We furnish bunks, basic food supplies and equipment to make your own meals and bicycles for transportation.  The workload is 30 hours a week, arranged however you like for your social events or part time work.  Sometimes we have a bunk room at the Artfare Hotel, sometimes a camper space at Camp Goofy.  It’s a fifteen minute bike ride between, part of the way through downtown and the other part along the park and bike trail along the dry Santa Cruz riverbed.  We’re not a regular WWOOF farm with beautiful open vistas and produce you can pick out of the fields, we’re an urban garden center developing ways and means for low income urban dwellers and traveling artists to have a gardening experience in small spaces using recycled materials and objects.  So far we’ve grown only a very limited amount of food to eat but have gained loads of information and are starting a new crop in the aquaponics system with a new bunch of fish fingerlings.  Daily we attack the chaos and grit and grime of the construction debris pile and find ways of converting accumulated junk into use.  We’re making progress but we’re not there yet.

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I never cease to wonder at how, historically, at least on social causes and social arrogance, the Quakers almost always got it right. When volunteers came out to a new place like in the wilds of Africa or wherever, they’d often ask the resident member of The Society Of Friends,“What do you want me to do?” The answer would usually be “Nothing” just observe for about six weeks then you can talk to us about doing something. The reason they got it right I think is that they didn’t talk much in their meetings, but (following their own advice to volunteers) sat in silence for long periods before anybody spoke. Another reason is possibly their non hierarchical organizational structure.

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When you come out you may see chaos and poverty but there is a plan, and a support system is being developed. You may be overwhelmed and wonder how you can be useful.  Many more people than Quakers and Buddhists would agree that often the most help can be given by listening and observing.  (Yogi Bera says you can observe a lot just by watching.) Globally and locally we’re in an emergency situation. In any emergency the first requirement is you gotta get real quiet.  If that’s too hard sometimes just getting quieter helps.

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.We don’t have the romance of the wilds of Africa or six weeks for you to observe a lot just by watching but  would suggest you watch what’s going on UNTIL you see if you see a place where you can take part or not and then if there isn’t one we can both just meditate or mindfully move on, remembering “The Existentialist’s Prayer”:

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“I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, you are not here to live up to mine.  But when we get together, it’s beautiful.”

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So “expect nothing” because nobody looks like what they write or photograph or sound like on the phone or the radio, because.....?

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“We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.”---Anais Nin

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​(See picture to  the left)

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as with the dream team of  Don Kay & Ho Tay, just down the street from us, DonKayHoTay say,

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“And eye for an eye and as Ass for an Ass

We aint’ got not class.”