Best Experience of My Life

I'll share one experience I had with one of the many workshops we did.

A woman from Fibershed came out to teach us about making sustainable textiles and natural dyes. One of the things l learned is that you can use the tanins leached from ground acorns as a fixative for the dye. This mixture is a byproduct that you naturally get when making acorn flour, so once we were making natural dye, we realized we might as well make acorn flour, and then to make acorn flour, all of a sudden we were foraging in the woods for acorns and while we were there, we thought we may as well forage for mushrooms and other foods too. So once we stepped into these natural processes, all of a sudden I found myself emerged in this beautiful circle of life and sustenance that lends itself to a whole other way of living! And then when I was foraging in the woods and finding all of these materials being freely given like a gift, it made me feel in a deeper sense that the earth is my home and understand how generous it is in sustaining me and giving me everything I need for free. And then I found myself in an abundance mindset, rather than a scarcity mindset that I'd been conditioned into all my life, and it really made me realize what a gift my own life is.

This was just one afternoon on the farm but it is a microcosm of what can happen when you start to live in community and in relationship with the land under the guidance of the knowledge, curious, and beautiful leaders of this program.