Retreats and Workshops
In keeping with the history of this land we have continued to open up the farm to groups who seek retreat, growth, and the rich connection between healthy food, healthy bodies and healthy minds.
From 1988 to 1991 we hosted Susan Osborn and the Seeds of Singing workshops. Those early day workshops created life long friendships, community and a deep understanding of the enormity this sacred space could hold for people as they discovered and learned something new.
More recent examples of retreats and workshops have included: women’s yoga retreats, forestry workshops, and vision quests. Additional details about these are listed below. If you are interested in facilitating a workshop or retreat on Morning Star Farm, please email msfarmorcas@gmail.com
Improving Forest Health and Fire Resistance in a Changing Climate
Facilitated by: Kirk Hanson (NNRG Director of Forestry), Kai Hoffman-Krull (Forage/ Restore Char CEO), and Carson Sprenger (Rain Shadow Consulting Director)
In this workshop, local and regional experts will provide forest owners in the San Juan County with tangible do-it-yourself strategies for improving the health, resilience and productivity of the forests. As the facilitators articulated, “participants will learn how to evaluate forest conditions, select trees for harvesting, and utilize woody biomass for biochar production and boost soil health.”
Song of the Body
Led by: Katie Gray and Djuna Mascall
When women gather with the intention and support to release shame, fear, and judgement- powerful transformation can occur. Our weekend retreat will be a space in which to unfold, rest, and nurture your body. Receive the healing medicine of music, yoga, the beauty of Orcas Island, food from the land, and sisterhood.
This women’s retreat took place in 2018.
Night Traveling: Bringing Light into Dark Times
Facilitated by:
Hugh M. Grant and
Jade Sherer
We will meet in an atmosphere of mutual support and encouragement on beautiful Morning Star Farm on Orcas Island, WA, to listen deeply for new ways of bringing our light into the night-like quality of these times. We will endeavor to befriend the dark, to embrace the unknown, to wrestle with our dreams, to pray, to respond to our inner quickenings, to plant the seeds of our visions, to navigate beyond our fears, and to begin to see how our particular souls can be a part of the healing of these times.
Dreamscapes: Dreaming a Future World into Being
Facilitated by:
Jade Sherer and
Lauren Chambliss
Philosophers say we are in a period where “radical hope” is the ethical response to a chaotic world. “Radical “because it is not based on experience, but on what we can imagine. On this island farm, we will expand our imaginative intelligence. Here, seeds become food and flower, fog alters our vision, and the surrounding sea calls us to our depths. Here, the dreamscape will guide us, individually, to embody this imaginative excellence. Each day, we will spend time together exploring our dreams, combined with periods of solitude, and luxurious space to wander the rugged landscape of hopes and dreams.
We will camp on the wild wet edge of the Morning Star Farm, wander in it’s domestic and wilderlands, and sit with dreams that call us forward.
“When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. ”