Wondering what you are supporting? There are a lot of community projects going on around here.

A formerly-houseless friend now has a house to rent. A nice quiet adobe fixer-upper in our nearby town. Another formerly-houseless friend who is now living with us celebrated another birthday. With a ton of food and the whole neighborhood. I’m still eating cake. There will be 4 birthdays this month. A traveler got a new sturdy hiking pack for his long trip south, and a puppeteer came to the farm to learn about beekeeping so that she can start an apiary as part of a community project in New York City. My little pony, Bella, has been giving all the neighborhood kids a ride around the yard, and we have a group from a women’s correctional facility coming out to learn how to start a beehive in the prison yard.  It’s true! In July, (with help from my neighbor Jen, thanks Jen!) we did a fundraiser for the local homeless shelter, selling lip balms and raw honeys at the park. We raised about $600 that provided warm meals and diverse assistance to people throughout the county of Socorro. At the end of July we took a road trip all the way up through 8 different states into Idaho, meeting lots of travelers and interesting folks along the way. There are always opportunities to give or share: a meal together, food, friendship, underwear, socks, and of course honey and skin care…

On another note, we have a new neighbor that is a gardener, and he’s been bringing us everything from climbing jade plants to lemon balm and bags of veggies from his garden. He knows all about herbs and tinctures, and has a library of plant reference books that would make a botanist jealous. This is an exciting development for me. I also started working with a blueberry farm in Washington to create a new organic product line, and it will be on the website later this week. Facials, mud masks and honey scrubs. It’s all delicious.

I’d like to think that one day we (you and me & everyone) will be able to gather together on pieces of land throughout the country and create more alternative lives that we love. Work with each other, our earth, our resources, our friends… Build, grow, heal, recover, restore.

Maybe somehow when we do all these little things, (like socks and meals and sharing)  really what we’re doing is practicing that dream. Making and giving gifts is, after all, an alternative to the independent theology of consumerism… Education is the greatest poverty prevention…. It seems as though all the solutions to the big ‘problems’ are going to spring up out of the little choices we make every day. So keep on spreading the love out there in all of your unique and different ways. The world will re-create itself with all of our bits of life. Let’s make it good 🙂

-Shay