Tag: ecovillage

Poco a poquito: Life At El Rancho

Published on by Jelelle AwenLeave a comment

20141218_115604

By Jillian Vriend

Poco a poquito or poco a poco means, “little by little,” in Spanish. The hispanic foreman here at the ranch uses it often and it’s become a favorite of ours as well. Not only is it fun to say (as so many Spanish phrases are), but it seems to capture a deeper lifestyle shift for me since moving to the ranch.

Recently, I was lining the spiral paths in our garden with river rocks that are piled close by. I started doing this to denote areas of the garden that were close to the path and in threat of getting stepped on. We sowed carrot seeds on a slope inches from the path and I didn’t want any unsuspecting foot crushing them. Then, I started lining paths that we created in some of the beds with rocks to denote where it was, again, ok to walk without crushing anything still dormant in the soil. I have been very relaxed about this process, mostly letting my inner child lead the way when she feels like adding more rocks. I was in the middle of adding more rocks when Chino, the aforementioned foreman, came by. He said the word for “path” in Spanish and we communicated through hand gestures that I was, indeed, using the river rock to line all the paths.

Chino offered then to wheel barrow over a bunch of rocks for me. I knew how Chino worked, which was in a big display of strength and grounded push. I knew I would find myself with a huge pile of rocks in a short period of time. I smiled at him and pointed to the bucket I was using to slowly bring them over. Then I used his seemingly favorite expression, “poco a poquito.” This he got immediately, smiled at me, and moved on.

This sense of responding to things needed to be done, little by little, is a different approach than the pushing productivity of the western world and actually in most work projects. While there is a sense of importance about getting our garden planted and harvesting from it, there is also a feeling that nature will take its own time. There will be periods of activity and periods of rest. Periods of big growth and periods of little growth. Indeed, little by little, our garden grows and rather than feel that I am ‘working’ on the garden every day, I feel that I am responding to it in a circular way.

Some days that means adding more stones to line the paths and some days that means not adding any. I trust that eventually all the paths will be lined. I feel like this approach is what I imagine for our next garden, which will surround the house that we are staying in on the ranch. We imagine creating a herb spiral full of basil, oregano, cilantro, thyme, chamomile, and more. Rows of tropical lettuce, arugula, mizuna (an asian type of lettuce), and mustard greens will be tucked near the house with ready shade and easy watering. Perky sunflowers and other flowers will line the walk way up to the house, inviting creatures and people to come in. We want to create a path made of brick from the back walkway to the outdoor kitchen and level out the back of the house by the veranda for placement of some hammocks.

Or maybe not. This is the plan but we’ll see what actually unfolds…little by little.

Jillian Vriend is co-creator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life and author of three books.

Letting Go Of Who You Are Not: Life At El Rancho

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

IMG_2036

 By Wayne Vriend

It’s been a couple months now just about since arriving at our destination: Rancho Amigos, though my sense of tracking time is way off from what it used to be. It sure doesn’t feel in any way like January, sitting here at 9 in the morning in shorts and a tee shirt on the veranda of our ‘guest house.’ I occasionally glance at the date on my cell phone, when I’m using it for it’s main purpose lately: the Spanish English dictionary app. I haven’t received a call on it for months now. It feels new and strange to not have reason to track the date, or the time of day for that matter.

We have a 250 watt solar panel, an inverter, and 4 very heavy batteries, that works great to power our laptops, run a few kitchen appliances etc. It’s kind of like camping on steroids. The blend of technology on what feels like me to be the edge of civilization provides quite the contrast. I tell myself to enjoy while we have it, because we don’t have the means to replace this stuff when it gives up. Thank God my 8 year old laptop isn’t complaining.

As I write this, I can feel the question of ‘Why am I writing, what am I wanting or seeking?’ or does it have more to do with contributing, giving back? I’ll keep feeling that as I write and see where this goes.

The last several days have felt intensely full. We moved from our tent camp on the ranch into the guest house after the workers completed some bathroom and outdoor kitchen tiling and plumbing connections. It all had to ‘hand bomb’ our stuff up a hill, as part of me likes to call it, as the ranch truck is waiting for a part from town. Then we planted our 900 square feet garden. The garden has felt like such a lifeline. We’re hoping to drastically reduce the amount of fruits and vegetables we buy in town on our weekly trip, in keeping with our budget predictions, more or less.

Back to the questions above: I can feel a part of me hesitant to write, not sure what tack to take. Shall we share the content of what life is like and what is changing externally with some commentary on the internal changes that afford that? Why bother writing about it at all? Is anyone being helped by it? Is part of me hanging on to an old identity of a blogger, writer, and healer as a steadying handrail in the midst of so much change? The questions are all here and baking in the oven so to speak. The answers aren’t clear.

I can so feel the surrender that it has taken to choose this path over the past year, and how that has been a continuation really of the past 10 years…letting go of the familiar when it feels time. When something feels complete in your life, staying any longer inside of that place has a signature feeling of you stagnating, of dying. Something wants to die all right, but only to make way for new life. Death can be so full of life, if we surrender to it. It is actually the refusal to surrender to natural deaths in our lives that brings on a kind of death we were not meant for.

Surrendering into an unknown is avoided for the fear it brings of being with the questions the unknown brings with it. Why am I here? and Who am I? What makes me fulfilled? I’m really curious at this point what another year of this so much simpler life will bring in terms of meaning and fulfillment, how I will perceive myself, and others, how I will perceive my own power in the world around influence or money?

Unanswered questions are the best, so I’ll leave those to bake and yield whatever insights they may. Maybe when all of our questions are answered, the quest of life itself is no more. And whoever came up with the idea that God himself, herself or itself actually knows the answers? What if us questing with our questions is god just goddin’ through us? Huh? Way cool shit man. Way cooler than the ‘to hell with you if you don’t get it figured out right shit.

Letting go of the contextual quest for the moment and just being okay with the sacredness of the content…the changes here and now on the ground, in this phase of life I live. Can you feel the difference? Do you know the part of you that can get lost in content, all the doing of life? And the heart and soul part of you who seeks to rise above it? Both are necessary and need to be baptized into the sacredness of a whole-some you.

As I was saying, about the content:

Internet: Getting the Internet here on the ranch is a $3,000 satellite installation away I’m told, and we’re not so sure we actually want it, even if we could afford it. That leaves us two hours drive away from the internet cafes and means that it has to fit into the trip to town day which has meant for me 20 minutes on line for every 2 weeks. It continues to open out for us how big a step it is to get out of the internet grids 24/7. It makes space for returning to our essential beings, being in nature and in our humanity. It’s kind of like those weird kids of my generation that grew up without TV, and how they were the most creative kids on the block.

Money: I did the last of my painting contracting days in August of last year in Canada, earning crazy good money. Doing something for 30 years enabled a finding of the best situations as far as easy money was concerned, but it also left me in a frequency zone of being a painting contractor, ready, willing and available, that was becoming less and less of who and what I am. Not that I’m real sure of who I am as I said earlier, but oftentimes, it’s about letting go of who you are not, or who you are not any longer. We alchemized and pooled all the money we could for this move to Mexico beginning when we decided to come in May of last year. We have about a year or more of money on hand to buy necessities if we live very simply, and partake of the yields of the garden, as well as the many fruit varieties on the ranch.

There isn’t any money income coming our way that we know of or expect. That’s an ongoing adjustment for me, at times that has felt totally scary, but each time, as I feel the fear and what’s behind it, it opens out into a trust and a rest. It births a trust in who we are and the value that we bring to life and others that will translate into our needs being met, but probably not so much through the fiat currency channels as the means of exchange that we have all become so entrained in. Today for example, I just brought a very welcomed coffee to the construction workers and one of the workers promised to bring me cocoa plant seedlings next week. Another promised me something yesterday from his garden that I didn’t understand. The energy of being in exchange with people feels like the natural and necessary future for us.

Social: Our English works well of course for the four of us on the ranch here, but that’s the end of it. Everyone else here is a Spanish speaker at the moment. The other ‘members’ of the ranch that have homes under construction are still waiting to move in and only visit here occasionally. So we practice our growing Spanish every day with the 4 ranch workers and the 6 construction workers that either camp out for the work week or horseback it daily here. It’s a bit of a euphoric experience to speak English with anyone outside of the four of us.

Pausing here in the writing for now, other things call in the moment….mostly life to be surrendered and responded to.

Wayne Vriend is co-creator and facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life.

Sowing Seeds Of Beauty And Hope: Life At El Rancho

Published on by Jelelle AwenLeave a comment
20141218_115604
Jillian and her dog Koda at Rancho Amigos

By Jillian Vriend

I have learned to live with all kinds of poop around me: bat, sheep, horse, dog, mouse, gecko, cow and chicken. And even to gather the poop that’s good for our young garden, mostly sheep and a little horse. Life has been about poop because it has been about soil. I’ve spent hours now looking at the soil in our garden area, assessing if it needs more compost, more water, more silty soil from the river. We were about preparing for soil for the first month and, now, we are about watering gently and observing as our plantings sprout up little green heads of life out of our soil.

I have never gotten to design a garden from weedy beginning to fruitful harvest. We were inspired to be non-linear in our design, creating curving and spiral raised mounds as beds. We inherited a plot here at Rancho Amigos that was already a 900 square feet with a solid concrete, but not quite complete wall built around it. So, we gratefully worked with what we had. For three years, sheep have been pooping in the lot so we figured it was pretty nitrogen rich. Still, we added month old compost composed of a ‘lasagna’ of green and brown manure. We also trucked in silty soil from near the river.

This is the best soil I have worked with, mostly because I’ve inherited gardens or even neglected yards in the past. We searched high and low (mostly online) until we found an organic, heirloom seed provider based here in Mexico. The seed company offered amazing varieties of all the vegetables that will grow well here in a tropical environment with a pronounced wet and dry season. We planted four varieties of beans, two varieties of tomatoes (with more to come), soy beans, green beans, jicama, tatsoi, bok choy, kale, daikon and regular radishes, carrots, green/red/white onions, jalapeno chilies and peppers. I sowed garbanzo beans and legumes that we bought at the store to eat, crossing our fingers that they will sprout and haven’t been sprayed with anti-growth chemicals. They are happily growing now. We also have arugula and cilantro growing in this garden, although most of our greens and herbs will be grown up by our house, as we’ll be picking from them often. We also received gifts of sweet potato slips, cocoa beans, and cucumber seeds from others in the community and from the sweet men who come here to work on construction.

I dream about seeds and little green heads bursting out of soil. The joy I feel looking at our freshly planted and mulched garden is difficult to describe. It is without connection to anything material. It is a sense of freedom that comes from taking care of your own needs without dependency on others. I feel it also when I turn on the taps here and fresh spring water comes out. And when our lone solar panel provides us even juice to charge our computers, play our stereos, and use the occasional appliance.

I’d had to adjust what beauty means to me. Just today, I was ‘decorating’ our living room, which mostly consisted of sweeping out old mouse poop and dust so I could put out the very few household decor items that we brought with us. I had a moment of feeling tears over what I had given up; so many beautiful pictures, stones, candles, plants, throw pillows…on and on…in order to pare down for the road trip here. I carefully picked these things out or they were lovingly given to us over the years and I had a moment of wishing that I could have them all back.

But, then, I looked out the wide open window at the view of the lake next to the house, or the canopy of trees providing sweet shade on hot days, or the expansive view of the surrounding hillside and the river valley off the veranda . This is beauty. It cannot be purchased or given away. It can be developed and destroyed but, here, on the ranch we are here at the invitation of nature and the Divine Mother. It invites us to be here and feel how it is to blend in with rather than to overcome nature. My tears faded as I took in the beauty around me, realizing that I had used objects when we lived in the city to supplement a sense of missing nature. I felt suffocated there with the windows mostly shut, the drywall surrounding me, the traffic noise a constant presence.

Life here is about simple joys and pervasive beauty. It is both subtle and, at times, extreme. The subtlety is found in the lens you use to perceive it….as lacking or as in bounty. The extremity is in the constant reminder that we are living in and near the wild without grid electricity, cell phone, or internet service. Both aspects are unpredictable and leave me with this sense that anything could happen and, if it does, it will be based in something natural.

Jillian Vriend is co-creator and facilitator of SoulFullHeart Way Of Life and author of three books.

Living “As If” Collapse Is Coming

Published on by Jelelle AwenLeave a comment

mexico

By Jillian Vriend

Today, finally, I feel somewhat settled. After more than a month of travelling and short stays in various places, we are landed in a place that feels temporary yet stable. We repeat to each other, “We are renting an apartment in Mexico,” just to let in the reality a bit deeper. It feels like we are parked at the mouth of the river, waiting to (literally) begin the journey down it to hopefully claim our piece of sanctuary at an ecovillage located on 700 acres about one hour from here. There are still some unknowns about how it will all unfold, but inside of me it feels like we have found home. We have been claimed by life and by others here in a way that feels warm and welcoming.

Kathleen writes vulnerably about our experiences during the last five weeks in her two exodus journal entries here and here. Ups and downs. Ebbs and flows. Moments of joy and goodness. Moments of pain and constriction. The joy moments seeming to be impossible to occur without the constrictions and vice versa. For me, always there has been a deeper trust that everything would be all right and that we had been guided by the Divine to journey this far. Even when those around us were doubtful, critical, and, in one case, even cruel about expressing their skepticism about the way we were responding to our decision to come here….I still felt a sense that our trust and surrender to follow guidance would draw everything we desired.

We didn’t take years to plan the move here. Christopher and Wayne especially had been feeling the rumblings of industrial collapse coming for many years, yet our trajectories in the last several years have been around focusing on our emotional and spiritual health and deconstructing our false selves. When we gave up our residence (and the $1600 a month rent associated with it) and moved into an RV in January of this year, we felt we were on the right track. It was surrendering to Mother’s flow, but it wasn’t known what would unfold for us after that decision. The campground felt temporary with an energy of inflow and outflow of visitors with even the permanent residents feeling like they could move on at any moment. We liked this energy for awhile; it was freeing after committing to year long rental leases and feeling the noose of mortgages around so many people’s necks.

In June, I felt clear guidance that it was time to feel into leaving the campground and Canada altogether. I just didn’t feel like I wanted to go through another Canadian winter and I asked Wayne and Christopher, “Where would you go if you could go anywhere?” A rhetorical question, for sure, yet also, for the first time we really could go anywhere. Our daughter was an adult and completely independent. The painting contracting business Wayne had run for 30 years felt that it was at a completion. We hadn’t drawn new people to SoulFullHeart on the Sunshine Coast despite our efforts to hold talks and connect with local people. We could go anywhere that our desires would lead us.

Their answer was clear and quick, “Somewhere warm. Somewhere in the southern hemisphere. Somewhere we can get to by car.” These answers were fueled by desire for warm weather, yet, also, our sense of impending collapse was growing. I felt very clear guidance that in the next year major events would most likely take place that could make it impossible to leave Canada. Canada itself didn’t feel sustainable with its short growing seasons and deep reliance on fossil fuels and false self-based infrastructure. We wanted to live in a place where the local people lived more simply, more sustainably, and where there was a long growing season. We felt into various places in Central America and finally decided on Mexico, mostly because three of us had been here before and were somewhat familiar with it.

Mexico. I am falling in love with Mexico. It is a dance, just like in romance. It feels so foreign in moments- the concrete homes, the Spanish language, the accordion-heavy music, the dogs that wander free, the lack of self image.Yet it feels like home too. I love the way that life comes first here and work comes second. Every business seems to be run out of someone’s home so that the gap between the two is even less. They inhabit every square inch of their homes here, no matter how humble the dwelling is. Home is where the heart is here, yes. There are moments of culture shock, where I feel a rub inside of me after searching for anything comfortable or familiar and finding nothing. Dimly lit and un-air conditioned grocery stores. High heat plus humidity that seems almost hostile in its relentlessness. There is the challenge of being vegan, saying ‘no queso or carne’ over and over and getting confused looks back from waiters. Just like romance, the back and forths provide depth to the lust, to the desire that brings us here.

One desire, our desire for land, is strong. To grow seeds. To harvest and to eat of our own labors. This is the one thing that feels sane in a world that has become insane from fossil fuel addiction. Even here, in a state where so much produce is grown, many locals go to the grocery store still. Then comes the truck driven by local farmers full of watermelons or papayas or lemons…announcing over a loud speaker their price….and affordable freshness is in your hand and soon in your belly. Still, now, we are buying our food but soon, we hope, in the next six months or so, we will be eating mostly only what we grow. Is this a naive vision? Have we not planned well enough? Are we fools?

What feels naive and foolish to us is those who do nothing to become more sustainable, those who continue to live fossil fuel dependent lives without awareness, those who dream but do not follow their dreams because they need to earn money to keep their disatisfying lifestyles afloat, those who stay so busy that they cannot let in joy and breathing. Those who will most tragically and certainly die in the coming collapse if they do not change their lifestyles very soon.

And, even if we are wrong about the timing of collapse, why not live ‘as if’ it is a real possibility? Why not make changes to live more sustainably, including growing your own food, living off the grids of city electricity and water, living in community providing support and connection, letting go of false self attachments, healing your heart and soul? Why not truly experience your life in every moment rather than medicating with false food in so many forms?

We have jumped off a cliff into the unknown…and found that there is a river at the bottom that catches and submerges us. A river that is made of love and trust and surrender and courage. A river that has an unimaginable depth and a steady current…taking us onward and around the next bend and the next toward a destination where anything is possible.

Jillian Vriend is co-creator of SoulFullHeart, parts work facilitator, author of a  book about connecting with the Divine Mother and on this blog, and sacred humanity-Divine Feminine teacher.