Heaven on Earth Farm

Big News!

2009-04-13T16:35:00.000-07:00

The peas are up in the garden!
Also, spinach beets, carrots, and, I think, lettuce have poked their heads above the ground.

It's exciting to have gotten these cold-tolerant seeds in the ground so promptly, so that they would be there, ready to germinate, as soon as conditions allowed. This was made possible thanks to the help of WWOOFers Tina and Anais -- a bountiful harvest will no doubt result from this timely planting, as these crops don't like hot weather, and do best with the longest possible opportunity to grow during the cool-weather of spring.

It's almost as exciting as having a new baby in the family!

Happy Spring ...

-- Santha

Berlin Diary

2009-04-13T15:36:00.000-07:00

Two streams meeting: Mawenawasigh and ECLA, New York and Berlin
I've just arrived back in Berlin, where spring has sprung much more
thoroughly, and things are looking green and beautiful. Its good to
be back with yet a few more experiences to add to the stack.
It has been very interesting and rewarding spending four months in
Berlin, filling my mind full of ideas, meeting so many interesting and
diverse people and learning how to be an urbanite in this most
cosmopolitan of European cities. At the end of last term, I realized
that I was exhausted, and scheduled an emergency exit, flying home to
New York. Both in the days leading up to my departure (the day before
I left I traveled from Florence, to Rome, to Berlin, packed for home,
and then left early the next morning) and upon landing in Kennedy
Airport and driving up the Taconic to my home, I really had to think
about the nature of all of these places I had just been. I began to
be very aware of the sensation of a European versus American
consciousness, and I also became very sensitive to the way that the
land is so different in all the different places I was passing
through. I had also to think very carefully about what my purpose is
in each of these places, and how I can more effectively strive to
fulfill that purpose.
In Europe there is so little space; people have domesticated the place
for thousands of years, and over the course of this time with a fairly
steady human occupation, people have been required to discover methods
of being much more efficient with their time, energy, resources, and
space. We have not had this necessity in the United States. On the
contrary, a large proportion of those who immigrated to the New Land
were Europeans who were looking for more space -- who felt oppressed
either by religious concerns, by poverty, or anything else, and in
coming, it was imagined that if there was so much "empty" land, well,
it wouldn't matter if they spread out a bit.
But looking at Manhattan on my way out yesterday, I was struck by the
feeling that the whole city is suffering from a consciousness that it
has made not a few mistakes, that people haven't been very careful in
the creation of such a sprawling monstrosity, and that the time is
coming when they are facing the consequences of some of these
mistakes. I felt a certain sense of denial as to the state of
affairs, I felt fear and despondency, and I also felt a real sense of
wanting to do something, wanting to be able to change, but not knowing
how, not having any inkling of where to begin picking up this mess we
have gotten ourselves into.
When I arrived home to Mawenawasigh, Salt Point, Hanka Pond Road, the
first thing I kept saying, over and over was "its so nice here!!" It
felt incredible to be in a place where the land is relatively
undamaged, and where a real consciousness for stewardship is being
cultivated. The land felt loved, it felt like a place that is
beginning to learn to be itself again, beginning to learn that it will
be allowed to simply be itself and do what it was always meant to do
with the love and support of the humans who it provides for, and who
are re-learning how to provide for it.
The second thing that happened was that I went into my room, and I
found myself completely overwhelmed. I had come from a huge room with
four very large windows, lots of space in the middle, very little
storage space, and one suitcase worth of stuff for all my time in
Berlin. So to arrive and be thus confronted with all the sentimental,
might-come-in-handy-someday, and useless little things I had amassed
over the last years really brought home the issue at hand. I realised
that in order to fully be in life, fully experience all I had to
experience, to be both free and grounded in a place, I had to remove
some of the insulation of these possessions. If I had arrived with
only one suitcase to a place where I knew next to no one, and
certainly didn't have four generations of people collecting stuff in
case of need to back me up, and was fine, I realised I could take this
as a good lesson that what I need will come to me at any moment. I
spent a week solid sorting through the stuff, and ended up getting rid
of probably half of it, learning a lot about both what I am and what I
am not along the way.

I feel that being at home for this time, being with the gardens, the
land, the discussions not of Plato and Kierkegaard, but of what shall
we have for dinner and how to double dig the garden and lets clean out
the shed today will really help me in grounding the philosophy that I
am learning here. If I have that foundation on which to build this
life of ideas that sometimes feels like floating in space then I will
be much more able to be grounded in myself. I have the American land
in my blood and my bones (and a bit in a jar on my desk...), and it is
the land as it wants to be, as it truly is, not as something trying to
swallow the lump in its throat that is a strip mall.
And in order to really know how to nourish that land, how to be in a
place that is about doing fundamentally, rather than thinking and
speaking, I have the feeling that an education in thinking and
speaking will very much help to refine what that doing is. If I can
keep the consciousness and purpose of each place alive in me as I am
in the other, while fully experiencing what it is to be where I am, I
believe that I will be able to learn more readily and understand more
fully the lessons that each place has to offer as I learn more and
more clearly how to allow the mind to be the servant of the heart.

-- Elizabeth Hanka

Double Digging

2009-04-09T14:04:00.000-07:00

Goodbye, Anais and Tina!

2009-04-08T18:28:00.001-07:00

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!

Take a look at Heaven on Earth

2009-01-16T08:52:00.000-08:00

Farm Internship Program

2008-12-06T09:00:00.000-08:00

Apprentices and WWOOFers help with the vegetable and flower gardens, plant and care for fruit trees, establish permaculture beds, and work in the fields and forest tending native and indigenous plants; also assist with work on a variety of carpentry and maintenance projects including building a cold frame, a root cellar, a stone chimney, and more.

Monthly Fire circle gatherings and other community-building activities focus on fostering right relationship between people and the land. Swim in the creek; learn about holistic living and the healing arts.

A lovely heated cabin is yours to sleep in; share cooking, eating, common spaces and household chores with the family. Vegetarian or non-vegetarian. You need your own transportation. Days are full but not over-full: about 20–30 hours/week, but there could be time for part time work off the farm if you want. One or two people, year round; minimum stay one month. Ask about children or pets. No drugs or alcohol – smoking outdoors only. We speak English, French, and Spanish.