As we celebrate Winter Solstice over the next few days and with Christmas just around the corner, people all around the world are looking forward to a few days of respite from the fast pace of life which has become the norm for so many of us, including the team at Sacred Earth who have been working hard over the last few months, not only preparing the land for next year but also in the office. This website is the fruit of some of these labours, as is our successful Just Growth funding bid which will be supporting three exciting new projects in 2016.

However, it only takes a few hours on the land at Sacred Earth to feel a sense of the great slowdown which is taking place in nature as we move into the depths of winter. While the unseasonably mild and wet weather we’re experiencing clearly indicates a great shift in our climate due to global warming, there’s also a quality of quietude and stillness to everything in nature at this time of year which has been an integral part of our experience of winter time here in England for eons.

Finding a home at Sacred Earth

I am still a relative stranger to Sacred Earth, my first memorable visit was little over a year ago, and there are still many corners I have yet to explore. The question I keep asking myself as in contemplate these new aspects of the land is, how familiar will I become with these places in the years to come? Will I become friends with the robin who comes and watches me work in the garden? Will the rough bark of the hidden oak I keep feeling drawn to sit beneath become a familiar feel against my back?

In this passage from an article she published in The Nation shortly before the release of her book This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein, citing a conversation with Wendell Berry, elegantly sums up the extent to which the everyday Phentermine experience of so many of us is divorced from the cycles, seasons and patterns of the natural world, to the extent that most of us are not familiar enough with our natural surroundings to be able to notice all the small changes which are taking place as a result of climate change. It is a great relief to me that, despite the uncertainty of these times we’re living through, I have an opportunity over the coming years to begin to get to know a “homeplace” like this one intimately. Who knows? Perhaps it is a place my children will get to know even better.

Happily, there will be ample opportunities for me (and many others, including those of you who have never visited before) to get to know the land at Sacred Earth during 2016 as we’ll be running a busy programme of events throughout the year. This is will be an important transitional year for us as we become a Community Benefit Society with an organisational structure which supports much greater community ownership of the land.

Dates of many of the events we’ll be running on the land and elsewhere are yet to be finalised. Sign up to receive our quarterly newsletter and like the Sacred Earth Facebook page to be kept informed about everything that’s going on, including details of these projects and events…

• Come and visit our stand at Seedy Sunday in Brighton and Seedy Saturday In Lewes in February.
• Share food, fun and fellowship with us at our Spring and Autumn Equinox Community Camps.
• Our weekly volunteer days are an opportunity to learn new skills, meet like-minded people and spend time in nature.
• Making Ground will be art and crafting on the land throughout the year, with opportunities for people to get involved in workshops.
• The Earth Steward Apprenticeship year course kicks off it’s sixth year with an open evening in February.
• Sacred Seeds Herbal Project will be inviting people to come and spend a day learning about that most ubiquitous and versatile of British plants, the Nettle.
• Members of the Sacred Earth team continue to be involved in the ever popular “Little Wanderers” monthly mentoring programme at nearby Hawthbush Farm.
• Hathor Farm and Roots Farm kick off their exciting new farming projects on the land
• We’ll be recruiting an apprentice to come and get involved in our Biochar Project.