Change = River Haven Farm

Change is the only constant. How true that is. I was reminded by a friend that my last blog entry was dated, like 6 months old. And SO much has happened in this 6 months that I don't even know where to start, and I don't even want to undertake the task of writing about all of the change that has occurred. Instead I will write about what is inspiring me the most (well, 2nd most behind my beautiful daughters). For about 1 month now I have been spending most of my free time on a farm. On a community farm named River Haven. I created a group on the Transition Whatcom website as follows: http://transitionwhatcom.ning.com/group/riverhavencommunityfarm. As you may or may not read, here is the intro to this community farm the owner and I wrote.

"We are working to create a farming community. This is an amazing opportunity to get in on the ground floor of this nascent community starting up in Whatcom County on the Nooksack River. We are looking for people who want to get involved and start investing their labor, skills and intelligence into the land to help create a community that can be a model of self resilience and sustainability. The community is being founded on Permaculture principles and will pull together a diverse group of people with a common vision of self resiliency, varied skills and talents, and a common respect for the earth & her inhabitants. Skills and talents such as permaculture design, animal husbandry, gardening, child care, cooking/preserving,

carpentry, farming, composting, alternative energies, rainwater harvesting, natural building, etc. that can help build this ecovillage are desirable. We plan on growing most of our own organic

food and processing our own fuel (straight

vegetable oil and/or biodiesel). River Haven is also the home of the Straight Vegetable Oil Co-op where members can share equipment and space and provide their own fuel."

This farm is something that I have been wanting for a long time. Last summer i was a part of 4 different groups at one point exploring ecovillages, and everyone of the groups dissolved, and one even imploded into a huge pile of shit that I still can't help but step in from time to time :) Then, out of the blue a couple of months ago I got an e-mail from a friend telling me about this man who bought this amazing farm and is looking for people to come help get the community  started. I came out, met him, we hit it off, are totally like minded, he offered me the house and asked me to help create the community, I accepted, and now I am here. Living my dream, on a farm, on a confluence of a stream and a river, happy for the first time in a long time. There is still a lot of sadness within my happiness, but i know for the first time that I am on the right path, not only for me, but also for my daughters.

I now have space for my waste vegetable oil conversions (WVO) and oil storage and am therefore back into fueling my vehicle on WVO and bought my dream truck, a 1980 VW Caddy. OK, it is a total piece of shit, but i love it. I have started my WVO co-op and have 3 other couples involved in storing, filtering and collecting WVO. I am even cooking using WVO on a little veggie oil stove I bought, which I am now distributing through my E-Bay store. And I am working on designing a larger scale veggie stove.

I am pulling people together and learning new things, last weekend we had 2 amazing instructors put on a workshop on Primitive Skills, including lighting a fire with a bow drill and making cordage from natural, local fibers. The next day we had a workshop on building Rocket Stoves for cooking/canning and i have my own stove 90% finished and ready to test. I am inspired to improve the design, document and share what is learnt (www.greenconversion.net/rocket-stoves). I found some guy on craigslist and we now have 6 hives of bees. We host them in exchange for honey/pollen/wax at some point, once the hives are healthy to support sharing. We have the most amazing barn ever. I am working on creating my sleeping loft something like 40' up off the ground with the best views of Mount Baker and the Twin Sisters on the property. We have a pretty descent garden started considering the late start. We now have chickens. I plan to get 2 cats very soon. The farm came with a farm dog, Lucy. She is great, but barks a lot and looks like she has a taste for chickens. I could go on and on, but I will save that for other blog entries.