Imagine a place where values are tightly connected to experiences that can be had on a daily basis, uncontrived. Imagine a place where everything is connected because it’s natural.

Can you imagine a 16 year old sweeping, mopping, doing dishes for 30 or 40 people because the activity is called “your environment“ and it really is?

How about shoveling the manure of at least as many cows into the gutters, laughing at the “grossness” but with the beginnings of comprehension about the value of poop?

Isn’t it amazing that children, handling a warm udder full of milk for the first time, register apprehension bordering on disgust?

But isn’t it more amazing that his or her expression and the underlying attitude changes to smiling admiration of the animal whose gift feeds them each and every day?

Imagine witnessing the light of comprehension shining all day every day in each and every face.

Isn’t it one objective of all educators to create a context where children can begin to make connections themselves, without so much as a word?

Sprout Creek Farm is a unique environment. There is not one other like it in the whole United States. There are other programs where there is gardening, where there are animals, where there is attention to the environment, where education and experience combine to make a lasting impact on children. But none such as this. Sprout Creek Farm exists in its own right as a farm, its staff as a community working this farm, making the cheese, planting the vegetables, milking the cows and goats, collecting the eggs, feeding the sheep, haying the fields, caring for all that lives on this 200 acre farm. Sprout Creek Farm is not just an entity, but a living organism where all of us for whom this is a way of life enjoy the same experiences as the children who come here in programs. This is a place of hospitality, where the message to children and adults alike is this:

“Come and be a part of it with us for as long or as short a time as you are able to do so. Come as often as you wish. If you listen, we will do our best to teach what we’ve learned in ways that provide you with all the tools and information you will need to make connections. Connections with yourself, with the land and all that it is for us whether we work it or observe it. We will share the riches of an integrated life-style. We will be your place for “time out” in a world suffering from the lack of care for the very resources you come here to enjoy. But watch out! We will always be the place that pricks the conscious mind, that turns complacency upside down, that goads the conscience to look further into the issues surrounding our profound disconnection with the earth. We will be the place that compels you to act on its behalf and on behalf of all people and living things who are deprived of the connections with their particular place on this earth because of what some of us humans have done historically and currently to deprive them of what gives them life which is truly their right. We want to make all of the connections, and we want to make them with you. So come. Enjoy the land, the creek, the animals and plants, the community. But let the peace and the disturbance live side by side. Make ALL the connections!

Margo Morris rscj
Province of the United States