Ian Somerhalder Shares an Important Lesson He's Teaching His Kids

Corinne Heller

September 16, 2024 at 9:29 AM·6 min read

Originally appeared on E! Online

Ian Somerhalder is passing down valuable family lessons to his own kids.

The Vampire Diaries alum, who shares two children with wife Nikki Reed, emphasizes the importance of "building connection within the community" and giving back.

"What my parents taught us very early is, if you look around, there is a balance in nature," Ian told E! News at pet food company's Nutro's Pawtail Hour event in Los Angeles, Sept. 12, " 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."

The 45-year-old continued, "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. 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."

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Several years ago, Ian and Nikki, 36, put their acting careers on the back burner and moved with their kids to a California farm. The actor, who shares with his wife a passion for the environment and living a sustainable life, had told E! News in November that they produce most of their own food.

But the transition to becoming a farmer wasn't easy. Ian said there was "a lot of failure" involved.

"You learn some of the things that you try and plant may not work, but other ones do," he said in his latest interview. "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."

Ian Somerhalder, Nutro Event, 2024 — Natasha Campos/Getty Images for NUTRO

Ian continued, "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."

The Lost alum's latest interview took place two days before he hosted a farmer's market for dogs in Los Angeles as part of his partnership with Nutro, which had in 2022 launched a $5 million commitment to help train and support growers in the implementation of healthy soil practices.

One of Ian and Nikki's dogs, Nietzsche—a stray he rescued after a day of filming The Vampire Diaries in 2013—, accompanied him to both the farmer's market and his interview.

"Are you eating kale?" he asked her at the latter after she began chewing kale leaves on a branded Nutro display. "That’s a farm dog."

Look back at several of Ian and Nikki's cutest pics over the years...

—Reporting by Amanda Champagne-Meadows

Nikki's First TikTok