Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: community, fire recovery, home, intentional community, stewardship
Two years after the fire – we are rebuilding!
Our blog has been pretty quiet these past months, but that does not mean we have not been busy. We have been deep in the process of finalizing our permit submittals and hiring a contractor for our first three residential structures at the Rill!
First, Amy used her archival skills to help our architect (Robin Stephani of 8th Wave) reconstruct our very complicated permit history dating back to the late 1970s. So many buildings and so many owners and so many permits! Once this was done, Robin could let the county know about our septic capacity and our long-term rebuild plans. Then she finalized our permit submittals and we all held our breath. Or rather, we tried to breathe steadily, and kept doing our best to take care of one another and the land.
In the hot months of summer we harvested more azolla, that miracle fern that nourishes our garden. And we continue to remove invasives (yellow star thistle, stinkwort, tree of heaven, and more) when we find them, if the ground is not too hard and dry.
And e built a new chicken coop. We transported it backwards to its new home in the garden, Vinca and Amy getting some forward-facing tractor lessons from Thea along the way.
Through the Monan’s Rill Institute, we prepped and hosted another oak restoration event, except this time we got to be in the rain! We raked and weed-whipped under oaks with what promised to be a plentiful acorn harvest, and then collected acorns and continued to protect native seedlings.
The Rill was featured in the fall issue of Made Local Magazine. Ursa Born, who has been working by our side and tenderly observing us since the Glass Fire, wrote a beautiful piece – “Fighting Fire with Fire” – about our commitment to prescribed fire. Thea, who is a Fire Forward fellow this year with Audubon Canyon Ranch, was on the cover.
We’ve also started holding once-monthly pancake breakfasts, so that sometimes we are just breaking bread (or waffles) together, having fun.
But the big news is rebuilding!
This past Friday evening our contractor, Dustin Deason of Brandywine Construction and Design, held a Golden Shovel fire rebuild ceremony with us. We took turns turning over a shovelful of soil at each of the three building sites. We are so thankful to Dustin for his patient and knowledgable guidance as we enter into this new phase of recovery. And we are thankful to so many teachers and friends who have offered us nourishment and helping hands along the way. At the ceremony, e read an excerpt from Terry Tempest Williams’s essay “The Pall of Our Unrest,” which has been reminding us all along why we are doing what we do. Here it is:
“Grief is love. How can we hold this grief without holding each other? To bear witness to this moment of undoing is to find the strength and spiritual will to meet the dark and smoldering landscapes where we live. We can cry. Our tears will fall like rain in the desert and wash off our skins of ash so our pores can breathe, so our bodies can breathe back the lives that we have taken for granted.
I will mark my heart with an “X” made of ash that says, the power to restore life resides here…. Hand on my heart, I pledge of allegiance to the only home I will ever know.”
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: community garden, intentional community, workday
Build a Greenhouse With Us!
Tuesday 2/1 and Saturday 2/5
| At long last, 15 months after the Glass Fire, we are ready to rebuild our first building at Monan’s Rill — a greenhouse — and you’re invited to help. We’ve got all the parts ready to build a new 12’x24′ greenhouse to replace (and upgrade) our decades-old community greenhouse that burned along with our barn and homes in September 2020. The greenhouse will enable us to begin growing more food and pollinator habitat plants, both for the land and people of Monan’s Rill and to share with our wider Sonoma County and Bay Area communities. We’re especially excited that this year we will be able to grow produce for the Cultural Conservancy’s Native Foodways Program as well as seedlings for urban farms through Celebrating Womxn’s Leadership in Food’s Plants to the People Initiative. Two special workdays to build the greenhouse are coming up this week: sign up for one or both shifts either day. |
Tuesday, February 1st
from 9am-12pm and 12:30-3:30pm
Saturday, February 5th
from 9am-12pm and 12:30-3:30pm
| Please sign up at least 24 hours in advance. Volunteer spots are limited and COVID precautions are in place to keep everyone safe and healthy. |
We also want to express our gratitude to January’s workday volunteers.
Deep gratitude to all of our January workday volunteers: Brooke, Bill, Avinelle, Leyla, Ursa, Ramona, Rigby, Hannah, Red, Jay, Kendal, Amanda, Arden, Matt, Lisa, Juniper, and Leo!
Together we prepared the pad for our new greenhouse, cut dead limbs from oak trees, burned brush, made biochar, pulled invasive plants, prepared garden beds for spring planting, fertilized the raspberry patch, made and shoveled compost, fixed a broken water pipe, snuggled with goats, and had great conversations and fun.
Thank you all for bringing your hearts and hands and questions and laughter to this place.
| Our regular community workdays are generally the 2nd and 4th Saturday of each month, from 9am-12pm. Community workdays are followed by optional bring-your-own lunch and visiting, and then our community business meeting at 1pm, the first part of which is open to guests. The next opportunities to join us after the greenhouse build will be: |
Saturday, February 12th
from 9am-12pm (followed by 1pm meeting)
Saturday, February 26th
from 9am-12pm (followed by 1pm meeting)
| Feel free to pass along the invitation to friends — we welcome new folks to join us! Children are welcome as well. |
The community that we call Monan’s Rill is on the traditional territory and homelands of the Wappo people. We honor their story and this beautiful place through deep listening and gratitude, and a commitment to learning from the Wappo community as we steward the land.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: community, fire recovery, intentional community
One Step Closer to Rebuilding…
Debris removal is complete!
At the end of July, more than ten months after the Glass Fire and three rounds of excavator scraping later, our wildfire debris and ash removal was finally completed!
Crews came to take away stakes and caution tape and then completed the last step in the process: an erosion control mix (mostly wood pulp with a binding agent and some green dye) sprayed on the soil post-scraping, and wattles in some places as well, to mitigate any potential erosion of the bare soil in this winter’s rains.
We are grateful to finally be at this place so we can move forward with septic assessment, site preparation, and civil drawings to support the design and permitting for rebuilding our community homes.
Welcoming pollinators
One of the strangest experiences in the first 6 months after the fire was the near-complete absence of insects from the land. Not a bee nor a mosquito was to be found throughout the fall, winter, and early spring.
Nonetheless, thanks to many generous friends we gathered seedlings and seeds of pollinator favorite flowers like salvias and cosmos and wedding candles, and made space for the many poppies and sunflowers and borage that started themselves from seeds fallen last year.
Lo and behold, as spring turned into summer, pollinators showed up.
Wild honeybee swarms have taken up residence in hollow oak trees once again, bumblebees cover flowers from morning to night, tiny native sweat bees collect pollen on chamomile flowers, hummingbirds zip from the garden to the forest to the feeders we fill for them daily, and we’ve even seen swallowtail butterflies and hummingbird moths among the buddleia bushes that came back from the ground after the fire.
Raspberries return
More good news: although the decades-old raspberry plants in the Monan’s Rill garden burned to the ground during the Glass Fire, they quickly sprouted back from the roots, showing new green leaves as early as October, despite no rain.
Over many community workdays since then they were weeded, mulched, and protected from deer browsing by a new fence, so we are now enjoying bursts of raspberry flavor, while the bees appreciate the pollen and nectar from their flowers.
And a lion (or two)?
We’ve installed a new wildlife camera on the North side of Monan’s Rill and recently caught at least one lion passing by. Can you see that second pair of eyes in the background?
The resilience and regeneration of plant, insect, and animal life — wild and cultivated — at Monan’s Rill has given us all hope in these challenging times.
The smoke in the air from the devastating Dixie and Caldor Fires is challenging our community workdays, but we would still love for you to sign up and stay in touch as we navigate this season.
At workdays over the next few months, we will be tending to the garden, building compost, harvesting azolla, mapping oak trees for oak woodland rejuvenation, and more.
Volunteers are also always welcome to stay into the afternoon for a distanced bring-your-own-lunch picnic with community members and volunteers, take a dip in one or our two ponds, and/or participate in the first portion of our community business meeting to learn more about what we’re up to at Monan’s Rill.
We hope to see you soon!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: azolla, community workday, compost, cooperation, intentional community
It’s Hot Out! Time to Jump in the Pond!
A few years ago, a little water fern called Azolla filiculoides showed up on the surface of the upper pond at Monan’s Rill. At first just a small patch of green, it quickly grew to cover the whole surface of the pond. The lower pond stayed clear that year, but the following year the azolla made its way over the spillway and down the creek to colonize the lower pond.
To some, this little plant is an annoyance to be rid of. But there are many benefits to azolla as well. It converts nitrogen from the air into a form usable by plants, and in fact is as rich in nitrogen as cow manure. Like all green plants, it also takes carbon out of the atmosphere through its process of photosynthesis. And, as it sits on the surface of the pond it helps prevent evaporation.
If it is allowed to build up for too long, azolla can cause problems as it piles up on itself, then sinks to the bottom, and sucks all the oxygen out of the water of the pond as it decomposes, leading to anaerobic conditions. But if it is regularly harvested and tended, it makes an excellent mulch and compost ingredient, providing nutrients and moisture balance to the soil and plants.
Last year we harvested the full surface of the upper pond (pictured above), but we didn’t make much headway on the lower pond, so the mat of azolla became quite thick. For the past couple months, e has been diligently harvesting loads of azolla from the lower pond nearly every afternoon, throwing a net into the pond, pulling it back to the edge, and scooping piles of azolla on to the shore. e has also brought in some impressive harding grass plants that have taken root on that thick mat of azolla.
Help harvest azolla this Saturday afternoon
This weekend, we have shifted the timing of our community workday to the afternoon. Join us on Saturday, June 5 from 1-4pm to help with azolla harvest and other community fire recovery and resilience projects.
Bring your swim suit (or clothes you don’t mind getting wet) if you want to get the full in-pond harvesting experience. There are also plenty of ways to help with azolla harvest and other projects without jumping in!
You can sign up for our workday here.
Feel free to pass along the invitation to friends — we welcome new folks to join us! Children are welcome as well. We have at least one kid-friendly project every workday.
Advance sign up at least 24 hours in advance is required for all volunteers. Volunteer spots are limited and COVID precautions are in place to keep everyone safe and healthy.
Thanks and we hope to see you here!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: biodynamic, climate resilience, community, fire recovery, intentional community
Community Workdays are Vibrant and Important, Still
Through the wildfire last fall, many of the nutrients in vegetation, trees, and dead leaves and branches were released into the soil, leading to unprecedented growth of plants like wild radish, thistles, malva, and many kinds of grasses this spring.
Where do all those lush weeds go? We layer them with food scraps, manure and bedding from the goat stalls and chicken coop, and azolla harvested from the surface of our pond, to make a compost pile, then add the biodynamic compost preparations (also lovingly donated by friends to replace those burned in the fire) and wait for the magical alchemy of composting to transform it all into powerful fertility for the garden soil and the crops it will grow.
During recent community workdays many helping hands have cleared these weeds from garden beds to make space for spring vegetable starts, lovingly donated by several of our farmer and gardener friends since we have not yet been able to rebuild our greenhouse.
Sadly, we have to report that an unexpected day of cold winds brought frost to our garden last night. This morning Thea wrote on Instagram: “After weeks of heat, last night brought strong winds and frost which damaged a large portion of the crops in the garden, beautiful peppers and cucumbers and basil and tomatoes and squash and flowers all of which were grown by friends and given to us to revitalize this garden that is the heart of our community after the fire. Most of the seedlings sat in their pots longer than I would have liked waiting for bed preparation and irrigation to catch up with them, but after a super productive workday a couple weeks ago we finally got everything into the ground, watered, and mulched. We were all astounded by how much food and flowers would be forthcoming. Bringing this garden back to life has been a big project for me since I left my full time job and moved back to the land, something tangible I could contribute to renewal after destruction, and so even though I’m used to the ups and downs of farming it is particularly painful to see so much of this new life killed today. Seems like more row covers and low tunnels will be in our future if we want to keep growing food in this increasingly unpredictable climate.”
Our GoFundMe is still open – if you can contribute to our ongoing garden recovery – including new starts and a start on our greenhouse, too – we will deeply appreciate the help. Thank you!
Join Us for Community Workdays:
Star Thistle and the Weed Whip Challenge
Although fire can disrupt the life cycle of some invasive species, it can create more space for others to come in, such as the Harding grass and spurge we have shared about in earlier newsletters. Now that we are into May, another invasive has arrived on the scene: Star Thistle. We are lucky to only have it on the western edge of Monan’s Rill land, but it is already flowering so the time to clear it is now. Join us for upcoming workdays to see this rarely-visited corner of the land with some beautiful westward views and keep the Star Thistle in check by pulling it before it goes to seed.
Many people have the misconception that once land burns in a wildfire, it is immune from burning again. As a sobering article in the Press Democrat this week emphasized, that is far from the truth — in fact, without careful post-fire stewardship, fire-scarred landscapes can be ripe to burn again quite soon after the initial blaze.
Here at Monan’s Rill, we see the greatest risk this year from the potential of a grass fire, as the wild oats and other grasses are taller than we have ever seen them, and are already becoming golden and brittle from the hot and dry spring we are experiencing.
Do you have a weed whip/weed whacker/string trimmer? If so, please join our weed whip challenge and help us clear around our remaining buildings, travel trailers and roads to make sure Monan’s Rill is safe this fire season. You can sign up for one of our upcoming workdays, or contact us to arrange another time to come and help out.
Our next volunteer workdays will be Saturdays, May 22 and June 12 and we invite you to sign up to help with one of several projects including pulling star thistle, weed whipping grass and tall weeds for fire safety, tending to the garden, and more projects to be determined.
Feel free to pass along the invitation to friends — we welcome new folks to join us! Children are welcome as well. We have at least one kid-friendly project every workday.
Advance sign up at least 24 hours in advance is required for all volunteers. Volunteer spots are limited and COVID precautions are in place to keep everyone safe and healthy.
And if you can’t make it this month or next, please do sign up for our newsletter so you can keep up to date with how we are moving forward!
Our deep gratitude goes out to everyone who has been supporting us through this challenging time of devastation and renewal through your financial gifts, your participation in workdays, and your companionship, whether near or far. This greater web of support helps us continue to build toward a healthy and resilient future together!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: community, fire recovery, Glass Fire, home, intentional community, renewal, wildfire
Goodbye to the Structures of Our Lives
Just two weeks ago, seven months after the Glass Fire, excavators finally arrived at the Rill to clear away our burn debris – the remains of our homes, barn, community toy shed, wood sheds, cars, well, hot tub, greenhouse, garden shed, play structures… Our memories. Our lives the way they were. So often social media leans towards the light, the bright and shiny and resilient. So over these two weeks, to honor the grieving process, Amy posted just a photo or two or three per day of our beloved burned structures on our Instagram page, with small passages of gratitude and memory (with help from Thea and e), to say goodbye. To make room for and honor the shadow that we know is there, so we can move wholeheartedly forward with rebuilding and re-visioning the Rill.
Now we are posting them here. The goodbye passages have been edited and altered and extended at times from their social media incarnation, because of the collective nature that the project became. Other people’s words and memories are in some places woven in.
Thank you for being on this journey of shadow and light, with us.
Garden House. Thank you for sheltering us. Thank you for the beauty, the polished wood and broad panes of glass, for the late-night fire watches in the downstairs office, the happy hours amidst cascades of flowers, the parrot who once regaled us naughty cries, and for the garden – a masterpiece created over time. Goodbye.
Patio House and Ridge House. Thank you for sheltering us. Thank you for standing watch over the rill and the valley, for being at the end of the Daffodil Path. Thank you Ridge House, the first of all the houses at Monan’s Rill. For the massive stone chimney built by group effort, your whimsical art, your purple walls and the massive Mother Tree that stood outside your wall of windows and then didn’t. Thank you Patio House for housing so many families and growing better over the years, with gorgeous decks, your shady patio and many entrances. Goodbye.
Hill House and Studio. Thank you for sheltering us. Thank you for being a sweet spot way up on the hill. For your green roof, cool downstairs, for the root cellar, and the broad deck like a wonderland, under the Dragon Tree. Thank you for the sweet sanctuary of your Studio. Goodbye.
Oak Corner. Thank you for sheltering us. Thank you for your resilience, for holding so many families over the years, for allowing so much laughter and life to roll through your halls. Thank you for morning coffee on your lovely expansive deck, sunlight piercing the fog. That late afternoon iced tea brewed on your deck, enjoyed while the sun was setting, was divine too. Good neighbors rattling your screen door, delivering the best eggs. Half-buried matchbox cars, tucked in your foundation, memories of all the kids that played under your porch. Goodbye.
Barn. Thank you for sheltering our beloved animals. Thank you for calling us to the steady rhythm of daily chores, where we often overlapped into impromptu conversations. Thank you for storing a cider press we could drag out in the autumn. Thank you for your heavy sliding door, your hay dust in the morning light, and for holding our bursting, aching hearts as we learned lessons of life and death. Goodbye.
The Longhouse (West Wing, Long House, Pooh Corner). Thank you for sheltering us. Thank you for your innovation, versatility, your devotion to community, your willingness to change. Thank you for the long sinuous stretch of yourself, your holdfast nature, your attention to the raucous red-winged blackbirds, the stately grebes, and the occasional heron on the pond. Thank you for the cool air that flowed through and around you at night, from the forest to the pond, like a quiet caressThank you for your hospitality – warm muffins and sparkling holiday trees and good books and a place to run and ask when we needed something at the Hub. Goodbye.
Coyote House. Thank you for sheltering us. Thank you for your solidity, up there at the top of the hill, watching the edge of the forest. For the ample carport, which stored so many people’s camping gear and tools and bikes. Thank you for the brilliant blue tiles, the rock wall at your base, the roomy closets, the claw foot tub, the dreamy sleeping porch under the starlit sky. Goodbye.
Manzanita House. Thank you for sheltering us. Thank you for being our cabin in the woods, our light-filled refuge, our original hub. Thank you for the welcoming front stoop. Thank you for the tall windows that allowed us to track the moon, and therefore our place in this world. Thank you for your roomy kitchen, and the loft that became a nest for growing children. Thank you for being so close to the road, so neighbors could wave and smile and easily stop by. Thank you for your tall ceilings echoing our laughter, tears, and merry shouts. Thank you for your expansive deck inviting us to play in the forest. Thank you for the crackling of deer hoof on live oak leaves, and for the birdsong. Goodbye.
The Yurt. Thank you for sheltering us. Thank you for being our most recent, and most astonishing, house. Thank you for the craft. For your circular embrace. For the many kinds of wood you held, bringing the forest inside. Thank you for having an ideal layout for games of tag with a toddler, for the built-in bookshelves and built-in bed Thank you for your broad dome of light, for your attention to detail, and for being a joyful, companionable gateway to the garden. Goodbye.
Garden sheds and greenhouse. Thank you for nurturing thousands of seedlings that became food for our community and flowers to delight our hearts. Thank you for storing the seeds and tools and equipment and infinite varieties of irrigation supplies that oscillated between chaos and order and chaos again. Thank you for anchoring garden committee meetings and Monday night barbecues and workdays and blind wine tastings and all the in-between conversations around your long wooden table with its rounded end, hosting laugher and tears and heated debates and hugs. Goodbye.
All the Other Assorted Structures of Our Lives: chairs, fences, cars, woodsheds, hot tub, well, toy shed, play structures (including the hollow tree at the bend that was an ancient, friendly playhouse), the Caboose (first a darkroom, later a writing/dreaming sanctuary), the Poultry Palace, the Round Table under the grand garden oak…. The debris cleanup contractors did not know what to do with you when they arrived. What are these odds and ends of people’s lives that don’t obey the rules of being tidily next to private houses? What is this place? “It’s community,” you whispered, and they shook their heads and we smiled. Thank you, Caboose and table and coop and sheds and playhouse with the poppies stenciled on your side and all the rest, for evolving alongside and amidst us, following your own logic (a logic held in stories), for meeting so many needs, for being our companions. Goodbye.
Don’t tell us
how to love, don’t tell us
how to grieve, or what
to grieve for, or how loss
shouldn’t sit down like a gray
bundle of dust in the deepest
pockets of our energy, don’t laugh at our belief
that money isn’t
everything, don’t tell us
how to behave in
anger, in longing, in loss, in home-
sickness, don’t tell us,
dear friends.
——
Goodbye, house.
Goodbye, sweet and beautiful house,
we shouted, and it shouted back,
goodbye to you, and lifted itself
down from the town, and set off
like a packet of clouds across
the harbor’s sandy ring,
the tossing bell, the untowned point—and turned
lightly, wordlessly,
into the keep of the wind
where it floats still—
where it plunges and rises still
on the black and dreamy sea.
From Mary Oliver, “On Losing a House,” in Michigan Quarterly Review, August 2017
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bioblitz, biodiversity, community, fire recovery, Glass Fire, intentional community, wildfire
Spring at the Rill has been lively! We’ve been able to watch the lush recovery of our land in real time. Birdlife, fungi, lizards and snakes, jackrabbits, new fawns, oak shoots, stump-sprouting toyon and madrone, honeybees (finally), and the flowers. The flowers! If you have been following us on Instagram you have seen some of the flowers. We were told they would come and we were not let down.
In charcoal-rich places where we reseeded, we have also welcomed a lush carpet of native grass, with small dabs of lupine and poppy. We will seed more before the rains next fall, after our salvage logging is done. We are removing burned firs on the southern slope of our ridge, in order to restore an oak savannah ecosystem. (Many thanks to Pepperwood Preserve for treading this tender ground before us – it hurts to see any tress come down, even when we know there is a larger reason.)
We have also been growing ourselves as human beings through this time. We held a small Easter gathering, to celebrate community. We are working with Kate Sassoon, a community facilitator rich in experiences with different kinds of cooperative groups, to reground in consensus decision-making for the long rebuilding road ahead. And we also have started planning and visioning our rebuild with the help of the amazing Robin Stephani of 8th Wave, a local architecture firm devoted to climate- and fire-resilient, affordable Sonoma County housing.
This coming Saturday, May 1st, we are celebrating spring in the way we know best – by connecting with the land and each other. We are hosting a Bioblitz, a citizen science project that brings teams of people together to gather information about local biodiversity. You can read about it in this lovely Press-Democrat article:
https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/lifestyle/watch-for-wildlife-at-burned-down-monans-rill-this-saturday/
And if there is space left, you can sign up though our link tree here: https://linktr.ee/monansrill
While all this life is blossoming, we don’t want to sugarcoat the process. There’s a lot of hard physical and emotional work going on. Just today, the excavators arrived to start the debris cleanup on all of our burnt homes, well, garden shed, barn, community toy shed, and more. It still hurts. We are so grateful for all the ongoing support, through our GoFundMe, through our community workdays, and through sheer emotional connection. Thank you so much.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: fire recovery, forest health, Glass Fire, indigenous wisdom, intentional community, oak woodlands, stewardship
The Promise of Oak Restoration
One of the hardest things about this fire has been its impact on the trees. Yes, those of us who lost homes are grieving our homes, in our different ways. But we all share in the sadness of losing countless beautiful, beloved trees: many firs – including one that sheltered the ashes of a community founder; gorgeous oaks that graced our homes and barn; at least one maple – which always delivered a precious shock of vivid spring green or glowing autumn yellow as the year turned; and countless madrones and manzanitas, with their smooth tawny barks.
Some of these were lost to the Glass Fire itself; they toppled or charred as it moved through, or soon after. Some were declared hazard trees by PG&E or AT&T in the fire’s immediate wake, and were cut down. Some we have removed ourselves, as we know they will not recover. And PG&E is back on our land now, taking down trees they marked “P2” (Phase 2) that are in danger of falling on power lines. Later this year, we will engage a forester to manage salvage logging in some areas of our forest, taking out dead firs that can be used for lumber, reducing fuel load in the process.
We know that there is so much work to be done to heal and restore and rejuvenate this landscape we tend. We need to be on the lookout for erosion, invasives, and impacts on the habitat of our non-human neighbors. Out of all of this, though, something beautiful is emerging: a commitment to oak restoration.
Thankfully we have so many local resources and leaders to turn to, in order to understand how to do this work. Pepperwood Preserve, our watershed neighbor, burned in the Tubbs Fire of 2017, and its scientists and educators have a lot to teach us. Recently, a few of us attended a Pepperwood webinar on the indigenous meaning and tending of black oaks, taught by Clint McKay, Pepperwood’s Indigenous Education Coordinator, a member of Pepperwood’s Native Advisory Council and of the Wappo, Pomo and Wintun communities. (Monan’s Rill is situated on the homeland of the Wappo / Onasatis people.)
The acorns of the beautiful black oak provide sustenance for the Onasatis people and many of their non-human siblings. In his teaching, McKay told us about Pepperwood’s Black Oak Project. They identified 60 healthy specimen black oaks and studied their microenvironment. In order to replicate this health in other trees, they conducted microburns, removed invasives, and thinned the forest. At Monan’s Rill we have done some of this kind of work, in partnership with the NRCS EQIP program and Fire Forward, and now the Glass Fire has given us an opportunity to rethink large swathes of our land. We know that “oak woodlands” in northern California do not usually look the way they did when they were stewarded by indigenous communities, and that our mountains in particular have experienced a long stretch of fir overgrowth and oak crowding. How can we use this moment of devastation to plant beauty, share resources more wisely, and cultivate a healthier relationship with the earth we walk upon?
Some of us will walk with Clint McKay at Pepperwood this spring, to learn about black oaks and other plants and trees important to our local indigenous communities. We are also in conversation with longtime oak arborist Dave Muffly, learning about oak propagation methods that we could use here at the Rill. All of this is happening in concert with our work with Friends of the Mark West Watershed and the Sonoma County Forest Conservation Working Group, striving for watershed health and large-scale vegetation management for fire safety.
This is undeniably a challenging time for us at the Rill, and we are buoyed by the vision of a healthier forest and planet. We are humbled by what we continue to learn about indigenous land stewardship practices. We are nourished by the promise of oak woodland restoration.
p.s. You can support our work on oak restoration, and community restoration more broadly, through our GoFundMe donation page. Thank you so much!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: climate resilience, community, earth, fire recovery, intentional community, rebuilding, wildfire
Community Renewal
It is hard to capture the tumult and sadness and hope and laughter of the past few months at Monan’s Rill. Though we have had to stop holding community workdays, we are still gathering every Saturday to do the work of repair and rejuvenation that we can do on our own. We have salvaged garden tools and fencing, built a new goat shed, trenched for water and septic and internet lines, removed dead trees where we can and hauled brush to careful burn piles, dug out invasive grasses and reseeded with native grasses and lupine and poppy. This weekend we pruned and mulched the raspberries, which are already sprouting!
We also have been meeting regularly, often over Zoom, to use consensus as we face this moment. We also gathered on Zoom for our Winter Solstice celebration, and for Christmas Day storytelling, and New Year’s Eve bingo!
And we have walked the land. As individuals and in small groups, we have meditated, sang, cried, rested on the healing earth. We also set up a Building and Design Committee and walked possible house sites, imagining the future. We are on our way.
You can still give to the Rill. Everything we have received through the GoFundMe has helped the efforts above, and every donation will help keep us going.
You can also sign up to receive our new e-newsletter. We will keep you up to date on our renewal work, and let you know when we can open for community workdays again. They were such big, beautiful, joyous and helpful events! And you can also follow us on Instagram @monansrill.
Thank you for everything you have done to help keep this dream alive.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: climate resilience, community, fire recovery, gratitude, intentional community
Community Works (and workdays postponed)
UPDATE 12/3: Community still works! AND in the interest of public health and all of our safety, we have decided to honor the spirit of Governor Newsom’s stay-at-home order and cancel volunteer workdays for at least the remainder of this month. Thanks and love to all of you who have come and who have wanted to come. We’ll do our best without you! And we look forward to working – and maybe even breaking bread someday – again by your side.
It has been over two months since the fire. We are filled with gratitude to all the helpers who have showed up – some multiple times and from far away – to do the meaningful work of healing and recovery.
We are holding weekly Covid-safe volunteer workdays on Saturdays, and together we have finished mulching the garden beds to protect the soil before the rains (and to keep the moisture in), cleared half of the ditched of leaves and debris, found important propane and water lines to prepare for repair, and got wattles in place around almost all of our burned structures to protect the watershed from toxins in the ash.
This is amazing! Community works. In both small and large ways.
Because the laughter and the conversation and the breaking bread (safely) together have been just as healing as the hands on tools and in the earth. Thank you.
If you would like to keep up to date on what we are doing, what needs to be done, and our vision for a beautiful climate-resilient rebuild, please subscribe to our newsletter here: https://mailchi.mp/f27c758d4d3d/monansrill
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