Fall Semester

  As the Fall season really begins to come fully into it's own, the days are considerably shorter, the weather is beginning to take on a chill, the trees are in full Fall color, the wild Mushroom harvest is in full swing and the garden has gone past its full vigor.Most of the canning and freezing are done but there are still Pigs and Chickens to butcher, beets,carrots and rutabaga's to put in the cellar.We have made wine from the Summer fruit and now it is time to make wine from Apples, Pears and Peaches. It is time to store the firewood for this Winter and start cutting firewood for next Winter. As we are driven inside earlier by the shortening days there will be more time for making music and more elaborate cooking.The social gatherings will take on the flavors of the Fall season as the house is filled with the smells of Apple Pie, Pumpkin Donuts and Mulled Cider.
  To this end Stone Soup Institute is offering a Fall Semester to four students who are curious and adventuresome enough to explore the experiential learning opportunities on a small homestead in Maine.

Curriculum:

• Gardening and Crops
• Storing root vegetables for Winter
•  Cover Cropping 
• Planting garlic
• Threshing dry beans
• Shelling corn
• Saving seed from fall crops
• Animal Husbandry
• Butchering pigs
• Daily care of laying hens
• Butchering broiler chickens
• Daily care of draft horses
• Logging with draft horses
• Craft
• Wild harvesting mushrooms
• Wine making
• Baking in a wood-fired outdoor oven
• Introduction to Fiber Arts
• Introduction to Blacksmithing

The educational experience is designed around the practical skills and seasonal rhythms associated with maintaining a small homestead. The primary delivery of the curriculum is through the hands-on experience where students are expected to be self-motivated and able to self-evaluate, as there is no required reading, or testing.  

Living Arrangements

Participants in this semester will live in a 2000 square foot house built by Jim Cornish, the co-founder of Stone Soup Institute. There is also 16 foot diameter tipi and campsites available.

In the house, there are two bedrooms available to students; one in the north end which sleeps two; one in the south end. Students will prepare meals using the electric stove, outdoor grill and bake oven. Meals are served on a common table. There is one television with cable with VCR and DVD. There is computer access and wireless internet.

Social Opportunities

Stone Soup Institute is located on Harpswell Neck, a peninsula that is nine miles long and ½ mile wide at its widest point. There are miles of shoreline to explore within walking distance of the house, miles of public trails for hiking.

A small general store and post office are ¼ mile from the house.

Brunswick, the closest town to Harpswell, is nine miles north. It is a typical New England college town with movie theatres, libraries, restaurants, small shops, etc. A health food store and Farmers Market provide opportunities to buy provisions and visit with other farmers in the area.

Tuition, Fees and Dates

Spring Semester: Oct 15 – Dec 15, 2013
Fees: $2300 which includes full instructional program, seminars, and room and board.
Click here to download an application form. 

The Fall Semester at Stone Soup promises to be physically demanding, emotionally challenging, spiritually expansive, and intellectually stimulating. We hope that you are ready to stand in a place where our past meets our future and explore the possibilities.

Stone Soup Institute
298 Allen Point Road, Harpswell, ME 04079, USA
Phone: 207-833-2884
E-mail: mail@stone-soup-institute.org

Another Cycle Begins

 As the light rain falls on the Corn and Peas we planted yesterday I take some time to reflect on last years garden. Like most years there were some things that did well and others that did not. The Cilantro and Basil did not germinate well, the beans all got the Mosaic Virus, and the Squash and Cucumbers died from Squash Mildew but not  before yielding 29 Butternut Squash and 37 quarts of pickles and all the Cucumbers that we could eat. All else did fantastic. From a 6,300 Square Foot garden we ate all we wanted and stored the surplus for Winter. We canned :
  28 quarts of Tomato Juice
  18 pints of Salsa
  10 pints of Ketchup
  We froze:
  19 quarts of Spaghetti Sauce
  6 gallons of Tomatoes
  10 pints of Shell Beans
  10 pints of  Peas
  11 pints of Sugar Snap Peas
  In the cellar we put in:
  1 1/2 bushels of Carrots
  1 1/2 bushels of Beets
  2 bushels of Rutabagas
We dehydrated 11 quarts of Tomatoes and 11 gallons of Mushrooms, canned 4 quarts of Mushrooms and pickled 10 pints of Fiddle heads that we wild harvested.
  We made 10 pints of Pear Butter and 12 pints of Peach Jam from trees around the neighborhood that have been abandoned.
  We made:
  4 gallons of Raspberry Wine
  5 gallons of Rhubarb Wine
  5 gallons of Dandelion Wine
  5 Gallons of Pear Wine
  5 Gallons of Elderberry Wine
  5 gallons of Peach Wine
  We planted Byron Flint Corn which we ate all Winter and still have enough to last two more Years.
  We raised 30 LaRouge Broiler Chickens for the freezer
  Some of our bounty is long gone and some is still bountiful. We are adjusting, and planning and planting,singing and celebrating as the new Season unfolds.
  It is indeed Magnificent to bring the cycle around full.
 
 

Spring/Summer Semester 2013

Spring/Summer Semester 2014

As Winter begins to wind down the days are growing increasingly longer, the buds on the trees begin to swell and the sap begins to flow. We find ourselves well rested after a Winter of long nights and as our energy begins to surge we are once again reminded that we are not separate from the world around us.
Our thoughts turn to Spring as we contemplate plowing a new garden plot, starting seedlings, buying piglets and chicks, wild harvesting, and wine and beer making will be filling our farming days. We are sawing lumber for,cold frames, chicken tractors, and a small greenhouse(from our stack of salvaged windows).  Raised beds and barn rafters, a hog house and pen, and windows to trim our shop.
 As the Tiny House movement gains momentum we will begin construction on our third one to sell as part of our fundraising campaign.
 The seafood season will be in full vigor as the days turn past the Summer Solstice. We will spend long days in the gardens and fields and many long evenings around the Mediterranean Grill and outdoor Bake Oven feasting on the fruits of our labor.
 
To this end, Stone Soup Institute is offering a Spring/Summer semester to four students who are curious and adventuresome enough to explore the learning opportunities on a small homestead in coastal Maine.

The Curriculum

• Gardening and Crops
• planting and tending seedlings 
• direct seeding crops
• Animal Husbandry
• selection and care of piglets
• selection and care of broilers and laying chicks
• use and care of draft horses
• Building 
• tiny house
• cold frame
• greenhouse
• hog pen
• chicken tractor
• raised beds
• installation of windows and doors
• Craft
• wild harvesting
• wine making
• beer making
• baking in a wood-fired outdoor oven
• grilling on Mediterranean style Community Grill
• Introduction to Fiber Arts
• Introduction to Blacksmithing

The educational experience is designed around the practical skills and seasonal rhythms associated with maintaining a small homestead.
The primary delivery of the curriculum is through the hands-on experience where students are expected to be self-motivated and able to self-evaluate, as there is no required reading, or testing.  

Living Arrangements

Participants in this semester will live in a 2000 square foot house built by Jim Cornish, the co-founder of Stone Soup Institute. There is also a 16 foot diameter tipi and campsites available.

In the house, there are two bedrooms available to students; one in the north end and one in the south end each will sleep two students.

Students will prepare meals using the electric stove, outdoor grill and bake oven. Meals are served on a common table. 

There is one television with cable, VCR and DVD. There is computer access and wireless internet.

Social Opportunities

Stone Soup Institute is located on Harpswell Neck, a peninsula that is nine miles long and ½ mile wide at its widest point. There are miles of shoreline to explore within walking distance of the house, miles of public trails for hiking.

A small general store and post office are ¼ mile from the house.

Brunswick, the closest town to Harpswell, is nine miles north. It is a typical New England college town with movie theatres, libraries, restaurants, small shops, etc. A health food store and Farmers Market provide opportunities to buy provisions and visit with other farmers in the area.

Tuition, Fees and Dates

Spring Semester: May 15 – August 15, 2013
Fees: $3400 which includes full instructional program, seminars, and room and board.
Click here to download an application form.

The Spring Semester at Stone Soup promises to be physically demanding, emotionally challenging, spiritually expansive, and intellectually stimulating. We hope that you are ready to stand in a place where our past meets our future and explore the possibilities.

Stone Soup Institute
298 Allen Point Road, Harpswell, ME 04079, USA
Phone: 207-833-2884
E-mail: mail@stone-soup-institute.org

The Art of Labor

At times it seems that the art of physical work has been forgotten. It does not seem to be thought of, even in the negative sense, as in, "that work is for simple people who are not smart enough to get better work."  Though it feels culturally forgotten, it is not gone.

I think about that great cultural amnesia, and feel  pain about it,  because there is real joy and beauty in work that is shaped by the realities of the earth. In learning how to live within the rhythms and hymns of the earth, we learn the art of stillness; the challenging art of attention to reality. What you believe will happen matters little, when it differs from the reality of what actually is happening. It is only from that quiet, still, attentive place that we truly work with the earth, instead of trying to change and control it. We wrap our days around the rhythms of the earth, and live in the happy cradle of the earth- where all things will become balanced, where more time will always come, where  real rest will happen at the end of each day, and each year is marked with what we have learned, not what we have failed at, or done wrong. We are lifted and carried by the energy that awakens the world, and we rest with the darkness that tells all living things to sleep. 

The play of children gives way to the work of adults, and we put down our head and pull upon ourselves a weight that no one can gracefully bear.  But the more I  consider, the more I believe the reality of play and joy, that  we are so sure of as children, is the real one. Why should we not play when we work? Why should we not feel joy within our bodies as we interact with the alive world that we inhabit? Why should the way the world is put together ever stop fascinating us? In learning something well, you realize only that you know so little, and that we have this precious medium of time to feel and know this endlessly expanding place.  Calvin Luther Martin, author of The Way of the Human Being, wrote tenderly, and very well about this. Here he writes about a story teller- a man Native to the Arctic:

" The old man would speak of a world bristling and crackling with power, the power of origination and deepest formation, which cared for everything- took care of everything- even human beings. The earth, he said, is not a place to fear. The problem was that adults had lost their nerve, lost faith in the marrow of it all. Children, he believed, still hold the mighty secret of trust. It was the lesson of the child to the adult: absolute trust. Once trust began percolating back into the soul again, humans would behold the liberating of those colossal earthly powers that now lay silent under the spell of our bad faith. The earth would be alive again and human beings would stop living lives of waiting, stop living in the curse of time and history, to live instead in the still point of beauty."
 

A day at SSI

 Horse powered logging with the winter semester crew, homemade fresh ground cornbread.

 Video footage and editing by Dan Paluska

Building a Logging Sled/Scoot

 One of the first projects that the students have completed is a logging scoot. This is being used to drag wood out of the woodlot. It is then put into a jig( see below) to buck up with a chainsaw to a size that can fit into the wood stove and the Finnish fireplace. The logging scoot is seen above, with a load of hardwood. To build the logging sled, first the runners where cut from spruce.
Hardware was taken off an old logging sled and then bolted onto the new logging sled. Because we had the wrong size drill bit, we heated up the steel shaft and pressed on the bunk, which is the crossbar of the scoot.

 
The shoes where made of oak and were nailed into predrilled holes. These holes were filled with plugs, so there the bottom of the shoe is smooth and without any drill holes.

Posts were made from wood to fit into brackets. These hold the wood on the sled when the sled is in motion.
 
At this point the sled is finished. We used it for a few days. The group decided that a barrier between the driver and the horses would serve as a balancing aid for new drivers.
 


In the above pictures the floor planks can be seen. This is where the driver stands before wood is loaded onto the scoot. The images below show the detail of the harnesses and eveners.
 
 Bucking Jig
 

Horse Logging Semester at Stone Soup has Started!

The Horse logging semester has started here at SSI. The days are full of the choreing, learning, cooking, talking, resting, eating, and music. The students arrived here seven days ago, and spent a few days getting acclimated to the environment and the horses. They took a few trips for supplies, axe heads, safety gear, and the like.
They are driving the horses- as I write they are driving the Marcus and Gus as a team.  They are in the process of learning to build a logging sled. To that end, earlier today the students learned how to heat up rusted bolts on the old logging sled with a torch, and remove the useful parts from it.
They have begun using chainsaws to buck up firewood, and some tree felling has began as well. Some of these trees are standing deadwood, which will be used for firewood in the house.

We are all living together- taking turns cooking, cleaning, keeping an eye on the fires, and tending to the horses. In the evenings we eat, talk, and often play music, as the house is completely packed with musicians and musical instruments.
We talk about things we agree on, we disagree on things, we see different perspectives, we clarify our perspectives. We get overwhelmed with the activity and go to be by ourselves for while, and come back, and constantly seem to find ourselves happy to be here. Happy to feel like a person working with our hands, with the forces of the earth.

There is always a deeper story than the activities of the day though. I can not speak for anyone but myself, but this is the deeper story I hear, as this all begins:

Learning something in this way is different, because this is all about the feel of it. It is knowledge that lives in our senses. The ability is within your hands, in light touch, in patience, in perseverance, and in the clear and calm mind of the willing learner. It takes time to sink in- but soon, the world you live in speaks back.  It says that you are capable, as your hands learn to feel something your mind could never know.  It says that you are wise as your instincts begin to communicate something that doesn't have a language to it. It says that  your identity is beautiful, as each day, you look outside, and see that world is indeed a hopeful, beautiful place, and you are not separate from it. When a human works with hard earned skill- gained only by time, clarity, gentleness, and patience, it is as if the work rises to meet them- Work is no longer work, but a dance that speaks only of love, of complete devotion, or complete willing dependance- it is a form of worshiping reality that a happy few get to know. It is a meditation and as profound a thing as can be found in any house of worship. It is one way we have been given to speak to the earth, and the conduit through which the earth speaks back. To have a life of leisure- to be done with work, is a common dream of some Americans. But, like so many other things, the absolute opposite seems to be the truth. To know how to work, with wisdom and skill, is real freedom, peace and happiness. The pursuit here is deeper than knowledge- its knowing.