Here we are.  Redwood Chapel Homestead.  It sounds so official. Yet, it’s just a simple, small house on 5 beautiful acres in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California.  By day, we’re a social justice lawyer and a software-writing wizard.  We dream of unplugging, slowing down, and having time to do ALL of the projects.  But, for now, we really only have the weekends – which I guess makes us part-time homesteaders.

So, why Redwood Chapel?

• The original structure on the property was a chapel for redwood cutters in the early 1900s.  Original-growth redwood from the Santa Cruz Mountains contributed heavily to re-building San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fire.  That original structure is now the living room of the house, which retains its original redwood paneling and brick fireplace.
• The redwood grove behind the house is like a chapel made by mother nature.
• A chapel is a place of worship.  We find a higher power in physical work, in nature, in the dirt, in the changing seasons, in the transformation of flowers into fruit, and fruit into preserves, in the flight of bees, and in the songs of the birds.  

This will be my third summer with Mike.  Our third summer of more fruit than any two people can really know what to do with.  My second summer of being his apprentice beekeeper.  Our first summer to finally clear a fenced-in space to grow tomatoes.  It’s time to start keeping an actual record of what we learn, build, grow, harvest, preserve & give away.  To note what happens when.  To remember what worked and what didn’t.

Here’s to hands in the dirt and connecting to the timeless rhythms of the Earth.