Now the autumn is here...

The last couple of weeks have been a wonderful whirlwind of all sorts of exciting things. Our Cultivating Wellness Conference, held Sept. 13th and 14th, went exceptionally well... a HUGE thank you to all of our speakers, practitioners, sponsors, work-traders and attendees! What an empowering experience to bring together a group of inspiring, creative teachers and healers willing to share their knowledge and energy with the D Acres community. Our 100+ participants got to experience and learn about a host of things ranging from yoga and craniosacral therapy to healing with fruits and beehive products. Vendors were set up throughout the weekend, and we celebrated the weekend with a circle dance, bonfire, and drum circle Saturday night. Good times.

The following weekend, six of us from D Acres headed east to the Maine Organic Farming & Gardening Association's Common Ground Fair in Unity, Maine. Always an enjoyable adventure, the fair provided great networking, educational classes, and Maine-raised whole-wheat fried dough. Classic. We had a D Acres booth in the Agricultural Demonstration tent, where fairgoers could learn about all of the programs and activities we've got going on at the farm. Additionally, Bill, Tyler, Josh, and myself delivered a lecture entitled "Home and Community Scale Permaculture" during which we shared our experiences growing food and communities with the crowd of over 50 people who attended! We hope that folks left feeling energized and empowered to turn their lawns to gardens and share in the abundance of food and spirit with thier communities. Viva la revolucion!

Immediately after the fair, we passed through the autumn equinox (September 22nd). The equinox marks the begining of the fall season, but also the point of perfect balance between light and dark, day and night; as we celebrate the coming season, we prepare to enter into the dark time of the year. This is a well-earned time of solitude and introspection, a contrast to the bustling height of summer's long days and exuberant activities. As the days grow shorter, we are able to thrive when we embrace the darkness, the quiet times, the magic and mystery of the shadow side of ourselves and our world. Slow down, look inward, and compost what is no longer needed in your life. Autumn and winter are times of transformation, a death of the old ways of being and feeling, a journey toward the spring, when the landscape will be reborn, re-emerging from the depths of the winter.

Enjoy the bounty of the autumn harvest and the brilliance of the foliage decorating the landscape; breathe deep the crisp autumn air.

~Lauren

It's been about a year.

Wow. A year has passed since I started living here. Maybe it has something to do with my watch breaking and not finding a good enough reason to buy a new one, but I've never experienced time like I have in the past year. So much progress and maintance on the farm, so many heart-touching friendships made with: interns who have come and gone, long term residents, and staff, and people of the surrounding community. It makes my head spin thinking about it. The time has flown by, but at the same time it feels like the experiences exceede those of a previous life.

Looking into the future, we're going into winter with at least 8-9 people, and possibly up to 13. That's 13 exceptionally creative people only having to shovel snow, feed fires, take care of pigs, chickens and oxen, and do chores. Plus, we'll be living in very close quarters. Luckily, any free time or insanity, that surely will arise, will quickly be unleashed on fiber crafts, ceramics, woodworking, jewelry making, silk screening, blacksmithing, music, dancing, painting, and snow ball fights. I'm excited to say the least. Not only will the arts be a blast, but also an opportunity to build up ideas and invintory for next season and allow us to rev up for the 2009 theme - something along the lines of "Arts, Tradition, and Culture".

Take your time.

-Dirty Joe

10 WAYS TO BE A REVOLUTIONARY

1. Compost your poop, pee on the bushes.

2. Instead of buying something new, try and fix what you have.

3. Grow you own food, whether it's fruits, veggies, or piggies.

4. Take a bath in the river.

5. Recycle everything and anything you can.

6. Instead of voting Republican or Democrat, vote for a change in the way you live.

7. Try doing chores instead of working for the man.

8. Pick up an instrument.

9. Question everything until you know the truth.

10. Be yourself for a change, without any interruption or distortion from social norms.

An Intern's Relfections...from Miss Fay

I left D Acres in the end of July after a six-week internship. If it were not for obligations at home and a semester of travel beckoning, I would still be there now. What I found there far exceeds what I could have imagined when I decided, amidst January gloom, to be a farmer for the summer.

D Acres helped me toward an understanding and a way of life that I did not even know I was missing. What D Acres offers, in addition to farm skills, a welcoming community of eclectic and energetic individuals, good food, and a beautiful place to let loose, is an approach to personal and collective reintegration. At D Acres, we spend our time doing work that contributes directly to our own collective livelihood. For just six short weeks, spending my time working in the very garden beds that I could count on to produce my own meals yielded a satisfaction and a feeling of wholeness and integrity that I have never before felt.

It was not until I experienced the fullness, wholeness, and connectedness of my life at D Acres that I also understood the relative disjointedness and incongruity of an unsustainable lifestyle—the kind lived by most people in the United States, urban, suburban, and rural alike. In this incongruous life, one’s work does not and cannot sustain one’s life because the “work” of the average person is not connected, in any way, to land cultivation or food production. While this kind of job never seemed desirable to me, it now seems inevitably unfulfilling because of the gaps it leaves between the way we spend our time and the way we sustain or lives.

D Acres helped me to recognize these gaps, these incongruities, which exist unrecognized and unquestioned between the foods in the fields, the “work,” in an office building or shop, and the consumption in the super market. To lead a sustainable lifestyle is not only to engage in practices which sustain the land and the natural resources that we depend on, but is also to engage in work that contributes to personal and collective sustenance—to fill the gaps toward a reintegrated wholeness.

-Fay S.