How are you all doing? All of us here at the farm are thinking of you and keeping you in our thoughts and prayers. Thank you for all your love and moral support as we shift gears to keep your orders going off to you with a small staff (so far, so good).

I was solo in the office yesterday, so I drafted seven year old granddaughter Grace to help me (I promise it was only when she had finished her remote learning homework). She and her family are sheltering in place here with us so Grace helped to put stamps on packages and generally keep me company. She decorated the room with ribbons and sailed around on a scooter, singing at the top of her lungs. It kept me going! I hope there are quirky, unexpected gifts keeping you going too. Bless you all!

I just had a dream that felt relevant to this time. In the dream, I walk by a basement apartment I lived in during my early twenties and I realize I need to go in and clean it out.

I go into the apartment, and it is filled floor to ceiling with very strange junk. Peculiar Shakespearean play bills, odd kitchen tools that make no sense and don’t work, garish dolls with technicolor hair, shapeless clothing and charmless pieces of furniture. I recognize none of it, and as I examine one bizarre gew gaw after another, I find nothing I want to keep. There also are other people’s tag sale items in big heaps everywhere. It is a sea of useless crap.

I leave to find garbage bags to start the immense clean up, and when I come back, there is a group of young girls who say they will help me clear out everything if they can take anything they want. This seems like an excellent deal to me. As we clean, we talk about Flower Essences and how their energy shines right through the bottles.

Several very old men come in and tell me I need to save stuff in case the owners come back. I ignore this advice. Not very far into the job, which looks to take weeks of effort, I leave the room for a moment and when I come back everything but a few pieces of big furniture have been packed up by the young girls and is gone. I see them merrily departing.

I don’t always have an immediate hit on dreams. Like another of last night’s dreams in which I am rooming with some teenage boys and have to peel potatoes for supper on a toilet lid. I am mystified and a bit horrified by this dream! But this first dream seems ripe for my understanding.

This “Time Out” we are in is quite naturally a time in which we can let go of a lot of old useless crap- old habits, old fears, old ideas, old inner junk. It is all coming to the surface, and we can release it all! And crews of merry Angels are going to help us easily do the clear out just as they did in the dream. Thank Divinity for that!

Two other things I want to say about this dream before I stop. First, as far as those Angel helpers in the dream go, in my waking life I have never seen so many Angels as I am seeing now. I don’t know if it is that more Angels are here or if I am just seeing better because they have cleaned out the basement room in my energy system but HOLY MOLY! Angels are with us! Please ask for their help. They are literally standing next to you. Of this I am sure!

The second thing is about this cleansing process and what is going to fill the void when the old stuff is gone. I have been meditating daily for 36 years. I don’t spend too much time each day assessing how well a meditation has gone. I can’t really know what happens in any given session, but sometimes it feels like the clouds part and light, bright as the sun, pours in with a brilliance that takes my breath away.

In the past, a meditation like that was unusual, remarkable and rare. In the past few months however, it is as if the very Earth has spun her way out of a bank of solar clouds into the sunlight of pure Divinity so that when any of us sit down and close our eyes SO MUCH LIGHT IS THERE. And that light is there to fill us up when we let the old crap go.

Regardless of what the story looks like on the surface, something amazing is happening. Incredible light is flooding into this planet for all of us. We don’t have to practice the lotus position or live in a cave wearing a hair shirt and eating twigs to receive this light. It is there for all of us right now (though speaking of twigs, some of my quarantine cuisine has been about as tasty as twigs).

My dear friends, we are at the turn we have long been waiting for. It is why we came and it is happening. Beneath the very real sorrows and challenges of this time, something amazing is happening.

PS And of course I thought of that great song, so apt for these times, when I wrote my title for this blog!

PS 2 Don’t you just love it that even in my dream I am saying no to patriarchs who want me to hang on to their old junk!

Many of you have requested we make a mix to support everyone through this time and to address the Corona Virus, so we sat down with our Angel and Elemental partners. This was the recipe we were given for a combination remedy containing many powerhouse Flower Essences and Flower Essence combinations. It is available now on this page.

Below I have listed the ingredients and given some possible reasons why the Angels and Elementals included these Flower Essences in the mix, but as always, their choices are wiser than I can imagine and words will always fall short of explaining any Flower Essence or Flower Essence combination remedy.

We offer it with MUCH LOVE from all of us here!

Our Corona Virus Mix– contains the following Flower Essences:

Breathe– This Flower Essence combination supports the health and well being of the entire respiratory system including the lungs. To underscore this focus on the lungs, the Angels picked a photo of Lungwort, a Flower Essence in the Breathe mix to represent this Flower Essence mix.

Corona del Inca– A gift from the southern hemisphere who asked to come online this year, Corona del Inca explains, “I act to neutralize even repel… negative energy so that your electrical systems and physical bodies can remain serene and unaffected by these low vibrations much like a mosquito net protects from mosquitos.” Please check out Corona’s full description.

Don’t Worry-Bee Happy– This was one that the Angels suggested from the first whisper of Covid 19 explaining that it is vitally important for us to try our very best to keep our vibration as high as possible at all times. This Flower Essence combo from the Venus Garden is a game changer for this.

Emergency Care– Our “Go to” Flower Essence combination for any acute emergency situation or illness, Emergency Care helps us calm and stabilize our electrical system during intense stress.

Epstein Barr Release– This one has many Flower Essence intent on fighting viral infections, so it translates into an excellent ally in this situation.

Feverfew– This beloved Flower Essence, first brought to my attention by a shaman from the Andes, supports us to find calm and go inward to a place of peace amidst this chaotic situation.

Flow Free– This one helps us move out stuck and low vibration energies in our mental, emotional, etheric and physical bodies which positively impacts our health and immune system. Please see the recent blog on this.

French Marigold– One of the best Flower Essences for fighting viral infections, French Marigold also offers great wisdom about adaptation and navigating radical change. Additionally it helps us go inward and hear our guidance better than ever

Golden Armor– Offering the immense protective energy of Archangel Michael and the Angels of the Blue Ray, this is a powerhouse of protection.

Immune Support– This is our beloved remedy for strengthening the immune system. It is another powerhouse.

Mutabilis Rose– For any species, including us, successfully navigating inner and outer change is an essential skill, and this Rose offers incredible wisdom about successful mutation.

Teasel– An individual Flower Essence offering unrivaled wisdom on protection. Vitex– This Flower Essence helps us get all the nutritional support from our food possible to keep us as healthy as possible.

Wow! What a show the moon put on for all of us this week. What intense beauty! I spent more time with the full moon this March than most months because it’s maple sugaring time here which means I am outside day and night enjoying the sky.

Maple sugaring is such a glorious, wonderfully messy and satisfying affair. And how lucky I am that it happens each year! Ours is a small maple sugaring operation. This size and our bootleg equipment make it what is known locally as a backyard sugaring operation.

We tap a lovely clutch of maple trees across the street from the farm and another group of old maple friends in our village. We “under tap” the trees which means we put very few taps into any tree. This year we had a neighbor who is a vascular surgeon help us tap and not surprisingly his taps are running well as he seems to have hit good veins in the tree. Jim does the lion’s share of drilling these taps with a lovely old hand held drill that his father gave him. I follow him around hanging the buckets and thanking the trees. We hang about forty buckets.

We usually tap late in February. Sometimes we get early runs then and sometimes things don’t really start until the middle of March. This year the season began early and has kept going strong.

Conditions have to be just right for a run of sap. The nights have to drop below freezing and the days have to get up into the 40’s. Brisk winds, too warm a night and other factors can stop the sap from running. But then as soon as one comes up with a theory about the whys of a good run, there will be a day when conditions don’t seem right at all, and the buckets will be spilling over with sap.

When the sap runs, we collect it in a holding tank that sits in the back of Jim’s ancient farm pick up. I am in charge back here with boiling the collected sap down to make into syrup. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup. We make ten to fifteen gallons of syrup each year depending on the vagaries of the season. While we feel quite blissed out when we have a big season of fifteen gallons, our numbers stand in stark contrast to staff goddess Emily McNamara’s family operation. They make upwards of ten thousand gallons of syrup at their sugaring operation each year, and while my evaporator is a small tin contraption that sits outside on a half barrel fire box, the McNamara evaporator is the size of a freight engine and takes logs taller than me!

Staff goddess Vicki also has a bootleg operation of her own. She and her family make about the same amount of syrup as us. This morning Vicki and I were chatting about our big haul of three gallons of syrup to date and sweet Emily quietly reported yesterday’s yield over at their place was 475 gallons.

Even if I made no more than a pint of syrup a season it would be worth it to me, because gosh, what a great excuse to be outside feeding a raging fire. Plus, maple sugaring taps me into all these wonderful spring moments. When I hear the honking of Canada geese, I just look up from the evaporator to see them all flying north in their V formations. On trips from wood pile to fire box, I watch clouds and smoke merge in the skies above the evaporator while at my feet, I get to welcome each Crocus and Snowdrop that appears as the snow melts. The season finishes with the arrival of red winged blackbirds and spring peepers. Does it get any better than this?

But back to this full moon and its particular luminosity, it reminded me of the light pouring into creation this spring. This light feels very strong, stronger than just the return of spring light. When I sit in quiet to welcome this light into every cell of my being, I am startled by its brightness and fullness and strength. It floods me with hope and gratitude. And it keeps me returning inward to work on grounding this light within myself and in the Green Hope energy grid.

This going inward is not such an alien activity during sugaring season. I think it is pretty much a natural part of sugaring.

Most traditional New England sugaring operations boil their sap in an enclosed building with the boiling done at night. There are practical reasons for the night boils. The fire burns hotter in the night’s cold so the sap boils off faster. But there is also a great culture that goes along with night boiling. When I was a teenager, I helped at a sugarhouse where everyone sat around the evaporator at night watching the boil. There was chatter, but there was also a lot of quiet. Everyone seemed to go inward into the last dreaming before the big, busy push of spring.

I liked this meditative mood then, and I still like it. I try to use pretty much everything that happens to motivate me to go inward, so I like it when an activity naturally sends me this direction, and watching sap boil definitely does this.

I don’t go inwards to run away or game the system. When I was younger, I probably thought that going inwards and following the guidance I received there would always make things go better. Now, I still feel going inwards is the answer, but experience has tempered my belief that my efforts to go inward will spare me all sorrows.

I’m motivated to go inwards because it is the only place I know offering timeless calm, light, peace and serenity no matter what is going on around me. The eternal verities that infuse our world with things like full moons and geese in formation are like a stream taking me to the sea. Inwards is the sea. Inwards is the place where I feel our indivisibility and everything dissolves but love.

When an attitude of separation creeps back in, going inwards helps me let that go. We are all in this together. We are all one.

During this time of clamoring news pulling us into a sinkhole of fear, I have used every tool in my toolbox to stay on this inward trajectory. My main tool is to slow down my external life even more than usual. And that is saying something, because for many years, I have had what most people would consider a slowed down life. Not much travel. Most days spent at the farm. When I say a trip to the post office is a big outing, people think I am joking. I am not.

How on Earth did I come to live this slow life? It began decades ago because one of my children almost always screamed loudly and continuously when we left the farm. He did this FOR FIVE YEARS.

After those years, I was in the habit of asking the still small voice of my heart, “How is it going to go for us if we go to the grocery store right now?” I had learned to listen to the guidance because of the disasters when I didn’t. By the time this child outgrew his aversion to life beyond the farm, I was used to always seeking guidance about what to do or not do. Oddly, even after he was happy to leave here, my directions remained mostly some variation on, ‘Stay home.”

In my quieter life, I am rarely bored. It is amazing how interesting life in the microcosm can be. Sometimes I am resentful of my peers with their endless conversations about their trips. Sometimes I am irritated by the cultural assumptions that traveling is necessary to a fulfilling life. Mostly I am awed and grateful for how much beauty and wonder unfolds literally at our feet.

I stumbled on writing this blog because I know a lot of people are temporarily having to live a quieter life, and I thought maybe sharing a bit about my experiences would be comforting.

When I think of small things that have made it easier for me to stay home, one of them is reading books from earlier generations, say those written in the 1930’s. Old books embody the pace of many generations ago- books like “The Herb of Grace” by Elizabeth Goudge- where most people stayed home as a matter of course. They help me feel it is not so strange to live such a slowed down life. They also give me a sense of other generations prevailing through challenges that we know in hindsight got solved but to them were as unknowable as the place we find ourselves in now. For example “The Herb of Grace” is part of a trilogy written before and during WW2 by an English writer. Each book grapples with the way the experience of another world war affects the characters, yet each is also about how the goodness in life goes on no matter the difficulties.

In her determined faith and deep enjoyment of the small pleasures of life, the grandmother of the trilogy, Lucilla, reminds me that life is wonderful no matter the challenges. None of us get out alive, so maybe its okay to simply enjoy the blessings of each day and deal with the dificulties as they arrive without going down the tubes in advance. Yes, I know I am in the high risk demographic for this bug, but would a consuming fear in any way help me or give my life more joy or meaning? I think not. I am just going to continue to savor the moon, boil the sap and leave the rest to Divinity.