The Farmastery
The Farmastery is the residential community at Spring Forest, which is multi-generational, including families, couples, individuals, and six dogs living their best life. We bring diverse backgrounds, education, professions, gifts, and skills.
Why Farmastery? We have some things in common with a monastery: shared residential life gathered around God through a common set of spiritual practices and making our space and our practices a welcoming and healing resource for others beyond our community. Unlike traditional monasteries, we are multigenerational and our community includes children. We also have a small farm and forest, which we care for and share with volunteers and others. The work of our farm is evolving and includes supporting refugee resettlement, the healing of trauma through shared gardening, and collaborations with churches, schools and non-profits to provide learning experiences in natural farming and eco-spirituality. Farm + new kind of monastery = Farmastery.
Some of our professional skills and passions include forestry, environmental toxicology, civil and mechanical engineering, law, road construction, farming, pastoral ministry, cooking, gardening, writing, art, leading retreats, holding space, spiritual companionship, and more.
All of us love the land—both farm and forest—and are committed to fostering the well being of animals, plants, soil, water, air, and humanity.
Our residential community--the Farmastery--is ecumenical. We follow and love Jesus, and we welcome friends and guests from other religions, no religion, and those who are spiritually curious. Our simple set of spiritual practices, (rule of life) is: Prayer, Work, Table, Neighbor and Rest.
Our residential community includes:
Randall Bell, Elaine Heath & their 2 dogs: Lilly and Dill
Foley Household: Tim, Gretchen, Heaven, Asa, & Aurora
Charlie & Mary Kay Jackson
Justin Nygren & his dog Beau
Marie & Mae Lewellyn
Chris Reed & his 3 dogs: Oreo, Sandy & Bandit
Joe Meinholz