The Secret Green Meadow

There is a secret green meadow at RavenCroft. A place where the green nourishes my hunger for the land and a longed for silence found in earth’s time. It is a meadow surrounded by big trees of Hemlock, Maple, Weeping Willow and Doug Fir. These tall friends create points of connection with cool shade, protection from the rain and the beautiful shifting edge of the sun’s light and warmth. I go each day to this secret meadow with the goats, Tillia, Willow, Nettle, Cosmos, Tulsi and Luna, a herd of six. Well, actually, seven including me! We come to eat and engage in Goat Walk.

For years I have kept up the pace of leaving home and entering the world of outside work. I've felt the tension and constriction of this world enter into my body, disturb my sleep, ask me to engage my ally motherwort each day to ease grouchiness and worry. Tears of longing to soften into the green and earth time have welcomed me home on these unexpected days off at home.

As this time of disruption unfolded I have been home more, Tillia and Willow kidded and we discovered a passage into a secret meadow of contiguous untended wild green. Each day we enter guided by a hunger for the earth mother.

In the meadow I become anew. I walk, observe, listen and rest. I follow, watch, tend and soften. I lead, connect, browse and transform. I enter a time out of my daily routine. I am a human. I am a goat. I am ancient. I am present. Today, we ate blackberry, huckleberry, and tender tips of holly and ivy. Yesterday, we ate tall grass and buttercup. All this eating to feed life, hungry mothers who feed hungry babies who all feed me. Sweet green transformed into blessed milk. This blessed green eases my constrictions, gives back rest and sleep and allows my heart to enter ancestral and earth time. Time in the secret green meadow feeds and tends the heart of each one of us, goat and human. We are at the heart of RavenCroft Garden. Enjoying the Green!