Quarterly Updates: Awaiting the Return of the Light

It feels fitting that our first post on return from our brief hiatus is our Winter Solstice update, for this is the season where, as we await the Solstice itself, we await the return of the sun. As always, our lives mirror the seasons as they shift, and we are entering a season of deep rest and reflection here.

The Ranch has never been so beautiful. The expectation of our annual vegetables being killed by cold has been unmet, and we're blessed instead with a very long mild growing season and lots of continued rain, and so we will continue to harvest beans, greens, and squash well into early Spring if this continues. We've been awaking to dew, which we've never experienced here before, and so we're keeping everything going with very minimal supplemental water which is absolutely wonderful. Our basins are flourishing with annuals and perennials alike, and we continue to plant trees and plants that are food for us and other beings, and those which provide the most nourishment to the soil along the way.

Three weeks ago we planted ten new trees, some desert buckwheat and Mojave milkweed, and seeded lots and lots of wheat in our greywater infiltration basin. The trees are doing wonderfully, coping with the stress of transplantation and the cold, and the other transplanted natives are thriving. Even though the milkweed hasn't flowered yet, I've seen many more butterflies than usual: perhaps a coincidence, or perhaps they know somehow that one of their favorite foods is here and are waiting for it to set buds and open up for them.

We have, at the time of writing this, completed a smaller pasture area than originally planned due to time and budgetary constraints. A local homestead is, effectively, failing, and they are attempting to dump their animals. Because we wish to house these animals in better, more hygenic conditions, help our local community, and begin producing more of our own food, we are taking on two pigs from them tomorrow and have taken five turkeys from them as well, who are currently integrating very well and looking much healthier. Pigs do wonderful work decompacting soil, which is something that is greatly needed, their manure is extremely valuable for compost, and they are brilliant, intelligent beings who can consume excess and produce many pounds of food for us and our network. In the future, when we have the resources to create our larger, multi-species rotational pasture, this area will be a great stud pen or isolation area for animals that get injured, sick, or need a safe space to have babies. The creation of such infrastructure is demanding financially, physically, and in terms of time, but each time we complete a project like this we gain independence and opportunities, so it is well worth it. We ensure that everything we construct is multi-purpose and long-lasting, so that should our needs change the infrastructure that we create now can still support us and our community in the long run.

We also built an aviary to raise Gambel quail in the Spring: these are a native variety of birds often raised for eggs and meat. Though they're not quite as commonly raised as livestock as Coturnix quail, because they're a little smaller, but they're better suited for our climate and will be much happier here. Until then, our "rescue" turkeys will continue to reside in the aviary.

As we reflect on the year, we see our impact on the land and feel incredibly proud. We've focused on a twofold goal: set ourselves up to reduce external inputs and our own footprint while simultaneously focusing on regenerating the land and surrounding ecosystem. Everything must work together, and everything must add something to the land as a whole, not just to us. While we've had some moments of stumbling along the way, it does feel as though we're accomplishing our goals well for the time that we've been here.

Finally, we are pausing hosting for the next while, perhaps a year or more. Unfortunately, our attempts at cultivating an on-site community encountered significant roadblocks and we have determined that the most responsible way forward is to step back from this experiment and to use what we've learned to rebuild a more stable foundation for such an endeavor in the future. We have, for now, parted ways with those who called Rancho de la Libertad their home since September, (though another of our long term residents will be remaining until he has to return to his home country, as he embodies so much the spirit of what we are attempting to do here and we appreciate his presence very much) and are considering deeply what changes we need to make for such a community to function.

One of the things that we attempted to emphasize as this most recent group returned to the Ranch to stay long term was context-building. We had set up specific, ritualized moments to be together as a whole group where we would meditate together, share knowledge and ideas, and participate in shared work that benefited the whole. However, one of the things that we realized we missed was that context cannot be built without trust, and the people who we invited to stay long term were not people with whom we had truly built a deep foundation of trust or value-alignment with prior, though perhaps we thought we had. While each and every person who's visited or stayed here this past year and half that we've opened this land and home to others has left something beautiful and indelible, there is always the knowledge that they will return to something else. This plagued us when inviting guests back as residents: though it is happy to receive, as a guest (rather than as a friend or community member), what is offered, the willingness to give that back in earnest always seems to be half of what is given, or less. We have learned that regardless of how we attempt to open things, we are fighting each person (including ourselves) and their socialization that insists that they need something of their own and that anything shared is not truly theirs. This manifests in many ways, but most frustratingly in a crass lack of regard for what is offered. Things go undone, effort is oriented to as a net negative, and resentment builds when reciprocity is a requirement of community.

Pragmatically, we know and have known that the best way to truly make this a community is to create shared economic ownership through a land trust or other means. We hoped to build relation and trust in a less committed communal environment to see who was interested and willing enough to help us create something like that, as the accumulation of more land and the creation of a trust is resource intensive and impossible at this point, and that without engaged partners there was little point anyways. We thought, "it is easy to do this alone, it is brave to give others the space to do it with us, to learn where we all fall short, to attempt to make a piece of land we've made live something that can be lived in by others who love it". We thought, perhaps naively, that if we offered our resources and expected very little in return people would have the time and psychological space to truly determine if consenting to this life long term was what they wanted, as well as to pursue value-aligned work (i.e: political activism, spiritual work, etc.) simultaneously if they wished. What we did not realize was that what was not built by their hands they did not care for, that everything offered was assumed to be an entitlement, not something that was earned through mutual labor and love. An attitude began to build where the structure we had attempted to set up eroded: anything related to group participation was seen as an additional obligation rather than an opportunity to build relationships, work seen as a drain on one's own personal well of time and energy and not as a way to meaningfully benefit the space one inhabits, and the conflicts that this led to gradually wore down our spirits. We love this place so dearly, we care so much, we want to share it so badly with those who also care about it, and we put so much effort into soliciting feedback and attempting to build a space that worked for new people who'd not yet built trust with us, or care, or a true foundation of values to work from, that eventually we realized we were ultimately being taken advantage of, and we felt too slighted and frustrated to continue. This was obviously not the emotional place we wished to hold space from.

Now, this is not to dismiss or diminish our own personal shortcomings, failures at communicating effectively, personality flaws, and so on. All of those things are very present in this saga though perhaps too vulnerable to express in a newsletter. However, moving forward we aim to make sweeping changes to ourselves and the structure of this community: it still is a community, after all, though it may no longer be a commune (at least not for a while). We plan on fostering our existing relationships: our own friendships with people we've known for years and years went neglected in exchange for offering space for newcomers, and we want to rectify that. Local friendships which have blossomed in the past three years since we've lived here deserve our time and attention, and we look forward to engaging more meaningfully with the surrounding community as well as the land, now that our focus is freed up to do so. We are preparing space and work to host for Open Studio Tours next Fall, and are planning other moves to embed ourselves more deeply in the artistic and holistic sub-communities in this region.

So now we wait for the return of the light, and we burrow down to preserve our willingness and our energy. Like buds under frost, we are not finished but dormant, patient. We know that like everything else we've learned these lessons will bear fruit in time, when it is time.

Thank you for reading and for being a member of the Rancho de la Libertad community. We hope that what we share brings you knowledge, hope, or valuable insights worth considering in your own context. Please consider supporting what we do and enabling us to continue to educate others and regenerate our land and community by becoming a paid subscriber or donating any amount to our ko-fi (operated by co-owner Siin). If you cannot do so, consider sharing us with a friend. We appreciate you for enabling us to do what we love, and what we are meant to do.

For paid subscribers, this month we are doing another quarterly Q&A if we receive enough questions. If you are a paid subscriber, please email your question to ranchodelalibertad@protonmail.com by December 15th to have it responded to in depth. Additionally, if you wish to receive gifts from the land, please email your address by the 15th so we may send out a small gift packet as promised previously. Thank you again!