1 – Camping at Sandhill, Saturday August 8 – Monday, August 10

So far Cynthia and Ralph and several of their out of town descendants (offspring, spouses & grand kids) & Richard are going out for Saturday and Sunday nights.

Others are welcome to join us for one or both nights, or just a day. Please reach Cynthia, whose contact information is just below.

There will likely be a swimming outing to the Hay River, plus the usual cooking, eating and tromping around.

Two projects we hope to work on:

• relocating the maple-syruping boil-down area to a more convenient location.
• Setting up a deer exclosure to protect white pine seedlings.

? – A September “Alone and Together” Retreat?

Last year a few of us spent a night and a day at Frank and Raquel’s cabin near Pine City, with lightly-structured time, apart and together. The effort was to let the natural setting recharge us, reorient us, revivify us. It worked well enough that we want to try it again.

Let Cynthia know if you are interested in something like this, and what September overnight date(s) you would have available.

2 – Planning for Buckthorn Busting, Monday Evening, 10/5

At Cynthia and Ralph’s, 7PM – 9PM

3 – Buckthorn Busting, Saturday, Nov. 14

Location still to be arranged, most likely in the Cannon Valley, not far from Northfield.

4 – Early Winter Harvest, Saturday, December 12

At Sandhill

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A New Approach

Cynthia, Ralph & Richard met on July 19 to consider our recent lapse of focus on the every-other-month face-to-face planning meetings.

Two things came out of this discussion:
1. At our current level of activity, it doesn’t make sense to have regular “whether-we-need-them-or-not” meetings. We will call meetings to plan our regular outings, or when there is some other specific reason to have a meeting.

2. We want to continue our regular outings:

• Maple Syruping, end of March/early April.
• NYM Sessions, Memorial day weekend — Saturday Campfire, Forest Friends Board Meeting.
• Summer camping weekend at Sandhill, July or August (after the height of the tick season).
• Hopefully, an annual personal-time/community-time overnight retreat.
• Buckthorn removal Saturday. Traditionally on the land of someone we know in the Cannon Valley, South of the Twin Cities.
• Early Winter Harvest, second weekend in December, at Sandhill.

Beyond the regular outings, we are deciding to go into “coast” mode, rather than aspiring to build Quaker Community Forest to include more than these regular activities.

We agreed we are in this for the long haul and if, at present,  our other commitments mean we don’t have extra energy to give to QCF, then we will do only what we love – our regular outings, listed above.These are popular every year, with just the basic publicity, through the usual channels. They nourish us, so we’ll keep doing them.

Of course we hope that over time more and more people will discover how much these outings can provide needed spiritual sustenance, but we no longer plan to make extra effort to recruit people to other possible events, like the mid-winter events that have not panned out the past couple of years.

We accept that we are in “basic group maintenance mode,” and we are happy with what we’ve got.

As our lives change for the less busy we may find we have the energy to do more, but that is for another time, yet to come.