True love is redemption

Dedicated to the natural world and to all those who are trying.

Peace 

Humming bird lessons

Like the humming bird in this poem, the little things that happen around us are bridges to getting us outside our heads and connected to life. We all suffer, and we suffer alone. Yet just in that fact, we are also connected. And we are connected in many other ways too. The practice is to stop believing our own made up narratives, and start perceiving what's really true. This is really hard and it takes a long time, and I can't tell you how it ends because I am still very much in process.

Peace 

How fear turns

First fear turns to rage 

As you realize how much

You've robbed yourself of 

Those times you were afraid

Then fear turns to sadness 

As you grieve 

For yourself 

And everyone else misguided 

And still afraid 

Then fear turns to freedom 

As somehow you let go 

One day, when you are ready 

And simply live 

When fear turns to loving 

You start to see in others 

As you have in yourself 

That we're complete and lovely

Despite our brokenness

----

And an unrelated picture that I like.

I am so grateful for the animals in my daily life.

Peace 

Pent-up things

Peace 

Transform

Rainy day, I'm inside looking out at some of the things that make me happy. In my personal experience, nothing I ever bought at the store brought me as much happiness as the relationships I've built by giving of myself and my time. Whether those relationships be with plants, animals, people. So if you're depressed and are having a hard time, go outside, plant something, care for an animal. Creativity also helps if you're feeling down. Use whatever difficulties you're dealing with as fuel to create something beautiful and good. We can always do that. 

Real work

My mom planted these lilies at my house years ago, and since then they've grown and bloomed and brought me so much beauty and joy every year. It's the same with our actions. Sometimes, something we say or do plants a seed in someone, and it can stay with them and grow in them and really make a difference over time. We are always sowing seeds around us, whether they be seeds of understanding, joy, love, hate, confusion, discord. So be mindful of your words and actions, and choose carefully what seeds you sow. This is your real work in the world and this is what you leave behind. 

Peace 

Be the path

Peace

Tahlequah

Tahlequah is the Orca mother who has been pushing her dead baby around for 10 days or possibly more now in the Pacific North West. The Orca population in that area is in very bad shape due to starvation and environmental contamination (PCBs) which is affecting their reproduction.

Earlier this year, on our west coast trip, Sena and Ed met Ken Bacomb, the researcher in San Juan Islands featured in the movie Sonic Sea, who has devoted the last 40 years of his life trying to help these Orcas. He was very depressed about the situation.

I wrote this poem for the mother:

Peace 

Good

My dad is back home safe after his trip to Romania; my mom's meds seem to help her depression and she's also taking other steps to help herself, which I am so proud of her for. Ed and the girls are doing well. And I've been very hot and sticky doing my work outside, but good and grateful. My little spot on the porch with all the flowers I've been tending is making me very happy, and I think my current read and meditation practice are helpful too. Here are some pictures:

Brad Warner is funny and irreverent and can also be offensive. But I like his books a lot and find his insights helpful.

How to meditate: lessons from Cookie 

Sunset in the pasture 

My flowers are thriving. Aren't they beautiful?


Peace 

Great Silence

Go out and do your work. Do what you can do, give what you can give.

Each breath a death, and each breath a rebirth

She said nothing I feel is wrong

The guilt, the fear, the heaviness

The joy, the love, the awe

All labels we've created 

They're all the same to her 

Different reflections of the whole 

She said to be with it

This energy that needs to move

That threatens to destroy 

She said just let it be 

And watch 

She said to hold the pain, the joy, the hope, the love 

She said that I could do it 

She said she's always there

beside me, beneath me, inside me, around me

She said that every breath I take 

Is like a new beginning 

My life starting again

She said in each fresh moment 

Just do what you can do 

And give what you can give 

No more, no less 

Lighten your load. Let go as much as you can of your expectations, guilt, fear, shame. These are concepts you've been imprinted with that are weighing you down. Find out what's real for yourself. Life is your greatest ally in showing you what's true. With every step you take, and if you can't take any, then with every breath, you have another chance to let go of what you think you know, who you think you are, and begin again. Go on, do what you can, and do it now.  

I was inspired to write this stuff above after a beautiful and difficult sweat lodge last night. I had a hard time pretty much all day yesterday, and I felt so exhausted by the end of the lodge that I could barely walk when I got out. My steps were uncertain and deliberate, and all I wanted was to lay against the earth and feel it against me for a long time. That is what I did, and that's when I felt the weight lifted off me, as I realized that all this stuff we carry, we can just let it go. Over and over, as long as we're alive and still breathing, each moment is an opportunity to let go and start again. So I wanted to share this insight, and I hope you find it a little bit useful.

Fertile Ground: Beauty and Brokenness

I set up an Etsy shop yesterday to sell my poetry book online, and I am so excited to have had my first sale today out of California!

I've sold about 15 copies too at the farm over the past couple of weeks. Thank you so much for everyone's support!

Here's a link to my etsy shop, and below is the book description. Let me know if you have any suggestions or comments.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/shundahaishop

How do you hold both the beauty and brokenness of your life, without shutting down parts of yourself, without becoming hard, or callous? How do you keep giving and loving after you have experienced the sadness, hurt, the pain and darkness of life? These are the major threads that run through the poems in my book, Fertile Ground: Beauty and Brokenness. The poems are generally short, simple, and raw. They are borne of real experience, and seek to reach out and express the rawness of that experience, without adornment.

The book costs $15 and you can buy it at the farm, or at the Willimantic Food Coop or on etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/shundahaishop

I am donating 100% of profits to these three environmental organizations:

Natural Resource Defense Council: Defending our air, water, communities, and wild places.

Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies: Marine research, rescue and education since 1976.

Marine Mammal Alliance Nantucket: Responding to stranded and injured marine mammals on Nantucket, and providing public education about the ocean.

The book is 77 pages long and it measures approximately 5.3" by 8".

It was printed at Gulemo Printers, a small local print shop in Willimantic, CT.

There are 2 poems on most pages; some pages have only one poem per page, and a few poems spread over two pages.

There are several color pictures, all of them originals.

There's a short bio at the end.

Thank you so much for your interest!

Humming bird medicine

This beautiful little friend has been visiting my flowers every morning while I have my coffee on the porch. I looked up humming bird medicine and here's what I found from manataka.org:

"These magical beings are most often viewed as a symbol of joy, happiness and love and come to awaken us to the beauty of the present moment. ... The hummingbird is the creature that opens the heart."

I love the noise humming bird makes as it flies or hovers above flowers, and I love how vivacious they are. I also read that humming bird cannot be caged or caught and confined in any way. It will die unless it is free. 

Peace 

Still you search

And still, you're searching for a reason to go on 

After you've seen the show 

for what it is 

And you have lost all strength 

to uphold the pretense.

You've searched the books

And all their answers 

are not your answers.

You've met the teachers 

And found that only those 

Who say they do not know 

Have anything to offer.

And still you search 

While shedding pieces of yourself 

Until one day there's nothing,

The day when you break free 

And find the answers that nobody can give you 

Are who you are 

This is for my mom and all those struggling with depression and other mental health issues. I hope the new medication and all the changes she's trying to include in her daily life help my mom feel better, and I hope too for the rest of us that we get the help we need to be healthy.

Peace 

Poetry in the pasture: A short reading from my book

Here's a 3 minute video with a reading from my poetry book, Fertile Ground: Beauty and Brokenness. I hope you like it. There's also info on the book and how to get it right below the video.

And an update on the ducks: through my sister, we found another Muskovy duck female, and brought her home this morning. We introduced her to daddy duck and they're getting to know each other.
He was looking for mama duck all last night and this morning, poor guy...He seemed super excited to meet the new female though, although she didn't seem so sure. Hopefully they'll like each other.

Peace

Sad

I had a hard day today. I felt off, sad and low the whole day. Then I was going to go to the bank around midday, and I got in the car and started backing up and ran over mama duck. 

She was resting in the shade under the car and I never saw her. I only saw her in the rear view mirror as I was driving away, and I got out of the car right away. She was messed up really bad, trying to stand and flapping her wings. Daddy duck came over to her right away and was sniffing her, but she just fell over and died. He kept trying to preen her feathers and eventually he just lay down next to her. It was all so sad, and made so much worse that it was my fault. Also I knew that Aiyana would be super sad since they are her ducks.

Ed was really nice and came home and we just hung out watching daddy duck trying to bring mama back. Aiyana was really sad as expected. Sena too, we texted her and she called to talk to me and try to make me feel better. My sister and nieces were very supportive too. My sister found a friend who has another female Muskovy duck and we will get her tomorrow for daddy duck. He needs a companion and hopefully he'll get along with the new female.

I just keep picturing mama duck and how messed up she was when she came out from under the car, and daddy duck doing everything he could to bring her back and then just laying there with her, and it kills me that I'm the one responsible, and that maybe if I had been more aware and less self centered on whatever was going on with me, this could have been avoided. Hopefully I've learned my lesson today.

Peace 

Color at home, and Sena's dorm room

The pasture looks so beautiful right now especially with all the chicory in bloom 

And the tomatoes are keeping me busy, with really nice harvests.

Sena's dorm at UConn. She'll be spending the next week there, part of a Pre-vet program she's enrolled in. She's excited about the program but was not too crazy about the room.

First time she'll be away from us for so long...it feels so weird....

But it will be a good experience I think.

Peace 

My beautiful friends and teachers

So grateful for them, especially when the human world gets too heavy. Their silence and quiet acceptance of what is, the way they live in the moment, their presence - these are my refuge.

Blessings, peace and respect to all animals all around the world.

Peace 

Life is practicing you

When we feel alone and unsupported, or unseen, we can try to remember that we have support from life itself. Life supports our physical processes, so that when our bodies get sick, they want to get better again. Life supports our emotional and spiritual wellbeing by giving us signals when we're not acting in a beneficial way. It supports our relationships with each other by drawing us in certain directions.

To have life on our side is more than we can ever ask for, and life is always on our side, until the very last moment, even when we don't feel like it is. Life wants us to thrive, because we are life. Life is experiencing and experimenting through us.

Chogyam Trungpa said that we are not practicing life, life is practicing us.

We are unique singularities, each one of us, every single being on this planet, and as such, precious to life. I hope you can take some comfort, strength, or maybe some courage from that. 

Peace 

Practice

I've come across two metaphors for meditation practice that I really like, and want to share them. I think that even if you're not into meditation, they apply to anything that you want to get to know really well, anything that you'd like to become second nature to you and become intimate with, wether it be gardening, painting, telling the truth, being courageous, or whatever else you're genuinely devoting yourself to.

The first metaphor comes from Dogen, a zen monk from the 1200s, whose work I'm currently reading about in "Sit down and shut up" by Brad Warner. "Dogen likens ... practice to the way you get wet if you walk through fog. You don't notice it as it's happening. But walk through that fog long enough, and you'll get thoroughly soaked."

The other metaphor I really like, and unfortunately can't remember where it comes from, is of practice being like soaking beans. I soak a lot of beans, so I feel close to this one. When you first put the beans in water, they are small and rock hard. Over time, the water infiltrates, slowly and imperceptibly, at its own pace, until the beans are eventually all swollen and soft, and quite transformed.

I hope these metaphors can be helpful to you in some way, maybe if only as encouragement that things do happen when you make an effort, when you try, even though it may take a really long time to see any results. Sometimes the results of our actions may not even appear until our lives are over. 

So, to close with another quote from Brad Warner, which I really like, "Do what you can, and do it now".

Peace 

Robin

This poor little robin never had a chance. It broke my heart to see it. Its nest fell out of a tree and the egg broke.

How to reconcile the realities of life with our ideas and expectations? And how to reconcile what we perceive as the beauty of life with its harshness?

I guess one way is to let go of our notions and expectations and try to align ourselves as much as we can with what actually is, while keeping an open mind and open heart. Walk that edge of trying to do our best without attachment to the results. Sounds so easy but is so very hard in practice.

Peace 

Flowers on the porch

Good morning! Look how beautiful the flowers on the front porch are getting. This little spot, which I've been tending to for a couple of months now, has become my little sanctuary. I'm glad to share it with you.
Peace 

A short reading from my book

I just posted a  6 minute, YouTube video with a short reading from my poetry book.

Enjoy this beautiful day!

Peace

My book is ready, and how to get it

My poetry book, Fertile Ground: Beauty and Brokenness, was just printed. I am so excited, and grateful to everyone who encouraged and supported me. For logistics on how to get the book, read below.

I decided to donate 100% of profits to these environmental organizations:

Natural Resource Defense Council: Defending our air, water, communities, and wild places.

Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies: Marine research, rescue and education since 1976.

Marine Mammal Alliance Nantucket: Responding to stranded and injured marine mammals on Nantucket, and providing public education about the ocean.

The book costs $15, and here's how you can get it:

• At the farm: just stop by during weekly sales on Thursdays from 3 to 6 pm, or whenever it works for you.
• By mail: Mailing costs are: $4.25 for US, $6.50 for Canada and $12 for Europe. Please send me a check for $15 plus the mailing cost, and include your name and mailing address, and I will send your book as soon as I receive the check.
• Starting next week: At the Willimantic Food Coop.
• If you have any ideas or suggestions of where/how I can sell it, would you please let me know?

Please feel free to email me (mail@shundahaifarm.com) or leave a comment here with any questions or anything else.

Thank you so much again to everyone who encouraged me. I would not have done a book on my own, but now that I did, I am so glad. It feels like a sort of passage and also a sort of connection and continuation of my ancestors, since both my grandmothers in Romania wrote poetry. 

Peace 🙏

July Farm Video

My latest video, showing what's going on in the fields and orchard, and with the animals. I hope you enjoy it.

Flowers, veggies and my latest read

"Sit down and shut up" Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death.

You know they say don't judge a book by its cover; well, I judged this one by its title and bought it. I think punk rock and zen make a lovely combination. I'm only 50 pages into it, but so far I do like it.

Only

Only love 

Through you

Not from you

Not for you 

Through you 

Be the instrument

Only love 

Even when it breaks you

Only love 

Peace 

Control, going with the flow, and the ground in between

How much to control? How much to let go and just go with the flow? And how to tread the ground in between?

One of the more difficult lessons we repeatedly have to learn in life is how to hold intention without becoming too controlling or too attached to the way it manifests. We all have situations where we'd like to see a certain outcome, whether it be in our personal lives, our families, jobs, communities, etc. In the great majority of cases, the outcome doesn't depend on us alone. And it's a fine act, one that requires self knowledge, sensitivity, life experience and some luck, to know how much to control and how much to let go of a situation.

Letting things be determined by circumstance alone doesn't feel right to me, but neither does pushing too hard for a specific outcome.

Personally, I feel that what I need to do is learn how to hold intention in a firm but gentle way. It's really tough and I don't have an answer yet. I think that a lot of is has to do with knowing yourself and trusting your instincts, and also learning to discern whim from something more solid.

It's also important to learn to be aware of when you are being swept away by circumstance versus acting intentionally.

We make mistakes, but rather than beating ourselves up over them, I think it's more useful to realize that learning this kind of fine balance is not a one time lesson. We must do it over and over, and our experience, our own lives and the lives of those we know are our teachers.

Nobody can tell anyone else how to tread the ground between being too controlling and letting themselves be at the mercy of circumstance. We are all naturally drawn to a certain point on this spectrum and we must all find our way to a good balance. Hopefully, we can have some support and understanding from others as we do this.

I share this from my own experience and I hope that it can be useful to someone, if only to know that you're not alone.

Peace and keep trying.

Go

"Go–not knowing where; bring–not knowing what; the path is long, the way unknown; the hero knows not how to arrive there by himself (or herself).” —Russian Fairytale, quoted in Search edited by Jean Sulzberger (as posted by Creative Soulful Woman on FB).

Just go. Knowing you'll get lost along the way. Knowing nobody can save you. Knowing that for you, right now, there's no other way. And also knowing that you're no hero, certainly not a hero, but that's okay.

Peace

My book going to final printing

Today I'm bringing my poetry book to the printer for the final printing. I am both excited and scared. Scared because many times I feel like my poems are crappy and pathetic and way too personal to put out there like that. Excited because I'm doing it anyway.

Peace 

Quote from Fear by Thich Nhat Hanh

I am acutely aware of how true this is. I have been both victim and perpetrator. 

"...blaming and arguing never help us and only create a wider gap between us. Only understanding, trust, and love can help us change and grow."

So let's be generous and open, and let's forgive ourselves and those who have hurt us. Let's trust ourselves that we can do better, and let's trust them too.

Let's live with an open heart knowing we'll be hurt again, and doing our very best not to hurt others. There is no place in this for blame. Just being willing to learn, to feel it all, to contribute and give the best of ourselves always. What else is there to do?

Peace 

Sunday morning

First, the milking.

Then, breakfast on the porch: my sister's home made bread, my own home made cheese and strawberry jam, and not home made but delicious coffee with milk from Jasmine. And current reading. 

Enjoy your day. It sure feels a lot better out there now that the humidity came down.

Peace 

These summer days

Quiet mornings with a book and a cat. Some of my own favorite memories from when I was a child are of reading a good book in a comfortable place.
Blackberry abundance is here 
Nasturtiums and geraniums 
Planning out the work for the day. My feet are never clean at this time of year because I'm always barefoot.
Whatever you are doing, wherever you are, may you also find beauty in your life and may you be healed by it.

Peace 

A little beauty

Just wanted to share this sweet little spot at my sister's house.
Nasturtiums and butterfly 

A simple lunch 

Life gets tangled and untangled

In its own time 

In its own way 

Have faith and learn from that.

4th of July

Me, I'm harvesting cilantro and milking my cow. Still, I'm grateful to be here and grateful for all the places I'm from. 


I hope that people are remembering those separated from their children today. I can't imagine the pain and anxiety.

Peace 

Girls

Quiet summer morning on the farm.
Girls just wanna have fun. Still true for good friends like these. Heading to the beach, with grandpa driving.

Peace 

Things I've been up to

Ed and I went to a protest in Willimantic last Saturday, to stop family separation at the border. Thank you to everyone who came out here and all over the country.
Cheese making

Trellissing and pruning tomatoes. They're loving this heat, and growing fast. Me, not such an extreme heat lover, but I deal with it.

Cucumbers coming right along too. Look at all those flowers. Abundance is here!
Peace