Until further notice the house at Forest Farm is closed for public tours. The gardens remain open and tours will be given Thursday through Monday from 1 to 5pm through the month of October.
The Board of Directors of The Good Life Center has taken this necessary action to close the house due to an unacceptable level of mold within the building.
We are working towards a full remediation of the mold with professional assistance and anticipate re-opening the house in the near future. A report of the condition of the house is available upon request.
We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your support and interest. For further information or to volunteer assistance or to contribute financially, please contact Jeanne Gaudette, The Good Life Center Board of Directors at 207-326-4735 or email jgaudette@midmaine.com.
The Board of Directors for The Good Life Center
UPCOMING HANDS-ON WORKSHOPS
October 12 Foraging for Wild Mushrooms
9:00am – 1:00pm Big Peter’s Brook in Blue Hill (Call to register and for meeting location)
Take an early Fall walk with Marc Bellenoit and learn about all things mushrooms. Marc is an experienced forager with more than 10 years experience. He will present recently foraged mushrooms and talk about what are available this time of year. He will then lead us on a walk along beautiful Peter’s Brook in Blue Hill to search for and identify mushrooms in their wild habitat. This walk will take place rain or shine. Please dress appropriately. The cost is $15-$25, sliding scale, and includes a seasonal, vegetarian picnic lunch. For more information call 326-8211. Space is limited so please register early.
Scroll down to see learn about recent GLC programs. Or click here to see 2008 Summer Schedule in its entirety.
RECENT MONDAY NIGHT MEETINGS
August 4 Rob Shetterly & Terry Tempest Williams, Mountain Top Removal and America’s Resource Wars
Painter and activist Robert Shetterly will be joined by author and activist Terry Tempest Williams for the August 4 Monday Night Meeting, sponsored by The Good Life Center and held at Reversing Falls Sanctuary in Brooksville. The subject of the talk will be “Mountain Top Removal and America’s Resource Wars”. Shetterly and Williams will speak about their experiences opposing mountain top removal and mining in Kentucky and California, respectively. Shetterly is the creator of the “Americans Who Tell the Truth” series which includes over 100 portraits and a book by the same title. He will unveil his recently completed portrait of Scott Nearing, to be housed at The Good Life Center in Harborside. Williams is the author of numerous books, including The Open Space of Democracy and Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place. There will be an informal pot luck dinner at 5:30pm followed by the formal presentation and portrait unveiling at 7:00pm. The Good Life Center’s Monday Night Meetings are free and open to the public. Donations are welcome. For more information or directions to Reversing Falls Sanctuary contact 326-8211.
August 11, Ellie Kastanoplous, Gaining Ground: Buying Land in a Crazy Market
Malcolm X said that “Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality.” On Monday, August 11, Equity Trust director Ellie Kastanopolous will present ways of making that vision a reality. Equity Trust is a small, national non-profit organization committed to changing the spirit and character of our material relationships. Through technical assistance, outreach, education, and community investment, Equity Trust pursues their goal of helping communities to gain ownership interests in their food, land, and housing, and they work with people to make economic changes that balance the needs of individuals with the needs of the community, the earth, and future generations.
2008 SUMMER COURSES
The Ecological Self and the World: From Fear to Action
Spend the weekend and beautiful and inspirational Forest Farm enrolled in The Ecological Self and the World, an intensive weekend designed to broaden our collective understanding of it means to be ecological citizens and what it takes on the personal, local, and global level to make the world more just and sustainable. The first part of the workshop is led by Phoebe Phelps, MA, DMin, Eco-Psychologist and Spiritual Director in Orland with a background in Transpersonal Psychology, Matthew Fox’s Creation Spirituality, and the East/West inter-religious dialogue. Phoebe will help participants deepen and clarify their understanding of the ecological self and prepare the group for taking the step from fear and despair to action.
Leading the second half of the workshop is Bob St.Peter, executive director of The Good Life Center and community activist. Bob will help the group find their “sweet spot”, the place where skills, ability, and interest meet and where we can be most effective (and affective!) on a personal, community, and global level. Inventor, entrepreneur, and humanist Buckminster Fuller said: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Cost: $150 per person, $250 per couple. Includes course, seasonal vegetarian meals, and a place to pitch a tent or lay a sleeping bag.
COURSE AGENDA
Participants are asked to bring to the workshop an item from the natural environment around their home, perhaps a leaf, a rock, some bark, maybe some soil. Meals are vegetarian and are prepared using seasonal, local ingredients. If you have allergies or restrictions please call at least one week prior to make arrangements.
FRIDAY 6:00pm Dinner
7:30pm Ingathering, getting acquainted, and self-recognition as ecological citizens. Fire circle.
SATURDAY
7:00am – 8:00am Bread labor at Forest Farm. Activities may include light garden work, gathering firewood from the forest or seaweed from the beach
8:00am–9:00am Breakfast
9:15am–12:00pm Deepening Our Awareness of Our Irrevocable Embeddedness in the Natural World
12:00pm–2:00pm Lunch & Tour of Eliot Coleman’s Four Season Farm 2:15pm – 5:00pm Clarifying Our Ecological Citizenship on an Increasingly Interdependent Planet
5:30pm–7:00pm Dinner
8:00pm Further discussion, music or chanting. A sauna will be available and a pond for swimming
SUNDAY
7:00am–8:00am Bread labor
8:00am–9:00am Breakfast
9:15am–12:00pm Finding Your “Sweet Spot” – the place where your skills, passion, and interests meet and where we can be most effective (and affective) as advocates for a just and sustainable world. The morning will conclude with each participant identifying actions they can take in their personal lives and their local and global community.
12:00pm Lunch
1:00pm–2:00pm Departure
See 2008 Summer Schedule in its entirety.
Posted by Joel | June 20, 2008
Topics: Hands-On Workshops, Monday Night Meetings, Workshops | No Comments »
2007 Monday Night Meetings
Recordings of many of the 2007 Monday Night Meetings are posted. Look for the page to the left.
Posted by Joel | June 8, 2008
Topics: Monday Night Meetings | Comments Off
A farmer in the city
I recently traveled to Washington, DC. What a change from the small peninsula I live on in Maine. I had a hard time keeping up with the pace of things. I had a hard time keeping up with the lights, consumerism, noise, power and the heat. I kept looking around at every open piece of land and thinking that it could easily be growing food. I finally happened upon a neighborhood where everyone had their front lawn covered not in grass, but in crops. There was cabbage, tomatoes, greens. These people were gardening! It was evening and I saw no one around, but I want to return one day and see if these people know show Scott and Helen Nearing were. I want to know if they’re trying to live their own Good Life. It calmed me in that crazy city.
Posted by Joel | June 8, 2008
Topics: Resident Stew: The Resident Stewards' Blog | 2 Comments »
Working for money
I’ve had the opportunity lately to work away from the homestead for someone else doing gardening. I have worked, thinking most of the time, why Scott and Helen wanted to work for themselves. When I work for money, I feel I have to be productive. When I work on my own homestead, I hope to be productive, but if I’m not, I let no one down except myself. I don’t like making money. It makes me dislike my job from the very beginning because it puts a value on me. Maybe my work is not something that can have a value put on it. I’m done with the job now. I’m glad of it , too, as I can return to the life Scott and Helen intended me to live and the life that I enjoy more. Working for myself, not for a paycheck, not for money, but for the Good Life.
Posted by Joel | May 12, 2008
Topics: Resident Stew: The Resident Stewards' Blog | 4 Comments »
The Learning Curve
I was doing some minor, minor plumbing today and I have never plumbed. I know nothing about plumbing. I began thinking about my entire generation and how little we know about living in a way that doesn’t need specialists to take care of all of the things we don’t know how to do. Now, perhaps specialists are needed and I’ll survive just fine, but I suspect that I will be better served by having a general knowledge about a lot of things and being able to do more things for myself. I then wondered if I would be able to learn all of these things. On top of that, I thought of what I do know above and beyond the “average” person my age and I began to wonder if they’d be able to catch up if the time came that it was needed. Is the learning curve too great? Have we gotten too far away from the lifestyle where you could do things for yourself? I hope not. My plumbing leaks though and so back to it I go to see how I can fix it. I keep on learning.
Posted by Joel | May 5, 2008
Topics: Resident Stew: The Resident Stewards' Blog | 4 Comments »
Do you trust Mother Nature?
I’ve been thinking lately about whether or not we should trust Mother Nature. I’m thinking specifically about the fact that we had had a very dry spring until the other day. All last summer I debated with myself whether I should water plants or trust Mother Nature’s cycle of rain. This spring with it being dry, the same thought came to me. Obviously we have developed the means to bypass Mother Nature. Yet there are certain styles of farming that seem more in tune with letting Nature take its course. I just wonder which way to go. Or is it a little of both as is usually true? Don’t we have to water the seeds that we plant to get them to germinate? Isn’t it wise to water if it has been really dry? Yet, I remember one time last summer when I finally decided to water and the next day it rained like crazy. What do you think?
Posted by Joel | April 28, 2008
Topics: Resident Stew: The Resident Stewards' Blog | 1 Comment »
A political action
Towards the end of this year, many Americans are expected to receive an economic stimlus package. My question is: Is this an economy that we want to stimulate? I don’t know what your answer is, but mine is no. So with that answer of no, I want to try to start a movement of people that are willing not to stimulate the economy with the money they get back. How can we do this? The easiest way is not to spend it, but upon further reflection it means we cannot invest it, or put it in a bank account. All of these things stimulate the economy. We could send it back to the government, but with the current war, I’m not going to give them more money than they have. (Of course, they’ll only borrow it anyways driving us in to more and more of a deficit.) You could buy a bond with it, but again, the same problem. I have decided that the only real possibility is to stick it under our mattress. A friend reminded me that money is worthless, so you’re better off to go buy some gold and put that under your mattress. Do as you like. I think it’s a fitting response to acknowledge that this economic stimulus is completely worthless by putting completely worthless paper mony under your mattress where it will be more and more worthless. I am hoping that we can get a ground swell supporting this idea. Share it with your friends, see what they think. Let me know what you think. Do you have more creative ideas? I’m open to them, BUT, let’s agree not to stimulate this economy.
Posted by Joel | April 13, 2008
Topics: Resident Stew: The Resident Stewards' Blog | 3 Comments »
« Previous Entries