It has taken ten years to create (from scratch) the beginnings of Bluestone Farm and Living Arts Center here on twenty-three acres in Brewster, NY. Based on the the principles of organic agriculture and animal husbandry, biodynamics, permaculture, and the importance of re-skilling for the future, the farm is an ever-evolving entity with its own ethos, personality and interconnections.
As the farm has come into being over the last decade, it has attracted many hundreds of people of all ages, occupations and ethnicities.
Some have come as volunteers, neighbors and/or retreatants, some as summer interns, some as long-term resident companions. Groups of children have participated in the ongoing work of the farm as well, drawing from schools, churches and community organizations.
As the farm enters its second decade, we recognize that our focus is gradually shifting from the initial hard but creative work of establishing the farm, to the consequent work of education. The type of education we offer is not usually in the form of classes and workshops, although occasionally we do offer these. Rather, it is experiential: putting ones hands in the soil, tending plants, taking care of animals, growing our own food, preserving food for winter, making the occasional vision quest in the woods, and living the deep rhythms of the cycles of nature, the growing season and the monastic liturgical year. It is, in fact, Earth literacy that we seek to advance, in the context of the sacredness of all creation.
Every Thursday at 2 pm Eastern, a new video illustrating the work of congregations and individuals will be posted on the Episcopal Church’s Facebook page here and YouTube Channel here.
Produced by the Episcopal Church Office of Communications, other videos featured on Thursdays at 2 include:
- The Abundant Table
- Missional Voices
- Presiding Bishop Michael Curry on World Refugee Day 2016
- Church on the Square, Baltimore, MD
- Episcopal Church Advocacy
- Missional Communities
- Mobile Loaves and Fishes, a food truck ministry in the Diocese of Rhode Island.
- Re-membering and Re- Imagining, a report from the House of Bishops.
- Double Down on Love, an original song from the Thad’s Band in Santa Monica, CA, Diocese of Los Angeles
- The Slate Project, an Episcopal, Lutheran and Presbyterian congregation that exists online and in person.
- The Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers, Presiding Bishop’s Canon for Reconciliation and Evangelism, providing an update on recent church planting meetings.
- The Rev. Scott Claasan of St Michael’s University Church reflecting on how music and surfing led him back to church.
For more information contact Collins.