The Free Farm: We're made of Star Stuff

I wanted to add some more news about the Free Farm. For one thing, I have been wanting to share this information for a while since Meg, a new volunteer, generously brought us a solar oven a while back and showed us how to use it. I have been converted to becoming a true sun worshipper. Now part of my routine when I come to the Free Farm is that I set up the solar oven and start some water heating up for tea or to wash our dishes in. We have been lucky that for all the last workdays we have been getting a lot of sun and even though the winter sun is low on the horizon we are still able to heat up the oven with that nuclear power plant in the sky. Now I feel connected not only with the earth and the soil, but with the sun. Actually I feel I have been feeling I am totally connected with everything. When we installed the rain barrels in November I felt connected to the carbon cycle and the water that is recycled daily on our planet.

The solar oven arriving at the Free Farm has connected me with the idea that we are all made of starstuff. I picked that up from a talk I attended at the Casa de Paz house a few weeks ago where I heard Rev. Michael Dowd talk about the marriage of science and religion. Check out the videos at Symphony of Science http://www.symphonyofscience.com/videos.html and especially the one We are all Connected.
" The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it
But the way those atoms are put together
The cosmos is also within us
We're made of star stuff"

warming up rice (last week we cooked some potatoes but they unfortunately were not ready for lunch)

I learned that the secret to getting the oven to work is to make sure the angle is correct

Also, our star stuff inside us, that great warmth and beauty radiates all the time outward in the great number of volunteers who come and visit us and help out at our workdays. Here is something I wrote at another blog http://freefarmstand.org/: "An example of this kind of love work happened at the Free Farm last Saturday and really made my day. Rahul and Asha, friends through Pancho, brought 9 people they have been hosting who are involved in the west coast InSPIRE retreat. They put on “5-week immersion trips in India where the participants interact and work with a wide range of organizations and leaders in social change-- starting with Manav Sadhna at Gandhi Ashram. “ They were some of the best volunteers we have attracted at the farm and not only did they work really hard, but they took a break after lunch and played music, that filled the air with joy and celebration. Also, my long term friend David came by and worked with some of them, bringing electricity to the greenhouse. It was so great to be connected with all these people.

Also, another smaller group of people showed up, I can’t remember the name of the group, who works with troubled teen girls. They were on trip learning about farms and our watershed and helped out for an hour or so." Here are some pictures from the work day:

Pancho reminds us to connect with the inner stuff inside us by practice of receptive silence. It is such an important part of daily lives and service work.