Goodbye, Anais and Tina!

We just said goodbye to Tina and Anais, our first WWOOFers of 2009, who have been here since the beginning of March.

As always, it's hard to know what to say as they go: "We'll miss you, since you've been part of our family for the past month; we're so grateful for all the help you gave us and all we learned from you; and we know that you will have many more wonderful adventures in your travels in the weeks, months, and years to come. We hope that you'll keep in touch, and send us your news from time to time -- perhaps with a post to this blog."

Perhaps it's best to let them say for themselves what happened during their time here at Heaven on Earth:

"Time passes fast: it’s almost a month since we arrived and it seems like a few days ago. This is our last night here. We have just returned to the lovely cabin from a good dinner, a really nice fire and talking. The night was so beautiful, clear and not so cold. A wonderful moon, waiting a few nights to become full, was there with us too. It´s nice to finish our experience here with a fire; we remember that two nights after our arrival we went to Rick´s fire which was marvelous and we had a great time. It´s like closing the cycle. Talking about ending that is never ending because it’s in spirals, cycles. It was good because in this time here one of our jobs was to wake up the garden and prepare it for the new season that is just arriving. Before we left the USA this past winter to spend three months in an ashram in the Bahamas, we were at Earthlands in Massachusetts doing some WWOOFing too -- there one of our jobs was putting the beds to sleep. It all makes sense! Different land, same essence.

Our experience at Heaven on Earth is our last WWOOFing experience in the USA after being at four other very different places; each of them was very interesting too.

We came here because we were looking for a place where we could leave our lovely van, Tofu. We sent email to different WWOOF hosts and Santha answered us saying that Tofu could stay at their farm. When we came to drop off Tofu (she spent the winter here) we felt that probably we would come back to stay for a while.

We have learned to do double digging and prepare the soil for the new season; we have planted seeds, some in the garden (spinach, beets, carrots, lettuce, sweet peas) and others indoors (kale, shallots, onions, leeks, tomatoes, parsley, tobacco, herbal teas). We took care of the seeds, watering them in the first days of life and checking every day to see how they were growing. We painted different places, punched the rose bushes, collected wood near the creek and raked the leaves around the house. We made a new garden bed for onions to grow.

Every morning before we started working we practiced Chi Gung with Santha; she showed us how to do it. This and other things make us think that this place is healthy and wealthy. The meals are really tasty and nutritious -- we are vegetarian and we never felt like something was missing. We learned different kinds of salads and how to cook amaranth and drink wheatgrass juice (the green vodka!) We shared the meals with the family and had good conversations in a comfortable and beautiful house, built by Craig. We are still impressed by the stone walls: they are gorgeous, and we just love it!

By chance, the three weeks that we were here Elisabeth arrived from Berlin where she is studying; it was good because we could meet her. And we were happy to be here when the art college where Rachel applied with a lot of enthusiasm, said “Yes!” -- she is accepted to study there.

One of the things that made us interested in coming to Heaven on Earth was Santha’s work. Her work includes nutrition, massage therapy, and plant spirit medicine and she is part of the Sacred Fire Community. She takes care of the land, the special place where the creeks come together, the sacred spot where the native Wappingers people lived in complete harmony with the earth. We are so glad because we experienced that all these things about which we are so interested make sense here, and you can feel and live it. Santha, with all her knowledge, integrates it everything she does day by day.

Now the doors are open for us to continue learning and growing in our understanding of the Mother Earth, the place that hosts all of humanity and that is often unknown and neglected."

Happy Trails to You!