From the Farmhouse Table: November 2021

Faith & Renewal

Even in a steady rainfall Tuesday evening, the fire caught, nibbling at the pages of a work in progress.

We stood there in the gloaming: Anna, Hedgebrook’s new executive assistant and board liaison, Amanda, our operations coordinator, Jess, our chef and master gardener, Hildy, my dog (and Hedgebrook’s mascot), and me, the no-longer-quite-new ED.

We burned pictures of those we lost, dropped bay leaves into the orange flames, traded stories and secrets, sipped box wine.

Today is my birthday: for me, November is a literal time of renewal.

The potage beds are covered against the freezing nights, draft budget planning for the new year is well underway, and, inside the Farmhouse, paper bags stand tall with saved seeds. Those beds, that budget, these bags–mauve hollyhocks that wink for the camera phone, spiky yellow flowers whose name escapes–they all hold promise. They beg for faith.

2022 will be the first time since the pandemic that Hedgebrook will operate at full capacity. Eighty writers are set to join us on the land. We were fortunate to receive Paycheck Protection Plan support from the federal government this year; next year, we will rely once again, solely, on our community of supporters, on foundations that believe, as we do, in the power of women-identified writers, on corporations that pledge to support women- and BIPOC-led organizations, on alumnae who place Hedgebrook within their giving circle.

I don’t expect it to be easy but I do have faith. This is, after all, a magic place built on a wonderful idea: A cottage for each writer. The gift of time and radical caregiving. Smoking chimneys and winding paths and delicious farm-to-table meals and, now again, the song of frogs.

Don’t be surprised if you receive an email with an invitation to pause with us as this long, exhausting year winds down. Maybe you’ll receive a letter with a special surprise, or a card with a little bit of Hedgebrook enclosed inside. Our end-of-year campaign has a simple purpose: to put you on these paths for a moment, to share how we care for and nourish ourselves and each other, and to inspire those of you whose words must spill forth.

-Kimberly A.C. Wilson, Executive Director