News Archive

Help Us Celebrate 10 Years of QIVC!  You’re invited to our Open House on December 18, from 2:00 to 5:00 at 235 Bradley’s Crossing Road, East Chatham, NY.  

The Quaker Intentional Village Canaan was founded ten years ago this year and it has now been one year that we have all been living on the land.  We hope you can join us for cider and cookies and have a look around.

It's finally fall, we have weathered two early snowstorms, and the leaves are mostly off the trees that surround us.  In October we had our Fall retreat, during which we worked on our vision for the future of our community and our visions for our own growth as invidivuals.  We considered how we could support the community and how the community could support us in our growth.  We also cooked and ate great food!  We are also working on how we can make membership in QIV-C possible for households with fewer economic means.  

Fall also means saying goodbye to some of the animals raised and loved here during the spring and summer.  All four pigs are no longer in their pig wallow down by the big garden, and some of our freezers are full of pork.  We have also taken many lambs off to the slaughterhouse, ending a summer of community lamb-chasing.  Boy, do they like to escape their fence.  We started or interrupted many gatherings over the last few months with "sheeplechases"!

In the last few months one of us has become a Certified Professional Midwife, one has completed a year-long immersion program in Non-Violent Communication Mediation, one has decided to apply to nurse-midwifery school, various members visited Occupy Wall Street, and one of us presented his ideas about metacurrency there.  One of us had a consulting job in Ramallah (in the West Bank) with an NGO, one of us went to a conference on Lyme Disease as part of helping a child overcome Chronic Lyme Disease, one us has embodied the Egyptian god Ptah for a school project, one of us coping with chemotherapy, and two households are building woodsheds for a winter's worth of firewood.  We are busy folks!

We have invited two people in their 20s to live with us for a few months this winter to do work projects and participate in community life.  We look forward to the opportunities, accomplishments, and insights this will bring our community.

Join us for our Open House if you can!  And enjoy the dark but sparkly days of late fall and early winter.

Summertime brings more opportunities for togetherness with community members of all ages.  Communal dinners enjoyed outdoors in the fading sunlight are popular.  Trips to nearby swimming holes and lakes draw small crowds.  On one recent day, several of us happily responded to a friend’s request that some QIVCers come pick her raspberries, as she couldn’t keep up with the volume her patch was producing. 

The evening of the summer equinox, we had a “Community Fruit Walk,” where we visited places around the land where fruit was bursting forth.  This took us not only to our official berry patches and orchards, but also to some less traveled locations where old apple trees still produce and wild blackberries are prolific.  Some of us noted that we were visiting such spots for the first time, and some of us were surprised at the great volume of fruit we can produce.  Now, several weeks later, we’re enjoying sweet and tart berries – raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, currants, and gooseberries – and looking forward to enjoying luscious peaches, plums, pears, and apples.

About those old apples trees, of which we may have 100 (mostly non-producing) around the 135 acres, here is a bit of history:  The Kirby family migrated from Connecticut to East Chatham and established this place as a farm in 1795.  In the 1800s, they would bring hay and apples to the railroad depot for shipping to the growing urban center of New York City.  A newspaper article in January 1879 stated, “King and Kirby have just shipped a carload of apples to New York, loaded during the cold snap.  With a lined car and a coal stove they defied Jack Frost.”

While Jack Frost seems far away right now, we’re splitting and stacking firewood for winter nights and will soon be laying up food to enjoy a taste of summer once these hot days fade away.  Come join us in our adventure to live a better life!

Yesterday was our Spring Farmhouse Work Day.  Before we started on the real work, some of us participated in a wonderful hour of yoga and many of us filled our bellies with delicious pancakes.  You may wonder if people then headed to take a nap, but no, they got to work, tackling a long to-do list.  Several hours later, the Farmhouse was looking much spiffier both on the inside and around the outside.  Adding to that lovely effect, the purple lilacs chose to burst forth in bloom on that same day.

The apple trees are blossoming everywhere – more than 100 of them all over the land – and the peach, pear, plum, and cherry trees in our orchard and near our houses have also burst forth in white and pink.  We never know how many apples we’ll have, but there should be plenty for cider making in the fall.  Each year we wait hopefully to see how many of the young peach, pear, plum, and cherry trees will bear fruit.  Will this be the year that we have so much bounty that we can produce jam to last all the families for months?

This time of year – blossom time – is when the number of inquiries QIVC receives jumps.  People are looking for new beginnings.  They are seeking to align their convictions, their yearnings, and their dreams with how they are living day by day.  It’s exciting to talk about QIVC’s five intentions and explore whether or not there’s a match.

We have more visitors, too.  They admire the community we are building and bring enthusiasm.  They ask questions about why we’re not more radical and offer encouragement.  They enrich us.

We have an Advisory Council that is charged with providing spiritual guidance and reflection on how QIVC is living up to our stated intentions.  Recently, they have stepped forward to worship with us and share wisdom as we face challenges with group dynamics.  We are blessed to have this assistance.

Would you like to join us one of these days to sit on the porch and watch the mother birds feeding their young, to bottle feed the lambs dubbed Headlights and Padiddle, or to inhale the perfume of the lilacs?  Just contact Spee Braun at speebraun@fairpoint.net or (518) 392-0891.

2 of our 15 new lambs

If you listen carefully, you can hear rushing water all over the land, the product of the BIg Spring Melt of 2011.  With the reappearance of grass and dirt, the gardeners are full of excitement and starting their seedlings indoors.  They discuss who will grow what vegetables, how to avoid unwanted cross-pollination, who has extra seeds, and how to arrest the spread of thistle.

The children, too, are full of excitement and enjoying the warmer days.  The lacrosse sticks are out.  The trampoline, now clear of snow, is seeing more action.  Two teenagers are running every afternoon to get in shape for spring sports.

It's maple sugaring time and that, too, generates a lot of excitement among QIV-Cers of all ages.  For the second year in a row, one of the kids is doing a science project on syrup production.  This year's research question is, do trees in an east-to-west line produce more sap than trees in a north-to-south line?

We're working now to get out the word that we're recruiting new members.  How do you like our recently launched updated website?  We've begun receiving numerous inquiries about membership in QIV-C and hope the website provides useful information.  Please send feedback to info@qivc.org.

INTERESTED IN EXPLORING MEMBERSHIP AT QIV-C?  We currently have 3 housing possibilities:  build your own house, build your own one-bedroom apartment, or buy an existing 3-bedroom house.  But first, there's a whole process to take you from inquirer to prospective member to attender to member - click on "Getting Involved" above for more information.  Also, be sure to check out the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) - click on "FAQ" above.  We hope to hear from you soon at info@qivc.org or (518) 392-0891 (ask for Spee).