My dear Judy; (December 2021)

It's 6 am and I'm sitting in front of the woodstove answering emails after three weeks of the flu or something else, who knows. I love seeing your name in the email post. Such a modern woman!

Below is a recap of the farm year which explains lots of other activities I've been leading. In the fall I agreed to head the Marietta Unitarian membership project to work on growing membership, particularly among young people. The membership is mostly people above 65 so this is going to be an interesting chess game for me.

We bought a house in Marietta Ohio. We've spent the past few years exploring small towns in Ohio but kept going back to Marietta because they have a college, and the unitarians, so there are progressive folks around. The house is a "rural Victorian" and is serving as Jay's office four days a week, and our solar installer certification classroom for labs and certification testing. It's three stories so when we save some more money we will put in an upstairs bathroom and finish the third floor into an apartment for ourselves. I plan to create a food forest garden in the 30x70 backyard and host some classes there - an urban Blue Rock Station.

The new year brings a lot of need to engage in activism with young people. It feels like we are fighting for the life of our democracy and the next 23 months will determine the outcome. I hope, if I can find the donors or funding, to create three activism weekend camps to bring people together to create their own activism plans for their local areas. We will also be a voter registration site. Sigh...the world is in collapse, but then hasn't it always been?