Welcome to Summer at Orchard Hill!
Summer is nearly here! Growing, tending and blooming are in full swing at Orchard Hill. We are busy preparing to welcome campers for Day Camps, where we will celebrate music, friends, creating, growing food! Pizza Nights at Orchard Hill Breadworks are underway and bring us together each week. Join in!
SPRING REFLECTIONS
Day Camps
Day Camps welcomes new leadership. Our multi-generational leadership model keeps everyone listening, learning and leaning into the challenges and seeing emergent pathways. Thank you to our friends and supporters for leaping into the fray.
There is a sense that something new and fresh is happening and we want to show up for it.
So now Andrea, Eleanor, Jumoke and Sammy are co-directors and collaborators. With Jumoke and Sammy’s leadership as working artists - both woven in cities and communities across creative disciplines of music, art and theater - we look to bring new and exciting opportunities for culture, friendship, immersion in community for families, school-age children and teenagers.
We celebrate the high school graduation of our most senior counselors - Asher Elbers, Aster Mueller and Salvador Sharon Eaton - and welcome them to New Leader positions, as they step into greater leadership at Day Camps this summer. Along with 6 Lead staff, 5 Junior Counselors, and 6 Counselors-in-Training we will join up for a leadership training at the end of this month. Big thanks to Ian Myers for making this level of investment and participation with our youth leaders possible.
Learn more about our awesome Day Camps Staff
School-year children’s programs
The wider neighborhood of families have co-created two parent-led children’s groups. The Preschool Coop and fabulous teaching team Jules Brooks and Ellen Denny serve local young children three days a week. The Petal & Pine Homeschool Coop gathers one day a week. These groups provide a place for children to learn and grow, holding true to our deepest mission.
Community Garden
Community Gardeners come together year round. Folks are in a 4th growing season.
Long Tables is a neighborhood Signal group drop off and pick up resource station in our front foyer is also a fabulous community-led venture. Big thanks to Petra Gillette and Amelia Kaufhold for taking extra care of those shelves.
Printmaking Classes Come check out the beautiful artwork created by your neighbors in Sammy’s spring printmaking classes. We’ll be hanging new artworks in the Great Room over the next week! Contact Sammy at sammy@freetimestudio.org for more information about printmaking classes.
Summer opens and sheds light and brings possibilities to gather. We can do all this because of the generosity of community and people who know that working together we are more. We can provide for all of these children and their families.
We hold visions of life filled with fierce joy.
peace lily, daffodils and incredible tomato plant sunning in the Great Room
GRATITUDES
Our Heroes,
THANK YOU!
THANK YOU!
We are deeply, utterly thankful for the support of the many individuals and organizations, who partner to make things possible.
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.
Cheshire Kids 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 Commission, thank you for supporting our Alstead campers!
Orchard Hill Breadworks for making the bread, sharing, employing many, and feeding thousands of people, supporting local growers and businesses and modeling the possibility of fair share.
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.
Ian Myers for his generous contribution to make our expanded staff and youth training possible. We will all grow and be fed by this time and your support.
Marcella Eversole, for deep partnership and shared practice on this land.
Hans & Laurel for contributions to the outdoor play and green areas.
Ty Elliston and Jason Antos for supporting community safety by offering our staff CPR & First Aid courses. Thank you Jesse Moore for providing an AED unit for the Center.
Thank you to all who have contributed sustaining donations which have made everything possible for us, the generosity that helps cover the always-costs and care day to day.
There are days when the voices of song, children laughing, adults sitting in close conversation and working together in all seasons, that there is a sweep of thankfulness for such clear expression of humanity, and that we have the space to practice community everyday.