Aniversarios
Three years ago today we visited the farm for the very first time. At the time, we were staying a few miles away with a friend and her young family. We did not arrive to her the way we’d planned, we had not anticipated visiting any farms that were for sale, and definitely did not plan on saying yes to the first (and only) farm we visited.
Three years into the process and we are still waiting to close on the farm. Nothing is ours, and nothing is promised. Most of this process has required immense trust, in tandem with ethically joining an existing community.
You can read more about how our world was turned upside down in Steven’s piece, Start here: Context is everything linked below.
Introductions: Palestina
At the end of October we were driving back to the farm when we noticed someone on the side of the road feeding a puppy. We stopped, hoping they weren’t abandoning the dog—as people commonly come to the mountains to do—and found that this person travels with dog food and often takes abandoned dogs to a rescue a few hours away near San Juan. That day he wasn’t able to bring the puppy anywhere, so we offered to take her to our vet and ended up deciding to keep her.
We named her Palestina to bring Palestine into our everyday conversations, with our neighbors, our community, anywhere we go with the dogs. It’s not a scary word or a topic to avoid because it makes for difficult conversations.
Communicating when it is difficult is what builds relationships.
The dogs got a new dog house this fall. Anyone who visited us summer 2023 knows intimately what an upgrade this is for everyone.
If you missed Colibrí’s intro, we introduced him in our April 2023 newsletter:
What we’ve been reading and listening to this month:
Neither Settler Nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities by Mahmoud Mamdani
The Trinity of Fundamentals by Wisam Rafeedie (translated by Dr. Muhammad Tutunji)
Introduction to Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire by Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini
Weaponizing Rape by Nada Elia
In 2024 we will be sharing a lot of our progress with infrastructure. For a number of reasons these intimate details will live behind the paywall. We hope you’ll join us.
For some context:
The wild pigs that live in the forest arrived in a loud way at the end of 2023. Tearing up the small garden we’d planted near our storage building and near the spot where we hope to eventually build the house. Post-pig the area is basically useless as a garden, unless we start from scratch. En lieu of that we’ve decided to build a covered multi-use space where we can process harvests, hold workshops, pitch tents, and stretch our bodies.
Below are two videos Alex created for their university students detailing the natural building methods we used to make the storage building and documenting us putting our space back together after hurricane Fiona. Both videos are from 2022 and show the space where we will begin building. We’ll be sharing more videos this year and wanted to start by catching everyone up to where we’re at.