Two Blessings of 2010: Wesley and Dasher
We start 2011 contemplating the blessings of 2010, including the birth of our grandson, Wesley, and four new goatlings. Donald and I (Patricia) live on a small, Demeter certified Biodynamic® ranch on the lower flanks the western mountain range of the Napa Valley, California, raising grapes, lavender, fruit, and goats. Most of our ranch is mountainous and wooded, so we also spend a great deal of time harvesting dead trees and generally managing the forest. Over the next year we will offer our thoughts about working with the land and give suggestions you can use.
Donald before steps of the award winning condominium he designed in the 1960’s. Berkeley, CA. It was the first condominium in California.
We were both born and raised on Midwestern small farms at a time in history that many farmed. Donald is now a retired architect, having built houses and hospitals as well as having served for a time as architect with the East Bay Regional Park System. He has always used a geometric proportioning system based on the golden mean that brings balance and appears everywhere in nature. He writes about geometry and the psyche and has two articles being published in 2011 in Jung Journal: Culture and Psyche.
Patricia and Sophia conversing.
I am a Jungian analyst in private practice in Napa, and a writer. During the time I was being certified to become an analyst, we suffered a crisis in our farming, almost losing a grape crop. Just as I needed to develop an entirely different perspective to become certified as an analyst, so Donald and I had to seek another way of farming to save our harvest. The perspectives were surprisingly similar. The story of that time is told in my book Farming Soul: A Tale of Initiation, published in 2010 by Fisher King Press. My novel Snakes, will be published in February 2011.
Between us we have nine children and stepchildren, three grandchildren and step-grandchildren (so far!), and one great grandchild. Our adult children participate in varying degrees in our farming and ranch life and share a love of this land that we are graced to live upon.
