Word from the Woods

Greetings Ffynnon Members and Friends of Ffynnon!

Summer is upon us, and thus our busy season.  We are excited to be a part of your festivals, camping events, day time excursions, group retreats, and walks in the woods.   To make your time here more enjoyable, we have a wish list this summer! We are trying to aquire the following items and we would appreciate your help. Every cent of money we raise goes directly to upgrading, maintaining, and adding to the land itself, to make your time here fun, carefree, and relaxing. You can use our e-mail address (source@ffynnonoregon.com) at PayPal anytime to make a one time donation or encourage your friends to become Members. Donations of materials and skills are always welcome.  Please contact us at source@ffynnonoregon.com. 

Thanks in advance for your support, as always!

• Picnic tables:  our goal is to build at least 4 custom picnic tables this year, with detached benches, to provide more places to eat, hang out and relax in the sun! We hope to purchase quality wood so that these last for many years. 
• Yoga/activity deck: from yoga classes, to workshop space, to a sunbathing deck, this multi-purpose deck will be made mostly from materials on our own land, which will need to be processed, to be deck ready. Yoga mats, a cabinet for storage, and props will also be needed. 
• Gravel: for numerous roads and paths, to allow accessibility for all of our guests, especially those with mobility challenges. 
• Trenches/drains: many of you have seen Ffynnon in the wet season. We are working to guide the water into specific channels, so that the paths you walk on are dry and accessible all year long, rain or shine. This takes drains, rock, and other materials. 
• Camp kitchen:  We aim to provide a temporary camp kitchen for the summer months, so that you have to provide less of your own cooking equipment.  Items in need are : compost container, graywater disposal, metal kitchen sink and drains, camp stoves and ovens, propane, tables, dishes and cutlery, tea kettle, dish rack, coolers, storage cabinets and tupperware containers for above items. 

So I've been looking over the website this morning prior to heading out for the day's work, and I've noticed that there really is not enough gratitude flowing out of these pages to all the folks who've volunteered to come out and help us this spring season.  Let's see if we can't set that right:  thank you to everyone who attended the three work parties so far this year; thank you to OWOW for their hard work and organizational skills; thank you to anyone who shared so much as a candy bar while clearing trails.  This work burns a lot of calories and strains a lot of muscles, and we at Ffynnon are grateful and proud of everything you do.

There is, of course, much more to be done, and you can find out about the remaining volunteer weekends and member appreciation days elsewhere on the website. Just for now, however, pat yourselves on the back and bask in the electronic appreciation of a very grateful founding partner.

Ffynnon Members, we need your help!  We are busy preparing our new Fire Circle for this year's events.  We are asking all Members of Ffynnon to submit a propsal for the name of this new community space. If you haven't seen it yet, we invite you out to one of our work parties, or just call us to arrange a visit! 

The 3rd weekend in June, a week before Sunfest, we will choose among the submissions and an annoucement of the new name will be made both at Sunfest and online.  The winner of the submission will of course, get the pleasure of knowing their choice lives on forever at Ffynnon, but also a FREE gift of a year's Stewardship (a $60 value) to give to a friend or family member, so that they too can benefit from the gifts of nature and the Ffynnon community! 

We are accepting submissons now, through our Facebook Page or by e-mailing us.  We look forward to your creative ideas for this beautiful new space. 

Yours in art, spirit and nature, 

Tasha and the Ffynnon team

I just checked on Weather Underground, and the forecast this weekend is for blue skies and warmth, sixties in the daytime and mid-forties at night.  Absolutely perfect! I look forward to this now like we all used to look forward to Beltane, the first real chance of the year to shake it loose in the fresh air.  For those of you coming to play with us this weekend, please start your stretching now!  We have circles to build, wood to haul, trails to clear, and an Immobile Home to to clean out.  I can't wait.

Howdy y'all, how'r yew? That's how we say Hi here in Kentucky. Mom and I are getting along much the same these days. She has always supported our efforts, both spiritually and financially. It was her initial interest and investment in Ffynnon that allowed Joel and I to join Neal and Tasha in our vision. My dad chipped in a matching amount a year later and we were off and running. When she passes I plan on bringing her home to the land to be with us forever. Her's is a spirit of great intelligence and love, not to mention mystic focus and will. She's a Buddhist, was the regional education leader for the Southern states, and travelled to Japan for direct learning from the monks. Quite a set of goals and accomplishments! That spirit of setting goals and steadily and steadfastly attaining them is what I hope to bring back with me to Ffynnon. Mom has always been a steady source of love and goodwill, cheering on and support for whatever I chose to do. She and Henry, my step dad, took the train out to Oregon for our wedding. My dad and Ann rode a Harley! My parents and step parents have all supported our vision and I cannot ever thank them enough. To have such loving people in my life and to be able to share their support with a larger community is such a blessing. I hope Ffynnon will continue to grow and flourish in the months and years to come as we polish our Business Plan and prepare to take major fundraising out to the greater community. So here's a note to Loves, Great and small. We gratefully accept what we are given, add to it, and share it outward to do good - wherever we may be. Very Blessed Be Ffynnon, friends of Ffynnon, and all those many folks we haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet!

~ Michael

TFG spent a weekend together here at Ffynnon, in gloriously blue skies, which was perfect weather for clearing space for our new fire circle, maintaining trails, and working with the land.  Spring is literally just around the corner and we are excited to welcome members, friends, and anyone who would like to help us out. Keep looking at our Events page for updates on the Work Parties, but here is an overview of things to come:

March 28-29 - First OWOW Sponsored work party

April 3-5:  Ffynnon sponsored work party (special perks for Members of Ffynnon)

April 25-26:  OWOW Sponsored Work party

May 23:  Morning: Special Members day to celebrate your support! Afternoon: FREE Open House for Potential New Members and friends of Members. 

May 24: Work Party Day, free camping and food, and perks for Warden Level and above members and above.

Come join us, the dear, and the elk, in welcoming Spring and help us prepare for summer events!  This is also the perfect time to come tour Ffynnon, if you've never been.  The Ffyynon Group are always happy to take a break from our manual labor to show you around the land and many facets of this beautiful space, so you can see for yourself its potential.

Bright Blue Skies await us!  Until next time...

The Ffynnon Group

Michael, Joel, Neal and Tasha

 

Greetings Ffynnon friends. Some of you know that I am spending lots of time far from Ffynnon these days. I'm taking care of my mom who has dementia, here in Kentucky where I grew up. This keeps me from being with my beloved Joel for weeks at a time, and from participating in the daily physical life of Ffynnon. 

I'm hoping that summer will see she and I moving back to Oregon so that I can again be a caretaker for the land that is now also my home - physically and spiritually.

We've launched our first major membership drive. Many of you have seen it I hope, and are considering supporting our work by becoming members of our growing community. Really, we need all the support we can get. The financial effort involved in a project of this scope is daunting and even our $5 a month level is very important to us.

We've been blessed with several major investors so far, and this has allowed us to actually be right on target on our original timeline. Moving forward, we've decided that a membership based community is our best way to continue to grow The Plan as we seek our next round of major investors.

The learning curve often seems almost vertical - there is so much to do, so very many details and all of them are so important! We continue to clean remaining garbage from the property and to learn correct forest management techniques. Learning the hydrology of the land and working with it is a daunting task in itself - we have SO much water. Then there's the continuing development of the land as a site for festivals and campers. We are starting to integrate the two properties into our long-range goal of becoming a retreat center that offers farm grown fresh produce to our attendees from our own yet-to-be-built kitchen.

But I get ahead of myself. Right now we're in our winter mode, going at our business plan hammer and tongs, getting it shaped up for investor presentations come spring. Reta is guiding us in this for which we are so very grateful. Her expert level business expertise is invaluable to us and we thank her for it.

I miss my compadres Joel, Neal, Tasha and Reta every day. Hopefully this topic will be a place where I can put down some of my thoughts and feelings as I continue to help imagine Ffynnon forward.

Very Blessed Be Y'all,

Michael

We are so excited to have you on board as Members of Ffynnon!  Please browse our website, post pics, post in the forums, and tell us about yourself!

We welcome your feedback, comments and questions, as you are now a part of the creation of this beautiful space.  We do this for you and you are why we are here. 

Stay tuned for event information for late Spring 2015, as well as Work Parties, to help physically create the space you will use for many years to come. 

In the meantime, if you know of any of following who want to donate or volunteer their time & skills, please et us know:

• photographers who want to donate their skills to taking professional, gorgeous nature photos of Ffynnon
• carpenters
• engineers and/or planners
• people with land moving and construction equipment we could borrow or rent cheaply

Check out the Events page for information.  Also, coming soon is a Ffynnon sponsored Work Party.  Work hard and see transformation happen before your eyes!  

We also welcome people to document these events via video, pictures and posts, if hard, manual labor is not your style (as long as you share those videos, pics and posts with us!).  

Welcome to our new website.  The News section will be where we update you on events & happenings, as well as post pics and videos of our progress - i.e. what your membership is helping to build.  Our members will eventually be able to share news of their workshops, etc. on here as well! Stay tuned for more...