Welcome Emma Rain
The Good Life Center's Resident Steward Juli Perry and Executive Director Bob St.Peter welcomed their second daughter, Emma Rain, on November 11, 2007. Emma was born peacefully at Forest Farm at just after 6:00 on a beautiful late fall morning. Emma is the third baby to call Forest Farm home and the first born at the farm. Thanks for coming, Emma -- we're glad you're here.
Resident Steward's Update
by Joel Walther
Just as life on the farm is beginning to slow down, it has sped up for Bob and Juli with the arrival of their new baby, Emma Rain. It has meant an adjustment for everyone, but a welcome one at that.
The garden is getting put to bed now. Most things have stopped growing, though we may still get a few warm days coming. You wouldn't know that it was cold in the cold-frames and greenhouse, though, where everything is thriving. We will have plenty of fresh greens still for the winter. That is always a welcome sight when most of your edibles are coming out of the dark basement cellar or out of a jar.
Leaves are almost completely off the trees as the world prepares for some down time. We are also preparing, though we are talking about winter projects as well. All summer long the neighbors have told us that winter is the time for projects. There is an expectation that even during these quieter months you are not sitting on your laurels.
Becca Hall (Summer Apprentice), Joel Walther (Resident Steward), Luna Butterfly,
Juli Perry (Resident Steward), and Bob St.Peter (Executive Director)
Of course it is also a time of celebration. We will all gather in different places to celebrate the harvest with Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving has a more immediate sense here. The harvest we celebrate was truly from our own hands. How much more real can Thanksgiving get? In fact, it may be more real than the first Thanksgiving when I�m pretty sure the Native Americans brought all of the food!
We were particularly proud of our rutabagas this year (HUGE). I didn't get the fall carrots in on time, which means we'll be eating our neighbor Eliot's this year. We continue to learn each moment. I am particularly learning now about newborn care! We make adjustments with each lesson and hope that next year's garden will be even more plentiful.
Let me end with a snapshot: Bob is reclining on the south-facing window seat with Emma beside him. Juli and I sit in chairs facing the fire both with our hands in the popcorn bowl. Luna is riding around the living room on her new red bike that she is very proud to have.
Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Stewards, this IS the Good Life.
Stewards' Writing:
The Best We're Doing: A Journal of The Good Life Center
Harborside, Fall, 2005
The Good Life Center is proud to present the first issue of our new online journal, The Best We're Doing. Issue One features essays on the Iraq war, community organizing in Sri Lanka, gardening on a toxic waste dump in Rhode Island, and much more. --click here to explore the first issue--
"The good life is never stable, never secure, never easy and never ended. It is a series of steps or stages, one leading into the other and all, in their outcome, adding, not subtracting; augmenting, not diminishing; building, not destroying; creating, not annihilating."
