Forging On

We are honored by Wisconsin Trail magazine's editor Harriet Brown, for her selection of Echo Valley Farm and Echo Valley Hope as one of "20+ People Making A Difference", in the January/February annual conservation issue. We intend to continue to earn that kind of respect and recognition.

Some 2008 Highlights:
This year we will begin our community garden, offering those in the near by town of Ontario an opportunity to grow their own food.

The goats will be kidding in early April, the sheep in late June, and of course, we will plant the field and attempt to work the orchard once more.

Navajo traditional healer, Annie Kahn, weaver and Peacekeeper for her people will return July 24-27. Everyone planning to attend should come and learn to build a warp and loom before her visit.

The month of August we will kick off with (the educational and charitable non-profit) Echo Valley Hope's, Sustainable Gathering, August 1 - 2, and the third annual benefit concert "Widening the Circle" on August 3. Visit www.echovalleyhope.org for details.

The rest of the month of August we plan to be putting up a straw bale learning center.

Echo Valley will (finally) be offering an extended stay program Spring/Summer 2008. For young and old, experienced and not, high energy, small energy, people, who enjoy being in nature, or would like to see if they do. This is an open door opportunity for you to try out your green thumb. An application is located on the contact page, complete with selections of the kinds of tasks available.

This is just a glimpse of what we are hoping for this growing season, and as always you are most welcome.

Welcoming 2008

Amid the rhetoric of politics and the prophetic juggling of what will be, I have been quite happy "growing corn."

One of the tidiest phrases passed to me by my indigenous friends is: "Can you grow corn with it?"

As the president hopefuls confuse us with: "I will end the war", "I will not", "I wish I could", "Let's have another", I ask myself, "Can you grow corn with it?"

As I read accounts of 2012, the End of Time as we know it, Rapture, etc., I ask myself, "Can you grow corn with it?" If people acted as much as they talked, the world would be a Paradise. Instead of growing corn, we talk, planting seeds of doubt.
And from what I can tell, the doubt trees are blooming, beautifully.

But not here.
Here we grow corn.

Human beings are basically Good, or at least Good lives within us. Given the opportunity, we will choose Good. And as long as we breath, Good is choosing us. This is a foundation from which I choose not to stray.

As we approach the New Year, we will make those resolutions, we will put up a little more hope and we will try...and I invite you, grow a little corn. Walk away from the maddening talk. Stand up and say no to a war with no end. Stand up for and protect the Good of your Life. Grow corn. Grow corn and prosper. Grow corn and feed others who have forgotten how.

It isn't so hard.

A few of us grew corn in the desert once. The earth was hard; you needed a pick ax. But once the seeds went in, with a little water...corn.
Enough talk of change.
May this year you "grow corn" in whatever you do.