Summer and Fall Reflection
photo by Niajea Randolph
Hello Everyone,
Greetings and blessings from the beginning of this new year!
We have been reflecting, collaging, and dreaming forward as we closed 2025: a time of renewal, gathering, cooperating and strategizing.
The freedom to arrive as you can and gather full-hearted is rare. We feel essential to an emerging reality we can only imagine.
Our camps, arts and educational programs inspired new learning and joy, and continue on. We are created every day by community.
A tremendous thank you goes out to all of you who bring your heart and words and expression to this place.
Upcoming Events
10:30am - 4pm at Orchard Hill Breadworks
Contradance Saturday, January 10th, 6:30pm
one of three gatherings, registration required
La Frontière Film Screening Saturday, January 24th, 6pm
Hey Kids! Let’s Make Pizza! Saturday, January 31st
11:00 am - 2:00 pm at Orchard Hill Breadworks
Bread and Art Saturday, January 31st
11:00 am - 3:00 pm at Orchard Hill Breadworks
Join a weekly group
All our classes and groups are welcoming more participation! There is space for you. All our weekly groups will continue into the New Year. Community, Stillness, Movement, and Togetherness happen through these classes every week.
Please contact them directly for updates on cancellations or changes.
Quaker Meeting Sundays, 9:30 - 10:30 am
Contact Emily Mason, OHquakers@gmail.com
Radiance Yoga with Elizabeth Bunker Wednesdays, 4:15pm
Contact Elizabeth at 978-793-2256
Walking Tree Zen Meditation Tuesdays, 6:30pm
Contact Kathy Byrne at 603-321-1572
Shapenote Sing 2nd and 4th Wednesdays, 6:30 pm
Contact Eleanor at 603-499-3422
Orisha Inspired Dance Class Thursdays 6:30 pm
Contact Kamala at 603-209-0334 or by email kamaladance@gmail.com.
SUMMER REVIEW
Day Camps
Our extensive set up began in earnest with Green Up Day and many coordinated times of group power. This required a major refreshing the playground, swingset, play house and play area yard, clearing trails in the woods, opening up the privy, preparing our pond classroom, raising tents, and creating the camp village!
This summer Marty Castriotta and Ellen Denny returned to camp staff and embodied their gifts as environmental educator extraordinares and land stewards, founders of Orchard Hill.
In addition to the gifts of leaders, counselors, emerging teachers and Counselors-In-Training, the emerging energy of hope and newness created a beautiful spirit of welcome. Campers greeted each other as if they had known them for years.
What followed was a flurry, all ages and stages living community creation, with arts expression, sharing feelings, and always heartfelt exploration of the wild.
Many of our leaders brought friends and artists from Baltimore, New York and California interested to feel the hum of growing community.
As the days rolled into each other a whole village was truly embodied in our lives. This went on for 5 weeks, culminating in the West African village camp where arts and music and friendship and love converged.
August Arts
Our camp season laid ground for a month of expressive arts and skill building in August, with programming for adults and teens led by Sammy. The annual Stamp Camp brought together printmakers from near and far to research sustainable print techniques and be inspired by the gardens and forests of Orchard Hill.
Music, noise, drag and dance came together in performances organized by Ash Schwartz, Alissa Schwartz and Sammy, enlivening our home with necessary expressions of what art can be.
FALL REVIEW
School Programs
At the start of the school year, the Center welcomed new students and families for cooperative school programs. We kicked off with welcome picnics where old and new friends united.
We are thrilled to have parent co-op groups using the space to develop their own ways to be kids in nature, and a culture of inclusive care in the spirit of Orchard Hill.
Community Village
For three days we held continuous the sacred drum and sacred fire, guided by Mayan Spiritual Guide Nana Wilma, along with Wisdom Keeper Marsha Forest and Grandmother Nancy Andry.
After such a tumultuous year and looking into more tumult, we gathered to practice and honor the medicine traditions long carried by Indigenous peoples.
“Each year that we create the village, we add another stone in the foundation of earth-based community that honors what is learned by caring for spiritual-elemental forces alongside our elders and children.”
We gather - four generations of us, made by the elders and the kids - as active peace warriors to stay close to the fire. In this way we generate and regenerate our understanding of humanity in times of turmoil and social change. It felt as if all the prayers for peace above, below and around truly went out across the entire world.
Rise Up!
COHAR Concerts
Our partnership with Continuum Culture and Arts brought two incredible concerts to the Center in October. Percussion ensemble The Forest and storyteller/vocalist čnaq’ymi (lone eagle) presented Coyote Makes a World. It was a stunning performance, and we are so grateful!
“Set within a dynamic rhythmic landscape layered with songs and mesmerizing vocalizations, Coyote Makes a World reflects the world we’ve made while taking the listener to places they’ve never before encountered.”
That same weekend, we hosted South African composer and saxophonist Steve Dyer and his quartet, who presented Freedom Melody, spotlighting the rich heritage of South and Southern African vocal and instrumental music within a contemporary setting.
Radically Rural
The incredible Radically Rural conference converged at Orchard Hill this year, with deep thanks to Marty Castriotta for weaving voices, ideas and leaders together to share in good food and essential conversation through the conference’s Land & Community focus. After a sharing stone soup and bread at Orchard Hill Breadworks, we gathered in the Great Room for a panel of farmers and educators providing real solutions and examples of our ways forward.
We are so thankful for Marty’s work with Keene State, Hannah Grimes, Radically Rural in creating a web of knowledge and resource that reaches far.
In the News
GRATITUDES
THANK YOU! Our deep Gratitudes to the following organizations and individuals.
Catalyst Fund, thank you! As part of NH Charitable Trust, the Catalyst Foundation provides unrestricted grants that allow us to truly serve our community and our building where so much happens. We thank you.
Jeffery Smith Farm Scholarship and the Cheshire County Conversation Commision, thank you! You have pulled us through year after year with your generous gift to future farmers and gardeners.
Acworth Conservation Commission, thank you for supporting our Acworth campers!
Alstead Conversation Commision, thank you for supporting our Alstead campers!
Keene Rotary Success by Six, thank you! Your donation provides for our youngest campers.
New Hampshire Charitable Trust, thank you for ongoing support through generous discretionary funds to keep the Center going.
Bishop Holle Memorial Fund, in the name of our beloved nephew who knew and embodied the spirit of the wild forest, the pond, the bugs and the blending of water, mud and art. This scholarship will go forward to keep his spirit alive.
Ryan Strickland, a former student of Orchard School, summer camper, summer counselor, lifeguard, now working for good in the world - thank you! His company sent a generous donation to the nonprofit of his choice, our Center.
Rich Standish, a member of Orchard Hill Quakers, who support the Center with their consistent presence for peace making - thank you! When Rich learned that our summer program was in need of funds, he generously supported our farm program.
Kristyn Wallace has been a major supporter of day camps, understanding the necessity of bringing cultural experience such as Sankofa African village to our local campers. This summer it would not have happened without her gift. Thank you!
Dr. Jeffery Scavron, a supporter of community based medicine and education, and inclusion of all people, has been primary for our organization since we began in 1994. Thank you for your gift this fall, which allowed us to pay our leaders in carrying forward our programs into the winter months.
More heartfelt thanks:
Thank you to all who have contributed sustaining donations which have made everything possible for us, the generosity that helped us create a budget and plans for winter, spring and next summer. We are working on that budget and developing our next seasons!
As we write, there are days when the voices of song, children laughing, adults sitting in close conversation and working together in all seasons, there is a sweep of thankfulness for such clear expression of humanity, and that we have the space practice community everyday.