Inhabiting Immensity: Remembering to Remember Together

remembering MLK + Pancho's update + seed gifting near you ⭐

“This is just the medicine I needed,”

she said, tears in her eyes.

“Thank you seeds

for reminding me: I too may be small

but I matter

and everything we all do matters

more than we’ll ever know.”

And yet, we’re human, so we forget and what a joy to re-member together:

As we inhabit our immensity

let’s surprise ourselves

how courageous & connected

we can be

and truly are.

And Friends:

thank you

for joining us on the journey.

As we practice the splendid (if often uncomfortable) magic of giving and receiving, of remembering to re-member together, we’ve so many Gift of Seed gatherings sprouting across the Northeast this winter, we’d love to see and share with you soon:

The Gift of Seeds

Join Fruition at the Genesee Country Village & Museum

Sunday January 18 | 2 to 4 pm

All flourishing is mutual, as Robin Wall Kimmerer reminds us, and seeds brilliantly embody this generosity, creativity and care. Together, let’s practice receiving hundreds of varieties of regionally adapted seeds as gifts, cultivating gift culture as well as community, nourishing all generations to come! Come ready to reflect, connect and honor your gifts as well as we all learn to amplify the gifts of community together. Expect puppets! And lots of seeds! And to come alive as we explore living in ways both old and new.

Bring a friend and a bag to bring home an abundance of seeds to sow more fruitful futures for your family, friends, neighbors and strangers as we become good ancestors together 💛

Register to reserve the gift of your presence:

Rather than ‘free’ as in ‘valueless,’ our gatherings and seeds are ‘free’ as in Fannie Lou Hamer, ‘none of us are free until all of us are free.’

Seeding the Future

Pack seeds, potluck & share a mini seed gifting practice with Fruition

Saturday January 17 | South Wedge Mission in Rochester, NY | 4 to 7 pm, potluck throughout!

Let’s sing, make new friends and deepen community camaraderie as we tuck countless seeds into beautiful packets to gift our wide community, Rochester and beyond!

Join us in body and / or spirit and know you are so loved, whoever & wherever you are 💛

together, we sow fruitful futures for all of us

And Friends, as we grieve such violent collapse and honor Dr. Martin Luther King Junior’s birth and legacy, we’d love to pause:

Did you know, in his vast understanding of reinforcing oppressions, that MLK advocated for food system reform?

Nothing is apolitical & here we are, climbing many of these same mountains decades later.

Four hundred years later.

Two thousand years later.

Committing to systemic change is as challenging as it is essential...

...and know that with each seed we sow and deeper breath we welcome (would you breathe a little deeper with me?), we embody the faith and embolden the legacy of Dr. King:

The arc of the moral universe is long, yes…

…and we’re here for the growth, pruning, (un)learning and becoming, woven in Love…

…and thank you for being part of our Beloved Community, whoever you are, wherever you are, near and far❤

In the spirit of Dr. King and all our ancestors who sowed seeds of courage and change (as well as carrots!) that nourish our bodies, hearts and imaginations today:

Let us gift you seeds!

Our 300+ regionally adapted seeds we share as gifts in 40+ gatherings, take a peek:

Save the Date(s)!

If you’d love to come ~40 minutes early to help set up our Seed Feast, play acoustic music or bring us a dairy-free snack (!), we love you and don’t be shy 💛

Sat, Jan 17: Seed Packing & mini Gift of Seed at South Wedge Mission from 4 to 7 pm, potluck included in Rochester, NY (free)

Sun, Jan 18: Gift of Seed at Genesee Country Village and Museum 1 to 4 pm in Mumford, NY (register here for free!)

Thurs, Jan 22: Gift of Seed at Montague Common Hall from 6 to 8 pm in Montague, MA (free)

Sat, Jan 24: Gift of Seed from 2 to 4 pm (with potluck to follow!) at CNTR in Middletown, CT (free)

Sun, Jan 25: Gift of Seed from 2 to 4 pm at Mercado Popular in Hartford, CT (free)

Sat, Jan 31: Gift of Seeds from 2 to 4:30 pm at Centerville Community Center on Cape Cod, MA (register for free here)

Sun, Feb 1: Gift of Seeds from 3 to 5 pm at First Church of Ipswich, MA (free)

Tues, Feb 3: optional potluck at 4, Gift of Seed from 5 to 7, singing ’til 8 pm at Center at Orchard Hill in Alstead, NH (free)

Sat, Feb 7: Gift of Seeds from 10 to noon, community seed swap from 1 to 4:30 Fletcher Library in Burlington, VT (free)

Feb 8 & 10: Gift of Seeds at Suarez Family Brewery & beyond in Hudson, NY! (free, more details to come)

Sat, Feb 14: Head over Peels for You! Valentine’s Day: Community Care as Self Love + People’s Supper from 10 am to 8 pm at Fruition (free, more details above & on website)

Wed, Mar 4: Buddhist Mobile Monastery visits Fruition 2 to 9 pm (free, details on website)

March 16 ~ 19: Gift of Seed and other diverse seed gifting delights around Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom (free, more details to come)

Sat, Mar 21: Rochester Urban Ag Conference & Seed Swap! (sliding scale, more details to come)

Wed, March 25: Gift of Seed in Corning, NY (free, more details to come)

Sat, March 28: Gift of Seed from 2 to 4 pm at Soil Factory in Ithaca, NY (free)

Tues, March 31: Gift of Seed from 6 to 8 pm at Wood Library in Canandaigua, NY (free)

Wed, April 1: Gift of Seed from 6 to 8 pm in Olean, NY (free, more details to come)

Thurs, April 2: Gift of Seed from 6 to 8 pm at RIT’s Bamboo Room in Rochester, NY (free)

Sat, April 4: Gift of Seed at Fruition (more details on website)

Sat, April 11: Gift of Seed, Keynote & other delights at the Maine Seed Festival (free, more details to come)

Wed, April 15: Gift of Seed from 6 to 8 pm at Sawmill Herb Farm in Montague, MA (free)

Fri 17th evening ~ Sun 19th morning Seed & Gifting Retreat: Bulk Seed Gifting & Gift Culture Cultivation for Community Organizers at Fruition (free, more details on website)

If you are connected to community gardens, seed libraries and other means of sharing seed abundance in non-commercial ways, join us to receive lots of bulk seeds and deepen our gift culture community and skills together!

Sun, April 19: Growing the Gift of Seed (seed gifting 1 to 3 pm, seed starting 3 to 4 pm) at Genesee Country Village & Museum in Mumford, NY (free, more details on website)

April 28 – May 1st Retreat: Being Seeds in a Garden of Change at Holy Cross Monastery West Park, NY (sliding scale, more details to come)

Sun, May 3: Gift of Seed in Cooperstown, NY (free, more details to come)

Sat, May 9: Gift of Seed & Transplants at Fruition (free, more details to come)

Thurs, May 14: Gift of Seed in Buffalo, NY (free, more details to come)

Fri, May 15: Transplant Swap & Share at Public Market in Rochester, NY(free, more details to come)

Sun, May 18: Gift of Seed at Fruition (free, more details to come)

Stay tuned for music, abundance sharing, plays & more opportunities to savor, laugh, learn, serve & grow together all summer, fall & for seasons to come!

If you’d love to say thank you, we love you and know:

~ Take the deepest breath you’ve taken all day and trust that simply reading these words is thank you enough.

~ What are your gifts and who in your community needs them? Sharing your gifts, especially in ways that expand your comfort zone, profoundly amplifies the gift so hungry to feed us all.

Sustain this work and joy alongside us!

~ In the words of our beloved friend Adam Wilson, we dream of a world than sustains rather than pays us all…

…and in this spirit, we share Fruition’s relational, material & financial non-profit needs and we’re so thankful for your vision and generosity nourishing generations to come 💛

Friends, we feel so deeply for all of you unable to join our embodied seed gifting and we would loveLOVElove for us all to experience the magic of seeds as gifts, though we don’t have the capacity to manage this by ourselves.

We do nothing alone and ohhhhh, if you have the energy to help bring to life seed gifting beyond our gatherings, please do reach out:

With our vivid intention

tools and imagination

let’s sow and sing

this world into being!

May we all feel so held

in the hands of our friends

our neighbors

our earth

our ancestors

and all those yet to come.

we are the seeds

Sow Seeds & Sing Songs,

and the Many Possibilities of Fruition

ps

If you’ve been forwarded this email and would love to subscribe, please do & hope to see you here on the farm one day, too!

pps

Pancho kisses Davi as we’re all kissed by the snow.

And Friends, thank you to everyone who felt for Pancho and Kevin last week: your outpouring of care was so visceral and medicinal to receive. We’re pleased to report Pancho is, miraculously and against all odds, absolutely thriving! After twelve days of gentle sedatives keeping him curled cozy by the fire (seeds are medicine, sleep is medicine), he is cross-country skiing miles on and beyond the farm every day — and hooray for the new fallen snow, soft and silent, a blizzard even as I write, the orchard barely visible just outside the window.

May our humble gratitude for both the sweetness and trials of life be as beautiful and as this snow. Is there anything else to see? Is this seeing the forest for the trees?