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The Sacred Gardener

Golden Lake, Ontario

About
Workshops + Events
Sacred Gardener School
Listen • Watch • Read
Online Courses
- Mound Planting the Three Sisters
Shop
Contact

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sacredgardener

Seeding earth wisdom since 1989.
Home of The Sacred Gardener School.
Wildculturing ~ Co-create ~ Wildcrafting
We're on Patreon!

"When I say sacred, I don’t mean it at all as a

"When I say sacred, I don’t mean it at all as a synonym for higher or separate, but as a clear expression of the divine.

I use the word to mean moments and places in which we are conscious of being in the company of Gods and Goddesses, of connecting with the protogenic sources of the physical world. I mean it as something that when experienced makes everything inclusive, part of one large animate narrative rather than exclusive.

These divine moments are built into a sacred building. And while unseen, or unspoken of, they also form the foundation of our civilization. They are the ones who contain the information on which everything we are rests. In these divine moments we remember our connection to everything. These moments are seeds from which all time grows and unfolds, keeping us as a culture and as individuals, alive.”

From Steven's book:

THE ROUNDHOUSE: A MEDITATION AND GUIDE TO BUILDING A HANDMADE HOUSE WITH LOCAL MATERIALS

Link to purchase your copy is in our bio.

#naturalbuilding #cob #localbuildingmaterials #localbuild #stackwall #earthship #bioregional #bioregionalbuilding #hobbithouse #communitybuild #lowtech

Hope Springs Eternal

This spring, after having ‘lost hope’ in many ways over the last year, I have been cautiously basking in the light of ‘hope’ like never before. I’m relishing the majesty of her purposefulness, and the razor’s edge of my expectations that cut me from ‘being’ in the moment. Like spring herself, hope’s ethereal quality only adds to my enjoyment while she resides with me.

Over the decades I’m slowly coming to understand how we can fully feel and be inhabited by an emotion without holding onto it. How to let them come and go, of their own accord, like the wild things they are. Working with and learning to embrace hope without holding onto her has turned into a sacred exercise that is helping me not be attached to my own irrational and disproportionately emotional leanings.

In my exploration of hope this old phrase came back to me “hope springs eternal”. These three lovely words and this expression is not one you often hear these days and if you do it’s likely with eye rolling and an ironic or sarcastic edge, usually in reference to a ‘lost cause’. But really it means that even in the worst of times there is always hope and to have faith that things with work out. And that the very nature of ‘hope’ itself springs eternal like a spring in the ground or as the spring returns every year.

So why is it that such a positive feeling, of all the tones in our emotional spectrum, has come to have such a bad rap these days when we might need hope the most?

Continued on our Patreon page, become a patron by following the link in our bio. You can join for $10/month and have full access to all writings and videos. For $65/month (there's openings!) you will receive a delivery of lovingly crafted teas, body care items, spice blends, incense kits and more.

#patreon #spring #springwater #hopespringseternal #wildwater #livingwiththeseasons #handmadelife

"I’m interested in promoting gardening as consen

"I’m interested in promoting gardening as consensus, gardening as communion, and gardening as an extension of the ecological continuum, of which our human evolution is also part. Gardening did not begin with humans. There are many ancient contracts between species. The Earth is a garden. Cultivation is the domain of creation. Everything on this Earth cultivates its own environment with the help of other beings and, in so doing, participates in the Earth’s cultivation and Her perennial cycles of abundance."

Steven Martyn, from The Story of the Madawaska Forest Garden

Check out the link in our bio to purchase Steven's books.

#forestgarden #consensus #cocreation #gardeningasconsensus #madawaska #algonquinpark #rapidlake

All my plant relations are jumping back up now. Ev

All my plant relations are jumping back up now. Every spring I’m brought to tears of gratefulness when I see their beautiful faces again. Only a week ago as the moon waxed toward fullness, we thrashed bags of un-hulled bean pods for their bright coloured eyes and coaxed hard white knuckle-like kernels from fourteen inch, eight-row Onondaga flint-corn. She and three other of last year’s heritage corns that I carry, still safely hang rodent-free, from the centre rafter of our living room ceiling. We need to keep an eye out for our family and those we love.

How we select our seed is very important. I’ve grown out heritage varieties of corn and beans for over twenty five years, and kept the seed strains consistent during that time. To have done this I am thankful for many corn teachings. One of the most important teachings was passed on to Gary Nabhan by an elder in Mexico, which he’s passed on in his book “Enduring Seeds”. She “tisk-tisk’d” him as he tried to help the old woman choose seed, because he only took the best looking cobs. She told him and my practice follows, that we should always make sure we take our seed, the planting kernels, not from just one or two of the prime cobs (as a breeder would if they were trying to hybrid the plant), but to take the seed from many different cobs including the ones that don’t look so good. The lesson here is to not discriminate based on appearances! Because the twisted little one with crooked rows may contain the very genes or medicine, that the species needs to survive this time of change.

There are great mysteries waiting to reveal themselves to us at the heart of agriculture.

#threesisters #savingseeds #corn #community #agriculture #regenerativegardening #smallscalefarming #subsistencefarming

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