Playground Rubber Mulch for Safety

This fundraiser is organized by Gaia's Way.

Tax deductible

You can make a difference by donating today to Gaia's Way at Hawridge Farm. Gaia's Way means "Way of the Land" and every day we look to our land for ways to enhance our community.

Our mission is to help our community eat healthy and heal from trauma. After a terrible scare of almost losing a loved one to Covid, we decided to sell everything and moved from Cape Cod Massachusetts to an extremely impoverished rural area of mid-state New York. In graciousness, we took the opportunity to buy a farm and grow our non-profit.

We currently are supplying local food pantries with farm-fresh, free-range eggs. The initiative was inspired by our granddaughter Pips - hence Pips Chicks eggs.

In 2023 we provided:

• Over 1000 fresh, range free chicken eggs to several local food pantries and other community members in need.

• We worked with youth suffering from trauma.

• With volunteers help and donated funds we built our greenhouse, which will house Tethy's Aquaponics Center.

This year we are looking forward to opening our aquaponics center. We envision a near future where we will make fresh fish and vegetables available to local food pantries, in addition to our eggs. With your help, we should be able to drop off our fish and veggies by December 2024.

We are also planning for this year:

• Trauma retreats for youth and adults.

• Free children’s library.

• Drop-in hours for children to pet the animals and learn about sustainable food growth through aquaponics.

This is an exciting time for Gaia’s Way. We just received a brand new outdoor play center with slides, swings, a fort, and more. This donation is wonderful for children who come to our farm for respite, trauma therapy, and just to be kids.

Our 2024 fundraiser is a small ask this year. We would like to make the play area as safe as possible for the kids. Utilizing rubber mulch is a great way to stop tires from being burnt and an even greater way to keep kids safe on playgrounds.

We need your help with the following:

• Your donations will help us buy the rubber mulch and continue our work on Tethys Aquaponics Center.

• We still need to buy solar panels for the greenhouse.

• Filtration system for fish stock tanks.

If you have read this far, you must be interested. Please look at our pictures and listen to our video, and ask any questions you would like. We may be the stewards of our small farm, but without the help of others, we just can't reach our goals.

Nancy is a trauma specialist and utilizes the land and animals as tools to help youth and veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Jennie studies Depth Psychology with an emphasis on Jungian techniques that give a safe space for our clients. Jennie is also a professor at SUNY.

We have 7 Great Pyrenees/Maremma dogs to keep our farm safe, 3 dwarf goats, 14 alpacas, 10 cats, 87 chickens, 3 horses, and 2 older retired dogs that live inside. All the animals are used with our clients, yes even some of the chickens. We had a client once who held a rooster during her entire session to help her discuss her trauma!