News Archive

The first signs of Spring are in the air! Spring in the Hudson Valley is always a thrilling time--the evenings are getting long, the sun shines down and warms our heads and the soil, and the birds, O the birds, singing their morning songs, awaken delight in our hearts.

We just finished an interesting retreat with a somewhat different format than in years past--we focused in on one topic, guns in community, for the entire weekend, and explored it through the practice of Non-Violent Communication, which is a conflict resolution method used by many communities.

Another exciting change that comes with Spring is the flow of children around the Land. The children begin exploring--looking at buds here, chasing robins there, and jumping on the trampoline after school. This leads to more community encounters, increases our time together, and makes us all feel more united with nature and the beautiful Land that we try to live in harmony with. And the adults begin the outdoor tasks that have been, literally or figuratively, buried under snow for months--collecting, splitting, and stacking firewood, preparing garden beds, doing outdoor building repairs, and the myriad other tasks of the warm season.

This year has been a year of renewed inter-generational community at QIVC. We now have three young families living here with a total of 6 children under the age of 10. We’ve been experimenting with community-led childcare and having children attend some of our community meetings, with mixed and often delightful results. The presence of children always adds joy and vibrancy to the mix as we continue the work of living life together.

QIVC welcomed a large number of visitors over the summer and into the fall, and they enriched day-to-day living in a multitude of ways. Quite a few were exploring living in community and shared with us why they yearn for community living in this day and age, while they also asked questions and engaged in activities to learn how we live out the QIVC intentions. In addition, we welcomed longer-term visitors hosted by community families. Late in August, over 40 people gathered to celebrate the 90th birthday of our eldest resident. 

One QIVCer designed and led a program that brought fellow college students for an amazing three-week residency at QIVC. 

Program participants explored QIVC's intentions, attended workshops on everything from Quaker decision making to human fertility awareness to extraction of honey, and contributed youthful energy to projects and discussions. By all accounts, their immersive experience revealed the richness of community life, taught them a great deal, and got them thinking more deeply about how they want to live their own lives.

The summer also saw the culmination of a major renovation of East House, aka the Yellow House, into which QIVCers and friends invested much time and energy to create a warm and attractive residence. We welcomed a visiting Quaker from Florida, who stayed several weeks in the Yellow House, and we prepared to welcome a couple whom many of us have known and loved for years and who, with their children, will try out QIVC for a year and see where that leads them.

A number of our young adults are off on new adventures this fall, while some older adults are shifting into new types of work and retirement. Some of the fruit harvest this year is bountiful - especially the pears - and we have plenty of apples, so we're looking forward to the annual gathering for apple pressing. If you'd like to attend, contact us at [email protected].

This past year has been a big year of transitions here at QIVC. We have wonderful new energy in our farmhouse, as a new family with two young children has moved in. They are filling the farmhouse with joy and light in this darkest of seassons. We've said goodbye to one family and welcomed two elders, who have moved in with their family members on the land.

The sheep whom we have so deeply loved have also moved on - to a Quaker-owned farm on the other side of the Hudson River, where they are in good hands. We miss seeing them in the pastures and hearing them baa as their shepherd approaches, and we will need to find new ways to keep our pastures mown and fertile in the coming years.

This Fall, we wrapped up our workshop on Dismantling Racism. For six months, we held monthly sessions on topics ranging from creating allies to combat racism, to "what it means to be white" and institutional racism. The workshop brought folks from various regional religious and social-action organizations to QIVC. By the end of final session, we realized we still have more to learn and discussed what type of gatherings we might organize in the future to continue on this educational trajectory while beginning to take direct action to help dismantle racism.

We had a wonderful apple cidering day this Fall. It was warm, and the yellow jackets were out in full force. We were joined by a number of close friends and new people who are exploring membership here at QIVC. Everyone took home and froze gallons of cider that we are still enjoying months later.

During these short days with long nights, we are enjoying indoor fun--boardgames, hot chocolate by the woodstove, and lots of community dinners. You're welcome to join us for potluck dinners on Friday evenings or other events announced by email and on Facebook. Not on our email list? Write to [email protected] and ask to have your name added.  Not following us on Facebook? Find us here.

Autumn in community is always a time of transition. We turn the clocks back, bring wood in for fires that will keep us warm during the cold Winter months, and begin to gather together indoors to share meals, stories, and songs. Here at QIVC, Fall has taken on another significance this year--the inevitability of loss.

In late October, our community lost one of its founding members after her long struggle with breast cancer. While we continue to grieve together, we also remember the incredible work that we did as a community to provide her with comfort and love at home during her final months and the support we gave each other during this difficult time. And we were reminded of the wonderful circle of friends that we have outside of QIVC, as our extended community gathered around us in support and later in mourning.

We have also been blessed by some beautiful warm, sunny Fall weather. The trees turned all hues of orange, red, yellow, brown, and purple before floating to the ground, and the horses, sheep, and wild deer gracing our fields have turned their heads to the bright daytime sun to soak up as many rays as they can before dark Winter sets in. We QIVCers have hearts full of gratitude and love to carry us forward.

 

Spring has finally sprung at QIVC! After many weeks of cold, rainy weather (and a surprising early Spring snowfall), the warmth has arrived, and with it lots of singing birds, tall grass, buds galore, and of course, sheep! The sheep were already here, but now they're out to pasture, rotating from one community pasture to the next and providing villagers with close-up views of newborn lambs. 

  

Sheep shearing!

Spring is a great time to come visit QIVC. The sheep have just been sheared and the lambs romp delightfully near their mothers. The bright green buds are just coming out on the trees and should be in full green in the next week or so. Down by the stream, wild flowers abound - trillium, violets, and marsh marigolds, to name a few. This is a great time to see our seasonal rhythms in action! 

Rhythm Days: Quarterly, on the occasion of each solstice, we come together as a community to remember our inseparable connection to the Earth and her seasons. We express our gratitude for the cycles of darkness and Light, birth and death, growth and harvest, abundance and fasting.  

Traditionally, in the fall, we make cider. We gather apples from our own trees and from those of neighbors and friends, and using a hand-powered press we make cider that lasts through the winter and early spring when containers emerge from freezers throughout our community.

Last year, for some reason, there were so few apples that we had only enough to make a small number of apple pies. This year, as if the energy saved from a low output last year could no longer be contained, trees all over our area had more apples than their branches could hold - literally! More than one friend told us of branches with a six-inch diameter breaking under its load of apples. We estimate we made nearly 100 gallons of cider!

The abundance of this harvest season was not restricted to apples. Our canning shelves include tomatoes, sauerkraut, applesauce, and various jams and jellies. Our freezers are packed with stuffed peppers, soups, raspberries, and pesto (both garlic scape and basil), and will soon hold pork, lamb, and turkey. In the cold storage are potatoes, onions, and varieties of squash. Still in the gardens are kale, brussel sprouts, and a few scarlet runner beans. We are even eating late season salads!

Our blessings abound!

Spring has sprung with an abundance of daffodils and apple blossoms, hot, sunny days, and baby chicks and lambs. Our lawns are growing rich and green with scattered dandelions - a bee's springtime, best friend. We enjoy being out and about, hearing the buzz of folks gathering daily for morning walks, beginning their gardens, and anticipating projects to improve or repair their homes. There is a welcoming renewal winging it's way through the community, and it feels divine.

We celebrated the coming of Spring with our bi-annual retreat this past April. All members of QIVC gathered together for an entire weekend to worship, connect, inspire, and create. We held close our connection to our first intention:

"To live in worship, increasing our mindfulness, spiritual focus, and God-centeredness by intertwining our daily lives with others who share these intentions"

With a wonderfully adept facilitator, we found ourselves at ease with each other and working hard at identifying those things that call us mindfully to Spirit. We were able to allow for space to flow freely, and to easily create a feeling of warmth and acceptance. We held each other in tears, in frustration, and in feelings of aloneness, as well as in joy, excitement of new things to come, and in revelry. While we grumbled a bit about losing an entire weekend (each of us has long lists of to-dos that pull our attention away), we all left feeling bolstered and loved, looking forward to gathering again in the Autumn.

As the weather has turned summery, many of us feel pulled to mindfulness of the rhythms of the natural world - noticing the bursting tree limbs, pregnant with leaves about to unfurl, gathering together in the light of May's Full Flower Moon, and seeing and noticing all the varied and beautiful feathered friends that have made their way back to the land (some of us can thank our dear friend, Adrian, for that renewed interest). The Finches and Flickers have returned along with Purple Martins, Red-Winged Blackbirds, Wrens, and many others. Purple Martin houses have been hung high in gardens and were immediately taken as homes by the ones that they were hung for. It's a magical and whimsical sight to see a bird eagerly and mindfully prepare their space to welcome new life, much like what's happening here at QIVC.

We eagerly await the abundance of our garden beds and orchards, with life bursting forth full of vital fruits and vegetables. We are looking forward to honoring the New Moon in May (May 18) with a bonfire and other delightful, fun ways of welcoming and accepting the darkness. We continually join hands together to find ways to serve each other as we travel down uncertain roads and new paths. Springtime is the land awakening, in itself and in us.

" The Springtime of lovers has come,

That this dust bowl may become a garden;

The proclamation of Heaven has come,

That the bird of the soul may rise in flight.

The sea becomes full of pearls,

The salt marshes becomes sweet as kauthar,

The stone becomes a ruby from the mine,

The body becomes wholly soul."

~ Rumi

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”       ~ John Lubbock

Summer days are meant for walking in lush grasses and woods, listening to the buzz of the honeybees and the songs of our resident birds. Summer is a time of refreshment. The sprouts of ever-giving gardens and fruit trees renew our senses after a very long, cold, icy winter. It feels good to be here at QIVC in summertime.

Our community is bustling with newness: new babies, new visitors, new additions on homes. (New newsletter!) We have new members, new residents, and a refreshed view on the intertwining of our friendship/family relationships. We have come to a place of acceptance within our group and are opening ourselves up to be in and settle conflict, to grieve and hold each other in the process, and to release it as the Spirit guides us to do so. After all the busyness of “Phase 2” we are now settling into a phase of being: being in all the changes, being with all the policies written (and rewritten), and now sitting with each other through new work that seems to be more spiritual in nature.

QIVC is now home to eight new members: the Coalter family has been lovingly and warmly welcomed into the fold as of May 2014. Yet our community is also saying good-bye to a member family: the Hanley/Scheibles are making their way to the Pacific Northwest where more vital work pursuits are sought, as well as deeper connections to family who live there. Their departure is a somber time but we are holding them in constant Light and are eagerly wishing them joy and happiness.

As we enter the throes of summer, we will chop wood and carry water. We will continue to plant seeds and harvest our bounty. We will open our doors to sojourners who wish to pass on through and set up space to welcome those who wish to come and stay a little longer.  We hope to see you soon.

The leaves are turning, the mornings are crisp even when the afternoons are warm, and mowing has given way to apple-picking and now to more firewood work and planning for snow removal.  Kids are back to school and we've already had our first fire in the Farmhouse woodstove.  It's Fall!  

In late September we had our annual cider-pressing Rhythm Day.  We had lots of apples from friends' orchards, and we started the day by picking apples from some of our "wild" apple trees on the Land and from some of the apple trees Jens has planted over the years on the slope behind East House.  All day long we washed apples, chopped apples, loaded them into the big cider press, cranked down the plunger with ever-more muscular turns of the handle, and watched the cider pour out into buckets.  Then it was strained and poured into containers...endless containers...a hundred containers?  We all drank what we wanted while we worked, or--in the case of the little kids--played around on the grass, tractor, and cart.  At the end of the day we had lots of cider, a cart full of pressed apples to make the sheep happy and possibly drunk, and a bunch of tired community members and friends.  As usual it was a fun, messy, delicious, long day.

This fall we've gained some permanent sheep fencing, some new Shetland sheep for the flock, and a lot of produce from our gardens and trees hat has been canned, frozen, and dried to nourish us in the coming seasons.  Besides a fantastic apple year, we were deluged with sweet yellow plums, peaches, and kale that has taken over the gardens of Jens and Dan.  In the realm of idea production, we've come almost to the end of a year-plus period of working out many policies and procedures that help us work together as a community and open ourselves up to different kinds of residents.  

As we move into late Fall and Winter, we continue to welcome interested visitors--especially on Fridays for potluck.  Let us know if you'd like to come find out more about our community.

Spring is here, daffodils are blooming, and we are all spending more time outdoors here at QIVC.  

A few weeks ago we had a firewood workday in which we tackled a huge pile of (bought) logs: first chainsawing them into lengths, then splitting them by hand because our log-splitter was in need of a new on-off switch, then stacking them head-high along the west wall of the farmhouse.  It was too much to do in one day, so In the days that followed, various people spent time splitting and stacking for exercise.  There is still a lot to do!

With spring come lambs.  We have four so far with lots more on the way.  Two have black noses which greatly raises their already high cuteness factor.  One day their moveable fencing was set up in an area with a woodchuck hole, and the lambs spent much of the afternoon playing in and around the entrance--jumping into the wide, shallow vestibule, butting each other over who got to stand in it, lying down in it, and sniffing at the entry hole itself.  The woodchuck itself was nowhere to be seen that day!

The apartment below Sandy's house is 95% completed, a certificate of occupancy has been granted, and our newest inhabitants of the land (except the aforementioned lambs) have moved in!  The apartment (owned and rented out by QIVC) is light and bright with many south-facing windows and a view down the hill of the fields and pond.  Local builder Andrew Stall did a great job and Anne managed the project and put in lots of time tiling, painting, budgeting, etc. to get it all done. We are excited to have a new dwelling in the community with new dwellers in it!

We've hosted interested visitors over the winter and are expecting more in May and June.  If you'd like to come visit QIVC and find out more about how we live and what we are about, you are welcome to contact us. 

QIVC has officially launched Phase II, which is about bringing in the next wave of participants, with broader options for engagement and residency.  Over the summer, we worked hard on “project management” – revamping policies, drafting new procedures – and now we’re off! 

We’ve officially welcomed Anne, who is working with contractors and community members to turn the lower unit on Lot 4 into a residence, into which she and her son will move this winter.  Prior to starting construction, a team helped scope out access routes for construction vehicles:

Another team helped move old construction materials from that space into the Machine Shed:

We had a wonderful fall retreat on the topic of Pathways, during which we considered how, both literally and metaphorically, we rely on the construction and maintenance of pathways to create and sustain our relationships with the Spirit and with one another.  We worked on physical pathways, such as these:

Our youth worked on metaphorical pathways on the porch roof:

Life sure seems idyllic at times!

Morning mist

A trail into the woods, cleared during our retreat

Imaginative play on a Sunday afternoon

Sheep grazing on greener pastures

The beginning of summer finds the households of QIVC branching out of our fall-winter-spring routines of school and work.  Two of our teens are home from Westtown School and enlivening the land with their cheerful energy.  Some of us are going to nature camp and sleepaway camp, enjoying family trips, picking strawberries, and swimming in local ponds on hot afternoons; gardens are being tended and harvested, CSA produce is being enjoyed (wait...MORE lettuce?), and we have daily sightings of swallows, deer, and rodents both picturesque (bunnies) and lumbering (woodchucks).  Paul's two pigs of 2012 are happily rooting near his garden, which is--as usual--impressively extensive.  A new electric fence protects it from the aforementioned rodents.  

The longer days allow for walks after dinner, playing on the lawn after potluck, and a beautiful firefly display at about 9 PM most June nights over the fields.  Two of us got together late one night recently to make at least 12 cups of garlic-scape pesto as a break from editing and studying. Despite summer's tempting fun, we continue to tackle the challenges of our chosen vocations and careers: publishing papers, divorce-mediation training, getting at least a C in pathophysiology, helping troubled kids, writing procedure manuals for sprawling organizations, and preparing grant proposals.  Challenges at home include sick little ones, chronic illness, and (a positive challenge) integrating a new baby into the house.  The residents of East House added baby Seraphina to their family early in June and we are looking forward to getting to know her (and help out by holding her).  

A local alternative paper, the Hill Country Observer, recently featured an article about us, which you can read here.

Pete Seeger’s song “Maple Syrup Time” has an introduction that calls us at this time of year:

Forget about the mess o’ merchandise the modern world is sellin’
Take a little time to take a little tip from Scott and Helen [Nearing]
Up among the maple trees – harmonizin’ with the breeze
I heard someone say…
It’s maple syrup time
It’s maple syrup time
 

Then the song tells you how to do it:

First you get the buckets ready, clean the pans and gather firewood
Late in the winter, it’s maple syrup time
You need warm and sunny days but still a cold and freezing nighttime
For just a few weeks, it’s maple syrup time

We boil and boil and boil it all day long
‘Til 97% of water evaporates just like this song
When what is left is syrupy, don’t leave it too long
Watch out for burning!  Maple syrup time, maple syrup time
 

Towards the end of the song is the real message for QIVCers and others:

As in life or revolution, rarely is there quick solution
Anything worthwhile takes a little time
 
We boil and boil and boil it all day long
When what is left is syrupy, don’t leave it on the flame too long
But seize the minute, build a new world, sing an old song
Keep up the fire!  Maple syrup time, maple syrup time

Keep up the fire!

Help Us Celebrate 10 Years of QIVC!  You’re invited to our Open House on December 18, from 2:00 to 5:00 at 235 Bradley’s Crossing Road, East Chatham, NY.  

The Quaker Intentional Village Canaan was founded ten years ago this year and it has now been one year that we have all been living on the land.  We hope you can join us for cider and cookies and have a look around.

It's finally fall, we have weathered two early snowstorms, and the leaves are mostly off the trees that surround us.  In October we had our Fall retreat, during which we worked on our vision for the future of our community and our visions for our own growth as invidivuals.  We considered how we could support the community and how the community could support us in our growth.  We also cooked and ate great food!  We are also working on how we can make membership in QIV-C possible for households with fewer economic means.  

Fall also means saying goodbye to some of the animals raised and loved here during the spring and summer.  All four pigs are no longer in their pig wallow down by the big garden, and some of our freezers are full of pork.  We have also taken many lambs off to the slaughterhouse, ending a summer of community lamb-chasing.  Boy, do they like to escape their fence.  We started or interrupted many gatherings over the last few months with "sheeplechases"!

In the last few months one of us has become a Certified Professional Midwife, one has completed a year-long immersion program in Non-Violent Communication Mediation, one has decided to apply to nurse-midwifery school, various members visited Occupy Wall Street, and one of us presented his ideas about metacurrency there.  One of us had a consulting job in Ramallah (in the West Bank) with an NGO, one of us went to a conference on Lyme Disease as part of helping a child overcome Chronic Lyme Disease, one us has embodied the Egyptian god Ptah for a school project, one of us coping with chemotherapy, and two households are building woodsheds for a winter's worth of firewood.  We are busy folks!

We have invited two people in their 20s to live with us for a few months this winter to do work projects and participate in community life.  We look forward to the opportunities, accomplishments, and insights this will bring our community.

Join us for our Open House if you can!  And enjoy the dark but sparkly days of late fall and early winter.

Summertime brings more opportunities for togetherness with community members of all ages.  Communal dinners enjoyed outdoors in the fading sunlight are popular.  Trips to nearby swimming holes and lakes draw small crowds.  On one recent day, several of us happily responded to a friend’s request that some QIVCers come pick her raspberries, as she couldn’t keep up with the volume her patch was producing. 

The evening of the summer equinox, we had a “Community Fruit Walk,” where we visited places around the land where fruit was bursting forth.  This took us not only to our official berry patches and orchards, but also to some less traveled locations where old apple trees still produce and wild blackberries are prolific.  Some of us noted that we were visiting such spots for the first time, and some of us were surprised at the great volume of fruit we can produce.  Now, several weeks later, we’re enjoying sweet and tart berries – raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, currants, and gooseberries – and looking forward to enjoying luscious peaches, plums, pears, and apples.

About those old apples trees, of which we may have 100 (mostly non-producing) around the 135 acres, here is a bit of history:  The Kirby family migrated from Connecticut to East Chatham and established this place as a farm in 1795.  In the 1800s, they would bring hay and apples to the railroad depot for shipping to the growing urban center of New York City.  A newspaper article in January 1879 stated, “King and Kirby have just shipped a carload of apples to New York, loaded during the cold snap.  With a lined car and a coal stove they defied Jack Frost.”

While Jack Frost seems far away right now, we’re splitting and stacking firewood for winter nights and will soon be laying up food to enjoy a taste of summer once these hot days fade away.  Come join us in our adventure to live a better life!

Yesterday was our Spring Farmhouse Work Day.  Before we started on the real work, some of us participated in a wonderful hour of yoga and many of us filled our bellies with delicious pancakes.  You may wonder if people then headed to take a nap, but no, they got to work, tackling a long to-do list.  Several hours later, the Farmhouse was looking much spiffier both on the inside and around the outside.  Adding to that lovely effect, the purple lilacs chose to burst forth in bloom on that same day.

The apple trees are blossoming everywhere – more than 100 of them all over the land – and the peach, pear, plum, and cherry trees in our orchard and near our houses have also burst forth in white and pink.  We never know how many apples we’ll have, but there should be plenty for cider making in the fall.  Each year we wait hopefully to see how many of the young peach, pear, plum, and cherry trees will bear fruit.  Will this be the year that we have so much bounty that we can produce jam to last all the families for months?

This time of year – blossom time – is when the number of inquiries QIVC receives jumps.  People are looking for new beginnings.  They are seeking to align their convictions, their yearnings, and their dreams with how they are living day by day.  It’s exciting to talk about QIVC’s five intentions and explore whether or not there’s a match.

We have more visitors, too.  They admire the community we are building and bring enthusiasm.  They ask questions about why we’re not more radical and offer encouragement.  They enrich us.

We have an Advisory Council that is charged with providing spiritual guidance and reflection on how QIVC is living up to our stated intentions.  Recently, they have stepped forward to worship with us and share wisdom as we face challenges with group dynamics.  We are blessed to have this assistance.

Would you like to join us one of these days to sit on the porch and watch the mother birds feeding their young, to bottle feed the lambs dubbed Headlights and Padiddle, or to inhale the perfume of the lilacs?  Just contact Spee Braun at [email protected] or (518) 392-0891.

2 of our 15 new lambs

If you listen carefully, you can hear rushing water all over the land, the product of the BIg Spring Melt of 2011.  With the reappearance of grass and dirt, the gardeners are full of excitement and starting their seedlings indoors.  They discuss who will grow what vegetables, how to avoid unwanted cross-pollination, who has extra seeds, and how to arrest the spread of thistle.

The children, too, are full of excitement and enjoying the warmer days.  The lacrosse sticks are out.  The trampoline, now clear of snow, is seeing more action.  Two teenagers are running every afternoon to get in shape for spring sports.

It's maple sugaring time and that, too, generates a lot of excitement among QIV-Cers of all ages.  For the second year in a row, one of the kids is doing a science project on syrup production.  This year's research question is, do trees in an east-to-west line produce more sap than trees in a north-to-south line?

We're working now to get out the word that we're recruiting new members.  How do you like our recently launched updated website?  We've begun receiving numerous inquiries about membership in QIV-C and hope the website provides useful information.  Please send feedback to [email protected].

INTERESTED IN EXPLORING MEMBERSHIP AT QIV-C?  We currently have 3 housing possibilities:  build your own house, build your own one-bedroom apartment, or buy an existing 3-bedroom house.  But first, there's a whole process to take you from inquirer to prospective member to attender to member - click on "Getting Involved" above for more information.  Also, be sure to check out the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) - click on "FAQ" above.  We hope to hear from you soon at [email protected] or (518) 392-0891 (ask for Spee).