Dear Friends,
Here we are celebrating the season of love and light, promise and hope! May the season be filled with joy for each and every one.
We are especially thinking of our friends and colleagues, neighbors, supporters and all those who wish us well!
The board of our little non-profit farm deserve a special thank you for all their support and dedication throughout the year. In addition to their duties as board members, they also volunteer to help complete our projects here at the farm, from hay harvesting to fence repair and animal care, as well as provide their generous support at our Open House in October. It is a major financial fundraiser for us as well as an opportunity for people from the community to stop in and become acquainted with our farm and the mission statement of why Ephphatha exists! We are most grateful for all our friends. We couldn’t exist without you!
And so here we are, arriving at the end of the year. 2025 looms right in front of us. 2024 was a good year here at the farm. We successfully grew organic flowers for a beautiful wedding in Portland. All our animals are healthy and happy. We have the addition of new chicken poults, ready to lay in the spring. We also have 14 new Guinea hens. Young guinea hens are called keets and make a very noisy call of “buckwheat buckwheat” at various hours of day and night, especially very early morning hours! The horses, Diamond and Bodyke, goats, Shadow and Gus, have adapted to their call and now sort of ignore them! The guinea keets will be free range in the spring to help with the control of ticks (which carry lyme disease and other pathogens which can be transmitted to our animals and humans alike) in the fields. It’s a natural approach to tick control. I’ll let you all know how it is working at the end of next season!
In assessing our 2024 year we find we have much to be grateful for. We continued to be supported by so many generous members of our growing community. We have made new friends and clients and as mentioned, our animal friends are healthy.
So now 2025 looms and we would like to expand our offerings and services for our clients. Our dream is to purchase an adaptive wagon and a specially-trained horse team to provide transportation to our clients and friends who cannot ambulate. This wagon could provide access to the farm fields and also continue to foster the human-animal bond with the horses. We know from experience how healing that can be! In order to accomplish this we need to build a barn to house the equipment and the horse team and provide a meeting space for our participants. It’s a big dream but we are in the season of miracles and we believe anything is possible!
So we are going to begin fundraising via a Go Fund Me page with the help of Dr. Steve Cina from Boston. Increased fundraising efforts in our own community and surrounding areas will also be supporting this new venture. Rossignol Excavating has staked the proposed area and where the additional footage of the road will run and the initial preparation to build. Hillview Barns are drawing and modifying plans, and the town of Winslow has been contacted to issue permits in the spring. So we begin and I will keep everyone updated on progress. Scary but exciting at the same time to be sure!
However, for the next two weeks we stop with business plans and meetings to attend to the things of the spirit and heart. We renew, we take stock of where we are, what to hold on to, and what to let go of!
Until the day we die we continue to transform ourselves to follow the light by living in Truth, the Truth of being sensitive to the needs of one another, to being compassionate and caring, to being less critical and increasing our generosity, not only financially, but also in giving of our time and presence…To practice being kind, to be content and thankful.
If we exercise our physical muscles we become stronger, and so when we exercise the muscles of our hearts, we can strengthen in these qualities as well. For me, one of my hopes is to listen more intently to what someone is saying or not saying when they are speaking to me.
We have arrived at the most miracle filled time of year. May all our hearts and spirits be ready and prepared to receive the messages of this Holy Season. Miracles abound. We have to be ready to see them.
ALL of us here at Ephphatha Farm, both furry, feathered ,and human alike, wish you a happy and fulfilling Holiday Season. Angels abound. Listen on a quiet night under the stars and you may hear them singing.
