling that someone's paying attention.

And paying attention, Sarah would tell you, is ninety percent of good innkeeping. The other ten percent is knowing when to look away.