Tag: volunteer programs

By Jillian Vriend

The foundation walls of our first cob (straw, clay, and sand) structure are growing. It is like a puzzle, taking random stones and fitting them together to form a sixteen inch wide wall. This first structure is a sleeping and living cabana for Christopher with an outdoor veranda. We will also create one for Wayne and I up on the hill by the large boulders. Our next building will most likely be the common area kitchen and dining building with storage and a pantry. Or maybe the pit/compost toilets and shower stalls. Some days it feels as if there is so much still to do and it almost feels impossible. Other days it seems amazing the progress we are already making by taking it poco y poquito (little by little.)

I have become fond of the idea that we are homesteaders or perhaps home/heart/soulsteaders is even more apt. Homesteaders live sustainably and independently. A homestead is a sanctuary for individuals to grow their own food, including raising livestock (although we have only adopted the chickens here on the ranch to eat their eggs occasionally), to live much more simply, and to be unplugged from the grids. A modern homesteader is able to combine some of the conveniences of the modern age with techniques from our ancestors. The modern homesteader sees the bigger picture about the long term unviability of our industrial, profit-based, and growth obsessed culture. They feel that they don’t want to contribute to the consequences any longer of this culture and want to take providing of their own needs ‘into their own hands’ (and hearts and souls, as it were.)

For us, the awakening about the consequences of industrial society and its seemingly inevitable collapse, is what motivated us to set up a homestead here in Mexico. Our biggest priority was to find a place with its own water source, fertile and unspoiled topsoil to grow organically, land for us to build homes on out of natural materials, and at a cost that we could afford since we were leaving Canada with a finite nest egg and without definite means to earn money in the future. We also felt that the rural Mexican culture would be more able to withstand collapse as they tend to live much more simply and cheaply and resourcefully than we do in the US and Canada. The village near the ranch just got electricity in 2008 and still doesn’t have wired up internet, only satellite service. This is an agriculture and ranching area. Many of the adults and land owners here grew up in this area and there is a love of for the land and nature that is palpable in the people here. There is also a heartiness in the people here that we all admire and especially notice that older men here are quite robust and healthy.

The learning curve over the last five months since we moved to our homestead has been huge. We have gotten some advice and guidance from locals here, but most of our guidance has been from a few good books and our own intuition. I am amazed at what I have learned and what I continue to learn every day about plants and how to grow them for food. My current learning curve is around saving seeds and what to plant in anticipation of the hot, humid, wet season that is coming soon. The ‘rainy season’ (which goes from June to September and into October sometimes) here is looming a bit large in the moment as we haven’t been through it before. Rising water levels of the river that runs in front of the ranch can make it challenging to get here and usually the only way to cross it is by the couple of horses that are ‘great swimmers.’ Two other people who live here on the ranch, a couple from Washington, are planning to buy a boat which we are hoping to use to boat here during the rainy season.

We are getting used to living with both unknowns and with a growing sense of security and safety about our choices to come here. We are becoming increasingly less reliant on industrial society and finding that giving up things that felt like necessities but are actually luxuries afforded to us through cheap oil primarily are not that hard to give up. And the benefits of appreciation, humility, and more connection with one another and the planet are huge.

Come visit us! Please visit soulfullheart.com to learn more about no cost volunteer opportunities to engage in healing, organic gardening, and natural building at a sustainable 700 acre eco-ranch in Mexico.

By Jillian Vriend

Our world has been about seeds and plants and now, it is about rocks. Round river rocks and jagged creekbed rocks. Rocks stacked in a wall to form the foundation of our first cob house. We are using cob (a combination of sand, clay, and straw) mortar, which is getting us used to the sensation of mud on our hands and feet (you mix the cob with your feet). I feel my inner child in glee; we get to play in mud for a good reason! The rocks seem to have personalities and I didn’t realize that they can talk just as plants do. They seem to tell me where they will fit in the rock puzzle. And they all seem to want to be part of it. We are building foundations which could remain for centuries to be discovered by generations in the future.

Life cycles are ending in our first garden by the river, which we call the ‘rio garden.’ The bean plants that are over three months old and have been giving us beans for a few weeks are starting to die and wilt. The tomatoes are wilting in the sun and the ones that the caterpillars don’t get are a welcome addition to salsas. Every time I harvest a bean pod I think of the plant’s will to live encompassed in the drying out pods. Each seed represents life even as the plant itself is dying.

As I talked about in this blog entry about death and rebirth, it is the season of the Dark Madonna or Kali. In this spring season, there is a feeling of anything can happen and if you’ve been running from change, it will find you. Kali offers a stark mirror for that which we’ve been avoiding or haven’t wanted to face in our own shadows. But, always, She offers a rebirth after the death into what is more real and less false. This can be a painful process, however, as parts of us attach to what is current and what we’ve become familiar with. It can be a very intense experience to let go of what we have known, even if it wasn’t making us happy or fulfilled.

For us, a big shift is happening in our personal world. It looks most likely that Kathleen will be moving on, probably staying local in the Puerto Vallarta area. Kathleen has been with us since the beginning of our arrival here in Mexico in October and off and on for over three years. Besides being a friend, she also has been engaging in our SoulFullHeart process since the beginning of its inception. The process for which she has come to the decision to leave and our process around it is quite vulnerable and raw still in the moment, so I feel to leave that for our private digestion. But, in her going, I can feel the death and rebirth cycle in a very intimate way. I’ve been through enough of them, usually by choice in the last several years as I’ve surrendered more to the Mother, to trust that whatever is lost or dies in this process will end up birthing me and others into a more authentic place. A place that we need to be. A place that ends up being the best one, even if it is hard to see that in the moment of loss and adjustment.

I feel even more how the ranch offers a hugely catalytic growth opportunity for those who desire it. Being unplugged from so many of the western world’s grids and immersed in nature the way we are here pushes up conditioning for us to feel and heal. I feel that anyone coming to stay here or visit here doesn’t remain unchanged. I certainly have been changed and continue to be, as have those around me have as well.

Please visit soulfullheart.com to learn more about no cost volunteer opportunities to engage in healing, organic gardening, and natural building at a sustainable 700 acre eco-ranch in Mexico.