This is a picture from inside the strawbale house where we have meals, dorms, living room, storage space and as you can see an amazing wood stove.


In the middle of week three here at Apro, settling into a grove and rhythm here. I am awed everyday at how amazingly beautiful the place and the people are here. I am continuing to learn so much about plants, gardening, fruit trees, and food preservation. Last week we did a bunch of pickling, which was really interesting (and tasty). This week we harvested a bunch of cherries and thinned apple trees for the most part. It is so easy to get lost in the trees for hours, it will be time for lunch and I will feel like we had just started. There is something very meditative about working in a garden. There is just a different sense of time. I love working to live and not living to work. I know that the work I do goes into sustaining my life and the community here and that feels really good, it is a very different feeling then having your work be worth a set dollar amount for a set number of hours. I work and live in the same place, but my work seems like just the kind of thing that you have to do to maintain and live on a farm. Really different than living in an urban setting and the work I am doing is just so satisfying.
We have worked on several different farms at this point and it is so neat to see the different styles of farming going on. Also I have eaten enough cherries to last a lifetime! Sooooo good! Living in community again is wonderful. Learning about group process and conscious dissension making really valuable and really rewarding. I got to see Evan and Aliza this weekend at Seattle Pride, which was so nice, and really fun. I also found out that my good friend Josh from my India program is coming back to the farm for a month this summer to help out, so I am super pumped for that! Alright, got to get back to work…we are drying cherries on the solar dryer today, ad trying to find a way to preserve 20 gallons of fava beans! More soon.
Much love.