“Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.”– Kahlil Gibran
This poem is like the tag line to Farm & Wilderness summer camps. The sentiment resonates with our approach to work. Work at Farm & Wilderness is full of joy and it is a gift to do that work in community. This past Ice Cutting “work weekend” is a perfect example. Families from all over travelled to Plymouth, Vermont to spend a few days playing in the snow, enjoying the company of old and new friends, and completing the necessary task of filling the Flying Cloud ice house with ice that will provide refrigeration all summer long.
After a hearty breakfast, we headed out for the mile(ish) walk into Flying Cloud. Flying Cloud is one of our most remote camp programs, existing completely off-the-grid, no electricity or battery powered devices whatsoever. Ice cutting is a critical event for Flying Cloud, we have to harvest enough ice to ensure refrigeration for food this summer. Harvesting ice involves hand-sawing huge blocks of ice out of the pond, hauling the blocks to the ice house by sled and packing them in tightly with sawdust. This could be called back-breaking work, but at Farm & Wilderness it’s a day full of smiles, laughter, and love.
At the beginning of the day, Rebecca Geary, Executive Director, thanked everyone for coming and said we couldn’t do this without you. That is not just rhetoric, we really could not cut the ice needed without you. Thanks to everyone who filled this weekend with love.
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