Smoke from the Lake Berryessa fire rises over the eastern ridge of the Napa Valley.
Fire and Farming This morning it is evident that the fire in the eastern most part of Napa County is less contained that it was yesterday morning this time. A large plume of smoke spreads across the sky at first light. The orangish light is alarming and reminds us to think about animals and evacuation… Read more »
Learning to live with a keystone species sometimes takes time! The four foot pyramid-shaped pile of sticks and branches in the understory of a canopy of coastal live oak immediately caught my eye. I had never seen anything like it. Obviously, something had built this structure, yet to my uneducated eye, there was no indication as… Read more »
Mating disruptor
Uninvited Guests (Pests!) When I first started writing The Uninvited Guest: Fire and the New Consciousness, I was thinking about fire. Collectively we banned it from our environment over the last 100 years and now it threatens to return with a vengeance. In this fifth year of severe drought in the West, we are being warned… Read more »
Solstice Sunrise. May the oak savanna survive.
Land Use in the Napa Valley and Consciousness It is the end of a season and of a year, and we in the Napa Valley are hardly in a sleepy, midwinter’s night space! Land use issues are reaching a boiling point, heated up by the drought and water scarcity, and the decreasing amount of land… Read more »
On Saturday, October 18, 2014, I will be presenting a seminar at the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco on The Spiritualized Earth, Birth of the New Consciousness: Jung’s Analytical Psychology and Steiner’s Biodynamic Agriculture: What Might Save Us. Since the Fall, mankind has been separated from experiencing the Divine in the natural world…. Read more »
Charlie Toledo
When I was interviewing Napa therapist and water activist Charlie Toledo, Executive Director of the Suscol Intertribal Counsel, this week, we had a conversation not directly related to the drought and water that I found particularly healing. She told me that in pantheistic times, people had more fun. “When I speak to elementary school kids,… Read more »
Although Racu has moved on to greener pastures, and in his place, less cantankerous llama Hijo guards, this true story about a rainmaker at another time of severe drought has never been more relevant. The blog first appeared in June 2011 at the beginning of California’s drought. At first no one noticed the Buddha I had placed in the forest… Read more »
Animals are an important part of Biodynamic practices. Not only do they help with weeding, but their manures provide fertility, all part of an important feedback cycle. Biodynamic Association Listing The Biodynamic Association website has a new feature in which we farmers, growers, processors and producers are… Read more »
When Old Friends Die Death always feels sudden, it seems, and no less so for a tree. Last night the dear old Valley Oak by the little farmhouse where Ramon and his family live, fell. The tree, at least 300 years and perhaps close to 500, lays shattered on the driveway. Although years ago a… Read more »
Wider Perspective: Turning of the Year
Wider Perspective: Turning of the Year Meditating Crow Each afternoon this week I walk the goats and Hijo, our llama, in the meadows around our house. The sun is warm on the south slopes, the grass just barely up, and the last hours of light have that magical feel of transition. On the eve… Read more »
© 2024 Patricia Damery.
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