UPDATE!

Thanks to incredibly generous support from friends, family and our extended community, we met our initial goal of funding installation of a grape arbor, 9 fruit trees and 40 native perennial shrubs in just a matter of days! We broke ground late last week and the results are stunning. 

We are extremely grateful for the outpouring of support and also heartened by how quickly we met our goal. Now we're hoping to raise an additional $2000 to pay for Phase 2 of the project: a graywater system to water the garden we just installed, a rainwater catchment barrel, three raised garden beds and additional habitat and food plants to adorn the entryway into our burgeoning food forest learning garden. Can you help us meet this goal? 
(Photo caption: This is right before we started putting plants in the ground. Swales are dug and we're ready to go!)
(Photo caption: Planting fruit!)

PROJECT BACKGROUND

Life is sprouting anew on an old dairy farm in Sonoma County, CA. We need your help to ensure it keeps growing!

For generations, cows compacted the soil, transforming much of the oak and bay woodland into a faint memory of itself. Then, the land lay abandoned for a decade. Until a new vision moved in. 

Since 2013, beautiful changes have begun to manifest in this quiet corner of Sonoma County. An organic farm has taken root. Old barns have been reclaimed and repurposed. Most importantly, people have returned who are willing and eager to be in loving, reciprocal relationship with the planet. 

Weaving Earth has been involved from the beginning. This regenerating landscape is home to our 9-month nature-based immersion program for adults and families. Through embodied practices of connection to place, self and community, immersion participants co-create a village and deepen their capacity to think, feel, act and design ecologically. This transformative experience is rooted in a foundation of holistic interrelationship and driven by the tools of deep nature connection. 

One of our commitments as an organization is to leave things better than we found them. In this endeavor, the tools of permaculture are a tremendous asset. This year, the WE Immersion is planning to install a beautiful food forest in the yard outside one of our primary gathering spaces: the yurt! The goal of this edible garden is to further our desire to source food locally, conserve water, restore native habitat, beautify this common space and teach ecological design by getting our hands in the soil. 
With your help, we will purchase 9 fruit trees, 40 native perennial shrubs and materials for a grape arbor. Our initial goal was to raise $1500. We did that in a matter of days and are now hoping to raise a total of $3500 to fund Phase 2 of our design, which includes a graywater system, rain catchment, some raised garden beds and some additional habitat and food plants. 

For at least 11,000 years before Weaving Earth and the dairy farm, this piece of land was inhabited year-round by Pomo and Miwok California Indians. In our efforts to reawaken an ethic of stewardship and reciprocal relationship with the earth, we are deeply indebted to these local indigenous communities and their land-based wisdom. 
(Photo caption: Planting cover crop last year in the yurt yard to build soil for this year's installation!)
(Photo caption: Our draft conceptual design for the yurt yard installation.)

Curious about the Weaving Earth Immersion ? These short videos will give you a better sense of what we're up to.

Education For Our Times
Moments In Time From The 2014/15 WE Immersion