Our Day, Our Work, Our Play
Leading rich, purposeful, rewarding lives
Our Day
The day begins with all household members sharing morning
tasks including preparing breakfast, helping others with personal
hygiene, hanging laundry, doing the farm chores. Breakfast is a
time so share our meal, our thoughts, dreams, and plans for the
day. Mealtime is one aspect of creating a social life rich in friendships
and loving support. While breakfast and dinner take place in
our homes, luncheon is shared as a community.
At the end of the day we return from our work, share the evening
meal, and relax with story-telling, playing games, music, reading,
and the company of our extended family. For all of us home is a
place of deep bonds, relaxing moments, and self-renewal.
Our Work
Co-workers and residents work side-by-side. Some of us
are farmers, while others are builders or bakers. On a typical
cay our more independent residents leave Plowshare Farm to apprentice
with local tradesmen, assist in a child care center, or help a
need neighbor split wood.
Our farmers care for the land and the many tasks on an organic
farm: milking, compost turning, feeding animals, training oxen,
tending seedlings, or harvesting the fruits of their labor.
Our bakers grind the grain, make our famous granola, and bake
our daily bread, cookies, and treats.
Our cooks make yogurt and cheese, process vegetables and fruit
for winter storage, and prepare a warm delicious midday meal which
we enjoy together.
Some work the land: splitting and stacking firewood, mowing, snow
shoveling, gathering sap for maple syrup. The building and maintenance
crew can be found just about anywhere: repairing a leaky faucet,
putting on a new roof, replacing a broken window. The wood workers
make napkin rings, beds, and doll houses, and repair furniture.
The crafters transform the sheep’s wool into felted balls,
hot pads, pin cushions, and various little animals and other pleasures.
All share in artistic activities including painting, music therapy,
color-light therapy, movement classes, and play practice.
Our Play
Throughout the year we gather, both amongst ourselves
and with the wider community for concerts, plays, festivals, Special
Olympics and other sports events. Residents are also encouraged
and guided in forming individual friendships with neighbors. The
cultural life, especially celebrating festivals of the year, warms
and enlivens us.
The Shepherd’s Play, which we perform in town, has become
a joyous event eagerly anticipated each year by both our residents
and the larger community. The summer is a special time when our
community works in the morning, and devotes afternoons to outings,
picnics, volleyball, canoeing, swimming, croquet, and other pleasures
of the season. Talent shows, dances, sing-a-longs, and festivals
in our local towns fill the evenings. Many friends join us year
after year for our much anticipated camp. Both in the quiet of
winter and the quickening of summer, at Plowshare Farm our cultural
life is rich and fulfilling. |
