Village View
Poems created during the spring semester of our Community College
Daffodils are yellow like golden suns. They dance in the waves of sunlight and air.
- Rukin Shivdasani
The very first flower I’ve ever planted. When they come up every year it brings me back to this memory. That is why the daffodil is my favorite flower.
- Sarah Bomba
Daffodils are yellow and white with sunshine that makes spring happy and people wide awake, in the early morning with cool weather with birds chirping all day.
- Nora Nickle
Love and flowers all year ‘round. Summer and spring. Easter is in April with bunnies and coloring eggs! Family means love to me.
- Cathy Fleming
Daffodils are flowers. Roses, too. I feel happy looking at flowers. Oh, pretty! They remind me of weddings.
- Jennifer Orahood
Daffodils are yellow.
- Aaron Burstein
Mishka Zuckerman and Elijah Kent enjoy the first blooms of the daffodils we planted on Michaelmas in 2024.
Palm Sunday
We received exceptional weather for our Palm Sunday walk this year, and brought our traditional rooster bread creations along for the stroll. Following a eurythmy performance in Fountain Hall, we walked to the intended site of a new care house we hope to build that would accommodate more of our wonderful elders. Some of our community members have attended more than 60 Palm Sunday gatherings here in Camphill Village, and it is with our current and future elders in mind that we turned our attention to this site near Undina House. In the evening, we returned to Fountain Hall for an inspiring biodynamics lecture by our friend Malcolm Gardner: “The Resurrection of the Clay Preparation.”
Tijen Wilson, Sherry Williams, and Asha Elhassan participate in our group song on Palm Sunday.
Elijah Kent, Brooke Hogan, and Asha Elhassan head to the lawn of Undina House for our gathering.
Ben Bruschke, Julie Boothroyd, and Vicki Fliesler arrive to bless the future construction site of a new care home in the Village.
Liliana Canton and Marian Scharr lead our annual Palm Sunday walk through the Village.
Brandon LeMay and Joseph Nour walk with their traditional rooster breads in hand.
Emily Wallach and Meg Henderson follow along with our group song.
Community Traditions Hot Cross Buns & Easter Bread
Jessica Duarte Sousa and Miss Maria Charlotte Logan brush egg wash on Easter bread loaves in the Village Bakery.
Throughout the year, our bakers provide our community and customers with sourdough and sandwich loaves, cookies, granola, pasta, and more. But our households have come to look forward to some seasonal favorites that our bakers have provided for decades, including holiday fruit cakes around Christmas time and fresh Easter bread and hot cross buns during Holy Week.
“Good Friday is rounded off by the wonderful hot cross buns provided by our Bakery,” says house leader Emily Gerhard. “We look forward to them every year.”
This was Natalia Avendano Torres’s first Holy Week in Camphill Village, and she said the bakers were all looking forward to making the hot cross buns. The process of braiding the Easter breads was much more difficult than she had expected, “but it was a lot of fun,” she said.
Karsten Rau sets freshly shaped hot cross buns on a baking sheet.
Freshly baked hot cross buns.
Photo by Corey Weaver.
Natalia Avendano Torres and Jessica Duarte Sousa prepare to braid individual strips that compose our Easter bread loaves.
Short-term intern Cleo Fahlke transplants onions beside Elisabeth Cooper.
Welcome, Volunteers!
Our community is so glad these new volunteers have joined us here in Copake since March. Depending upon their commitment, they will spend the next several months and years sharing our households, land, and craft studios. We look forward to living and working with all of you!
José Alzate from United States
Konstantin Bulgrin from Germany
José Gomez from Colombia
Harper Louden from United States
Hanna Mueller from Germany
Tatjana Pongratz from Germany
Paula Ruiz from Colombia
Lilly Schramm from Germany
We accept volunteers to stay with us for a few months to several years. You’ll share our houses, land, and workspaces, and have the support of the community while you contribute your time and learn new skills.
Volunteers enjoy:
• Room and board in a beautiful shared home
• Monthly stipend for incidentals and entertainment
• Fully funded health insurance
• Vacation time
• Possible college debt assistance for US citizens
• International friends from six different continents
camphillvillage.org/ volunteer
“I like hawks, owls, all different kinds of birds.” - Kim Warga
*Scan the QR code below to see our birding group in action!
Kim Warga searches for signs of life inside a dead tree in the Village.
Flocking Together
How Camphill’s resident bird lovers have been deepening their relationship with nature.
It’s 5:15 p.m. on a sunny Thursday in April, and we have an hour to spend exploring the grounds of Camphill Village before we need to be home for dinner. These Thursdays evenings are for the birds—as well as a group of our community members that have signed up to go birdwatching for the rest of the season.
Bug spray? Check. Binoculars? Check. Enthusiasm? Always.
“I’m glad I got this wish!” Marian Scharr exclaims while thumbing through a magazine featuring migratory birds—her attention darting from page to page. “There’s another new bird!”
This first gathering of birders is part of our Village “Community College,” which has been taking shape for a few years; our fellow community members who want to share their knowledge and expertise are welcome to organize a series of semester-based courses in the Village. This is house leader Sara White’s second semester imparting her birding passion across our community. Other courses offered this semester included bicycle repair, fairytales in eurythmy, and poetry.
We’re starting our birding course at the picnic tables outside of the Village Green, where Sara has displayed a collection of bird feeders and photographs for our lesson. She prompts us to identify the eating tendencies, habitats, and calls of birds in our region, and holds up a net full of white blocks that resemble cheese. “Does anyone know what this is for?”
Like so many awesome things we enjoy in our community, this bag of bird suet was made possible by Roger, our in-house butcher, who renders the fat from our livestock, and provides it to our households for this purpose.
After our discussion, it’s time to for a forest walk to our extraordinary wetlands, where birds, reptiles, and amphibians rule the roost. The vast beaver pond in Camphill Village is like something out of the mesozoic era: woodpeckers crawl up petrified swamp trees, algae-covered turtles sunbathe and fall off logs, and the dominant sounds of trickling water and bird calls are interrupted by the rustling tall grasses behind us. In every season, the beaver pond is very much alive.
Sherry Williams and Sara White examine different types of bird food during the first birdwatching class.
The beaver pond in Camphill Village supports a ton of wildlife, including migratory birds.
Marian Scharr observes our wetlands through binoculars.
And even when things appear dead, they can be full of life. As we walk, Sara explains to our group that standing dead trees provide invaluable nesting real estate for owls, woodpeckers, and other birds—as well as for the insects and rodents they eat—and should be left in place when possible to support our feathered friends.
“Look at that one, guys!” Kim Warga has spotted a very cool tree. “They’re making holes!”
The group huddles around the tree to observe the different heights and sizes of the many cavities covering the trunk. Kim loves being outside and learning about nature. She was especially excited when Sara arranged for the Ravensbeard Wildlife Center to bring their rescued birds of prey to Camphill Village two years ago.
“I like hawks, owls, all different kinds of birds,” says Kim. “I love nature.”
We continue our walk. Red-winged blackbirds chirp and trill overhead and robins hop into the shade as we stroll with binoculars in ready position. Cap Bielenberg is hoping to see a Baltimore oriole or indigo bunting, two of his favorites. Cap has a knack for spotting both at different places in the Village, including the bird feeder outside of Arbutus House where he lives with Sara.
Cap finally sees an oriole on the second Thursday in May, when we gathered in the shade of the lush Healing Plant Garden. The garden is known for
attracting birds and other pollinators to its vibrant flower and herb beds. And nectar-loving orioles are known to dine on bee balm, of which we have plenty. The wealth of biodiversity in Camphill Village is seemingly endless—from the delicate macroinvertebrates our environmental group surveys in our streams, to the milkweed-dependent monarch butterflies that accompany our sheep as they graze.
“Springtime is a great time to see the birds. They’re all migrating right now,” Sara says. “We’re actually in a great place because we do have our swamp—our wetland in the back—and we also have the open fields that have a lot of sparrows, and then we have our pond that has some wild Canadian geese there. So we’re really well off where a lot of our lands that we have here in Camphill Village have a lot of different environments that host a lot of birds.”
For the most part, the weather was excellent for our evening excursions. But we would have been drenched in early May if Sara hadn’t organized a backup plan: nest building in our Café. With feathers collected from our property, a ball of yarn, and hay from the resident guinea pigs of Arbutus House, we spent a productive hour building nests while Sara played bird documentary footage for us on her laptop.
“You need all the hay and all the sticks and then try to put it together like a bird, and it’s going to be difficult,” she said. “And that’s the challenge.”
The birdwatching course will end after the spring, and our “community college” courses are expected to pick back up in the fall.
Susan Freedman, Paul Marcuse, and Randy Simon create bird nests in our Café on a rainy afternoon.
Kim Warga meets Linus the screech owl, who was rescued by the Ravensbeard Wildlife Center in Saugerties.
Cap Bielenberg spots an oriole in the Healing Plant garden.
A goldfinch enjoys some flowers in a Turtle Tree Seed garden.
Cap Bielenberg, Sara White, and Taylor Jones use the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Merlin Bird ID app to identify lateafternoon bird calls in the Healing Plant Garden.
Sherry Williams and Marian Scharr listen to bird calls in the Healing Plant Garden.
Tony Bacon, Sherry Williams, and Mishka Zuckerman watch for wetland birds near our beaver pond.
MOMENTS
Christine Alema and Brooke Hogan restock jasmine rice in the Village Co-op.
Sophosethu Mpofu instructs a ballet class for our “community college.” Students shown: Bill Spillman, Zach Gastman, Marian Scharr, Elisabeth Cooper, and Jennifer Orahood. *Ellen Hunt hidden behind Marian.
Cordelia Schiller and Danny Miller pose beneath a mural Cordelia painted in our Café kitchen.
Hannah Oellers and Tijen Wilson dance the night away during our Carnival celebration to kick off the Lenten season.
Elijah Kent carries sap collection buckets to hang from our sugar maples.
Violin virtuoso Miha Pogacnik delivers a powerful performance of his Bach & The Foundation Stone Meditation for a packed house in Fountain Hall.
Cathy Fleming, delighted to present the completed embroidered garden she created in our Paper Crafts Studio.
Finot Selassie strums the guitar while Abby Lappen forms the chords during one of our fun weekly Movement with Abby evenings.
Esteban Giannini Patonnier, Tom Miano, and Jessica Duarte Sousa pour a freshly mixed batch of Biodynamic preparation that will be applied to our livestock pasture.
Support Camphill Village
Legacy Giving
The J. Murray Logan Legacy Circle was founded to recognize and honor donors who make future gifts to the Camphill Foundation, ensuring that people with developmental disabilities have the opportunity to live full, meaningful and productive lives.
Mr. Logan was the father of Camphill resident Maria Charlotte Logan, who has chosen to make her home in Camphill Village Copake since 1994. His visionary bequest led to the creation of the Camphill Village Copake Foundation, chartered to support the work of Camphill Village, and expanded to support the work of our sibling community—Camphill Ghent.
A memorial tree planted in the Village to honor Madeleine Harvey, who left our community an impactful legacy gift that included an invaluable collection of her father’s artwork. We are grateful to Mady for the legacy gift she made to Camphill Village, which also supports the vital programs and services for those who live here.
Membership in the J. Murray Logan Legacy Circle involves no obligations or dues. Its sole purpose is to thank and recognize you for including the Camphill Village Copake Foundation in your estate or trust plans.
Periodically, the Foundation will recognize Legacy Circle members by inviting them to recognition events and listing their names in Camphill Village publications, donor lists, and the donor recognition wall in the Bluestone administration building. Of course, we always respect a donor’s wish to remain anonymous.
To learn more, contact Elizabeth Phillips, Director of Development, at ephillips@camphillvillage.org or 518-329-7924, ext. 134
Your membership becomes effective as soon as you:
• Include the Camphill Village Copake Foundation in your estate plan through a will or living trust
• Donate any other gift to be realized at some future date, such as a life insurance policy or retirement plan.
Because Camphill Village’s funding comes mostly from private sources, we count on the support of fundraiser sponsorships and participation to support our Annual Fund. Consider supporting us through one of these events in the fall!
Visit camphillvillage.org/donate to learn about the many different ways you can support Camphill Village.
The Joseph D. Freedman Bowl-a-Thon to Benefit Camphill Village returns Saturday, November 8th!
Learn more at camphillvillage.org/bowlathon
Three Garden Crews with Distinct Intentions
Our acreage provides us with the space to practice a wonderfully complete Biodynamic agricultural system—one that includes livestock manure and horn silica from our farm, and open-pollinated seeds for our wholesome vegetables and healing herbs.
The people who live in Camphill Village rely on our gardens for nutrition in our homes and Café meals. And our crew members who work these gardens through the growing season experience wellness via daily exercise and fulfilling teamwork.
Seeds to Plant
In all, there are three types of gardens in our community: our Healing Plant Garden, with its remarkable and ever-changing herb and flower beds; our upper and lower vegetable gardens that feed our community; and the seed gardens operated by Turtle Tree Seed.
There’s a tremendous amount of specialized knowledge at play in each of these gardens, all of which have been waiting to spring into action—just like their crews—through the winter.
Turtle Tree Seed packages, sells, and donates some 300 varieties of seed across the country. This crew needs to ensure that the vegetables, herbs, and flowers they germinate are cared for well past the point of being edible or ideal for display—all the while protected from pests, shade, drought, and more for many months.
“We’re trying to give our peas support so they can climb up and have support without falling.”
- Bill McIlroy
Bill McIlroy and Oliver Reynolds-Scheel set up fencing to support a crop of peas.
“I work here in the greenhouse. I make all the plants, like this one.”
- Evan Young
A crop of lettuce in Turtle Tree’s Brookledge garden.
Evan Young and Alec Baresich tend to some parched petunias.
Evan Young transplants seedlings into a larger tray in a Turtle Tree Seed greenhouse.
Alec Baresich and Flavia Aguilar transplant lettuce in a Turtle Tree Seed garden.
Food to Eat
From the first bit of spring lettuce served in our Café to the ripe tomatoes we stew and can at the height of summer for winter spaghetti, our vegetable gardeners are growing with our meals and soil in mind.
“We hope to shape the beds with care in springtime, and we hope to add fertility to the beds while maintaining the integrity of the soil.”
- Peter Swiatek
Zach Gastman and Mishka Zuckerman use broadforks to turn the garden soil.
“I enjoy planting onions and I enjoy planting leeks and I enjoy putting leaf mulch on the onions.”
-
Elisabeth Cooper
“We also grow vegetables in our greenhouse all year ‘round, like now we have cucumbers, bell peppers, and tomatoes that the gardeners will harvest. And we have a big walk-in refrigerator that we can put them in in spring. The coffee shop and café use the lettuce greens as part of the lunch and some of the other vegetables that we grow as well. In the fields, we also have flowers for bees to enjoy them and other varieties of vegetables.” - Emily Wallach
Adam Smith prepares to place onion starts along a garden bed.
Elizabeth Chalakani and Emily Wallach transplant lettuce in the lower vegetable garden.
Elisabeth Cooper inserts the onion starts that Adam left into the soil.
Plants to Heal
The flowers and herbs we grow in the Healing Plant Garden are destined for transformation—into healing salves and tinctures, aromatic teas with different wellness properties, and flavorful culinary herb mixes. The crew in the Healing Plant Garden spends a great deal of time focusing on compost and weed suppression while creating a peaceful environment for people to amble and pollinators passing through.
“Our aim is now to try to catch up with nature. We mulch the garden to protect it. We hold the moisture in, but we also protect it from erosion.”
- Andreas Fontein
Andreas Fontein writes in his notebook near a bed of sage.
In spring I sort of like to feel Mother Nature at its best. It’s like finding a new beginning.”
- David Wallace
Sarah
and
The
leaves Hamed-Ali Momenzada is applying to a garden bed are raked and collected by our Estate Crew in the fall.
David Wallace applies a hay
manure mixture to garden pathways for weed suppression and nutrition.
Kim Warga turns the soil with a broadfork.
Amanda Balducci delivers leaf mulch to a garden bed.
Michael Coughlin pours wood chips for weed suppression and moisture retention.
Bomba weeds a lavender bed.
Copake, NY 12516
Front cover: Taylor Jones admires a magnolia tree planted in memory of house leader Tae Hirohata.
