Shalom Oregon. I shall return.

Tonight I fly to New Jersey for two weeks with my family and friends, and then it's off to Israel for a month with more family and friends. Now is a great time to take stock of the last seven months.

On February 1st I landed in Los Angeles and began WWOOFing and traveling my way North to Oregon. In three months I visited over a dozen farms, ranches, and homesteads. I saw small backyard gardens, large market gardens, CSAs, vineyards, and farmers markets. I met farmers as young as twenty and as old as eighty five. There were entrepeneurs, hippies, ex-hippies, hermits, Rich hobby farmers, and Hari Krishnas.

I slept in my tent, in barns, in cozy rooms, in smelly rooms, and cabins.

I finally made it to Oregon and spent the last four months in Coquille, at the Mountain Homestead Intentional Community. I helped build a recycled concrete(Urbanite) foundation, prepared a new food forest, learned how to live in a dynamic community, took part in a three day search and rescue, baked bread, picked cherries, went to a barn dance, played some great tunes for great people, played naked bocce on my birthday, gathered wild mushrooms from the forest, cared for a beautiful old woman, drank lots of wine, and went to a traditional Native American sweat lodge.

It's been a great year, and this past week in Ashland has been great. Potluck dinners, Farmers markets, driving to the Applegate valley full of small farms. Everywhere I go, people are coming together to make their lives better one step at a time. There is inspiration everywhere and it fills me with such energy and motivation to participate any way I can.

Everybody has the ability to make their world a better place to live in. You don't have to buy a hybrid to change your life. Grow food, please!!! No matter if you live in a house, apartment, wherever, you can grow vegetables and herbs. Talk to your neighbors, please!!! You can build strong relationships and help each other out with almost anything. Support your local community. Your neighbors have skills that you could use. Local businesses, local banks. Go to your local farmers markets, there are really cool people in your area growing delicious foods. Start looking around your town for fruit and nut trees, trust me they're there and many of them never get picked. Local businesses throw out tons of perfectly good food products everyday. Baked goods,dairy products, donuts, etc. Stop buying so much stuff. Ask yourself, do I really need it and how long will it last before I'm forced to buy another one.

I can't wait to come back to Ashland and start taking my own advice. It's gonna be grand!