You’re probably wondering how we settled on the name “Capella” for our farm. Well, it’s a short and complicated story about Berlin, a goat, and a binary star.
Do you know what a cornucopia is? You probably colored in a drawing of one in kindergarten just before Thanksgiving. A cornucopia is the large horn, lying on its side, overflowing with gourds and vegetables and is a common symbol for abundance and the harvest.
According to ancient Greek mythology, the “real” cornucopia was once a horn that belonged to a mythical goat named ‘Almathea’, who suckled Zeus while Gaia hid him from his father, the Titan Kronos (although some stories say she was a Nymph that suckled him with goat’s milk). One day, while suckling Almathea, Zeus reached up and accidently broke the horn, which immediately spilled abundance and sealed it’s fate as a symbol of plenty forever.
The name “Capella” is latin for “little goat” and that binary star was named for Almathea, the goat (or Nymph) that fed and saved Zeus. The name Capella is also the name of the binary star that shone brightly over the balcony of our flat in Kreuzberg, Berlin (that’s another different story). Of course, we knew nothing of Almathea and her sacrifice back then. We just knew it was bright and twinkly and a cheesy thing we could call “ours”.
In hindsight, it was our time in Berlin that really convinced both of us (Zoe and Gene), that not only did we love each other, we were in it for the ‘long haul’. So, the star that shone over us in Berlin was the first name we thought of when we decided we wanted to start a farm. Of course, we then spent the next three years debating other names before coming back full circle to Capella in 2025.
Still with me? I know, it’s a lot. But it’s the truth.
So, when people ask us how we came up with name “Capella” for our farm, the short answer is usually, “It’s our star.” But this, that you made it all the way through, was the long one.
Here’s some other fun things we discovered about Capella when we took a deeper dive. It’s almost scary how perfectly chosen our name was, well before we had any idea…
It is considered a constellation representing independent thinking, curiosity, and research (which is part of our Top 5 Long-Term Goals).
It represents a very particular type of learning - through adventure, discovery, trial and error.
