This Summer 2010: This summer was for reflection, remembering, healing, and supporting my parents.

We held a family reunion for my fathers 90th Birthday to rejoice in his life. The family gathered in and out for three days to make great food, tell stories, and to enjoy each others  reconnections after many years and find out how we are all related.  

I also took on a job, working at the Camp Sherman store, here in Camp Sherman, and focused on really being present this summer around the Metolius River home.  It's been a very liberating summer.

New Mexico Adventures

October 27th, 2010

Took to the sky again after many months of rest and healing.  Traveled to New Mexico, fulfilling the need to offer a class presentation to the City that has gifted Four Winds grant support over the last three years, the Santa Fe Art Council, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

Jeff Scheide connected me with teachers at the Gonzales Elementary School.   I shared our youth program with eager and enthusiastic 4th graders.  Thanks to Chrissy Romero and Contessa Serna for opening their classes.  That morning, sharing what was “POSSIBLE”.  The children had a hands-on trunk show experience of seeing touching and storytelling about what is possible around us, things and items around us we take for granted, and what things were used 500 years ago in their places.

Also, while there, met us with FWF family from Pittsburg, Lilith Bailey Koll and Jeff and Joan Scheide, Mahhaba Kauffman, Teresa Pisano, David Carson and others from years of traveling there. 

Also gave a talk in Taos to people from Argentina, Taos proper and Ecuador. The talk was based on 2013, the next millennium.  It was wonderful sharing thoughts, fears, and ways to relax from the doom and gloom of it all.

In all the years traveling to New Mexico I've usually stayed mostly in SF with Louisa Putman, (or her house), this dear sister on the Path. She has a Sacred Space she calls home here in New Mexico. She usually hosts people to come see me for a meal or talk, so this year I did that as well, and traveled to see members of our New Mexico family from Taos to Las Vegas, NM. 

Louisa holds a Sanctuary space; for others and me it is a place of renewal and deep truth, and this is where so many creature comforts abound. If you’re ever going that way…Arco Aries will hold you.

Pets include two dogs, two cats, chickens sharing their eggs, goats who gift milk and cheese, and now a black duck and guinea hen that has taken Elizabeth as their Mom.

This year Louisa and I were both in New Mexico at the same time (she also travels a far amount back east to help care for her mother) and we shared with others the Mayan New Years Fire Ceremony.  It was wonderful to renew, reaffirm and offer our gratitude to the 20 divine directions.  We fed the fire and these directions candles, chocolate, tobaccos, and medicines from all over the world.

Also, I was honored to attend the Spoken Word performance at the Native American Indian School in Santa Fe…. where each performance was heart felt, from rap, poems, dance and acting dramas. These high school students gave me a night of tears and laughter, one I needed to continue knowing I am Indian as well as what I appear to be…. white.  These students are led by one of the Men of Louisa’s Cedar Circle.  It was a night to remember.

The return to fall full on here in Oregon is wonderful…but the mile high air in New Mexico is medicine for me.

Louisa and I Santa Fe, NM

Exciting New Program for Deer Haven & Four Winds!

In September of this year 2010, I got together with my neighbor Sarahlee Lawrence, of Rainshadow Organics, www.rainshadoworganics.com, to form a plan to use Deer Haven as a site for a Farm School.  The goals are to use educational skills, the love of the earth, and buying locally to launch a location of collaborating land owners, organic farming and outreach, in teaching skills around organic food and offering this, this spring at Deer Haven, the lands of Four Winds Foundation.

Movement has been fast and very supportive since we started telling people: local ranchers are signing on, schools want to venture out and also come back to their schools setting up further ways to create food security in our local area.

Six local ranchers/farmers have come on to join in this alliance and to offer their experiences in collaborating to create the curriculum that they will teach and share, which will be offered here at Deer Haven. 

The land will be the school site. There will be public offerings monthly, as well as weekly for those taking a more extended learning curve to gain more knowledge as well as schools, organizations.

Our approach is called “Plots to Plates.” We're joining the rapidly growing movement that defies scarcity “thinking” and shows by example ways to grow food for yourself and others, providing organic produce, soil building techniques and how water can be present where it doesn’t seem to be, especially in this arid desert climates of Central Oregon.

WWOOF-ers, World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, a place to camp, learn and eat organically, while gaining respect, and future careers raising honey, livestock or farming for the areas people.  The outreach will be from many areas east of the cascades.

People will donate time and some cash to stay, be fed and in most cases join in, to further the movement towards healthier food sources, and showing there can be a living in growing food.

If interested in this program, get in touch with us at info@fwfoundation.com, or sarahlee.Lawrence@gmail.com