Friday, December 30, 2011

Bienvenidos and Welcome!

Jardines Lumbini ~ in the town of La Ribera, Baja California Sur, Mexico ~ is a collectively-owned permaculture community in its infancy of cultivation.


My name is Tiffanie. My family ~ husband Troy and three-year-old daughter Anjali, and two senior-aged cats ~ are heading from Oregon to live full-time at Lumbini, starting at the beginning of January, 2012. A dream come true that has been in the making for years now! Although it is owned collectively, we will be the first ones to actually live there. Our eventual goal is to live as self-sufficiently and eco-regeneratively as possible ~ cultivating food forests and gardens, raising chickens and other livestock (hopefully dairy of some sort!), and making as much as we can ourselves by hand. Although we certainly have read about, researched, studied, and dabbled in this kind of living for years, it is all pretty darn new to us, and feels like a huge adventure! And though this place will be a haven for us, a hermit's life is not at all our vision; we see Jardines Lumbini as a bustling home for many families and many playing children, as well a connecting and gathering place for community near and far. We envision education, celebration, nourishment and healing, art, and much more!

This blog is where I plan to chronicle our process. Though it seems I can't help but wax poetic, it is my intention for this to be an informative collection of chapters of our own family's slow journey.

So far in our shorter stays at Lumbini, we have found we come alive there more and more every day. We love living in the open air, warming up by the fire in the mornings, sipping coffee as the sun rises in the desert, living with birds and other wildlife in our midst, working with our bodies day-by-day outside in the elements, eating by firelight and relaxing under the stars before retiring (inevitably early) to bed in our tent to the music of the crickets. And I can't forget to include frequent visits to the nearby beach ~ either Troy for sunrise fishing, or the whole family for sand- and water-play, beach-combing and strolling. Life there is slow, dictated much more by the angle of the sun than the time on a clock.
We can't wait to return there for good, to see just how vibrant our bodies ~ and relaxed our minds ~ can become.