The Farm
I live on a few acres in Sonoma County. It has fruit trees, flowers, and a big vegetable garden. There is wide open field for skunks, coyotes, and jack rabbits to roam. It has a community of three tall sister trees — a redwood, a catalpa, and a sycamore — giving shade to me, and food and shelter for nuthatches, Acorn Woodpeckers, and Northern Flickers.
The farm is also a metaphorical place — a location within our imaginations to observe, nurture, and shape our inner worlds.
My farm is a constant teacher. It shows me the ongoing cycle of life and death, which returns to life again. Through it, I see ways I can develop the world around me, and how I must accept that there is much beyond my control.
My farm, both imagined and concrete, is a place for growth. Tending the soil, planting seeds, pulling up the weeds, feeding the roots, we all can thrive and harvest new fruits.
It will be a place in which others gather to learn through workshops and retreats.
For now, I share small bits of this place, through picnics, gifts of fruits and flowers, and farm stories and photos.
Through these little farm offerings, I hope others will be inspired to build their own creative spaces to cultivate resilience, healing, and acceptance within their hearts and minds.
The story behind the name
I bought my property in 2013. It took me four years to settle on the name Sparrow & Crow Farm.
I have an abundance of crows and a plentitude of California Towhees, a member of the sparrow family.
One bird is small, gentle, and seemingly insignificant. Yet it is ubiquitous, filling the ground, the bush, and the air with its numbers. The other is large, bold, and stubborn, making her presence known in such a fierce and raucous way, that one must stop and take note.
I desire my farm to hold both of these spirits together — a sort of yin and yang balance.
Both of these birds are used in my religious tradition as a reminder to let go of fear, worry, and anxiety.
God notices even the tiny sparrow. Do not fear. The ravens do not farm, they have no barn, and yet God feeds them. Do not worry.
I have found peace in this imagery for many years. Even as a young child those passages captured my attention.
It was through my health struggles with Psoriatic Arthritis and later Dysautonomia (Long Covid) that I came to realized that my struggles with stress, fear, and anxiety were greater than I realized.
Even though I didn’t come to understand the depth of my nervous system dysregulation for years after naming my farm, nor how to really free myself from it, I knew finding a release from worry was something I desired.
Just months after choosing the name for my farm in 2017, my area was ravaged by devastating fire storms. Thousands of homes were burned in just a few hours.
I woke that night to the sounds and smells of the Tubbs Fire raging miles from me. Within an hour's time, what was far away appeared to be just upon us. The entire skyline glowed a terrible bright red; the traffic of thousands fleeing blocked one of our two means of escape. Filled with terror of being trapped, I too fled.
When I returned to my land the next day, I found my home still standing. The air was a yellow brown. There was no sky. There was a deafening quiet to the place. No cars, no planes, no wind, no sounds of animals — the still deadness of a land abandoned. The eerie silence around me was punctuated by the loud sounds of my breath in a plastic gas mask.
My beliefs did not save my house from the fires. To try to find some reasoning behind its destructive path is futile; to say God spared one, but not another, heresy.
But my faith did support me as I tried to recover from the anxiety that consumed me that week and which lingered in my system for many years after.
A few days after the fire, as the air began to slowly shed its acrid haze, I noticed for the first time, that the silence had been broken: bird song, the first sounds to return to the land.
It seemed to me, though chosen months before, this was the real christening of my farm's name.
It was not that I thought then, "This place will survive. This bird song is a sign of permanence for your farm. Do not worry." I knew then that it all could be gone in a very instant. The worry, the fear, and the anxiety were not worth my energy.
Living in a new awareness of impermanence, with the gentle persistence of a sparrow, and the fierce boldness of a crow, I strive to teach my mind and body to choose love over fear.