Location: Cottage Grove, Oregon
Directors: Dale Lugenbehl & Sandy Aldridge
Located on eight acres of south facing slope in the countryside outside Cottage Grove, Oregon, Ahimsa Acres is devoted to helping people learn to cope with difficult personal and economic issues, resource depletion, climate change, and the rush and complexity of day-to-day life. This is done through teaching about lowering personal consumption, permaculture principles to grow food at one’s own residence, renewable energy and other sustainable technologies, conservation, and achieving a more peaceful inner state through the practice of meditation, drawing on the mindfulness tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh as well as the Buddhist vipassana tradition.
We are subsistence growers rather than commercial farmers, and veganically grow approximately 70% of what we eat. We have about half an acre under cultivation in gardens and orchards. Our central intention is to live, harming life as little as possible, hence the name Ahimsa Acres. Ahimsa is a Sanskrit word meaning minimizing harm to life.
Fruit crops grown at Ahimsa include: apples, pears, figs, plums, raspberries, grapes, and thornless blackberries. Principal vegetable crops include broccoli, sweet potatoes, kale, cauliflower, cabbage, collards, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, potatoes, garlic, onions, corn, summer and winter squashes, cucumbers, carrots, beets, celery, parsley, basil, Swiss chard, beans, peas, lettuces, various Asian leafy greens, a variety of herbs, and hazelnuts. Our efforts at food production are intended to provide us with food year-around through all-season gardening, drying and freezing and in-ground and geo-thermal and electrically powered cold storage.
Contact Info: ahimsaacres@gmail.com
Website: www.ahimsaacres.org
WWOOF Listing: wwoofusa.org/en/host/18714
