Spring is again in the air at Lost Creek Hippies Vineyard!

After a pleasantly mild Winter, Spring is arriving with a vengeance, as usual. We’re presently struggling to keep up with pruning and fertilizing. It would be easier if we weren’t constantly going away to visit family and friends, but that’s life! Our 28 trees in our secured orchard area remain alive and sprouting, but our two giant MacIntosh apple trees appear to be retiring, victims of age and perhaps too aggressive top-trimming… that’s a whole long discussion we can have. We’re planting about 8 more Honeycrisp trees in May.

We’re already looking forward to our 9th Annual Fall Fun(d) Raising Party on Saturday, September 14, starting at 1 pm. This will again be a fun-filled afternoon of chatting, fun games, drinks of all kinds, and pork stew, along with appetizers and deserts. If we’re lucky, we’ll have music… we will see if we could possibly equal the two fantastic groups of last Fall’s event! We are eager to have all leave with a bottle of our signature Altered States Apple Wine, so mark the date and plan to bring friends/family who are like you in enjoying a great afternoon while helping our close and distant neighbors ( that One Human Family we’re in ) succeed and thrive.

We again this March made our annual Spring donations of $1000 to each of our 3 charities ( see their receipts posted in our Financial Section ), in honor of all of you who have over the last 20 years helped is with planting and harvesting and/or attended any of our 8 previous Fall events.

Eventually, we hope to have a Fall Harvest Event, but we will see. We are somewhat challenged horticulturally, but our enthusiasm (unwarranted) remains undaunted!

Each of our 3 charities continue on with their missions, we are proud to remain a small part in their success:

Hope Coalition: Providing advocacy for women and their children in need of help with resources to achieve safe and affordable housing and paths to future safety and success .

Habitat For Humanity of Minnesota: Helping lower income individuals and families acquiring and owning quality affordable housing, thus setting them on track for better lives, while stabilizing and improving their communities.

Central Asia Institute: Helping girls and women in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan thrive thru education and employment skills, thereby spreading their success to many others in their local communities.

We do these efforts because we are so thankful that, by chance, we and our parents were helped out by their societal strucure to live in safe places and enjoy the benefits of financial success. Knowing that we can’t take it with us to the “beyond”, we are proud to do these small efforts to make our world a better place now while we can.

We feel very day that we are members of One Human Family:

Like fingers on a hand…
We are all different and unique.
We are all of equal value.
We are all created to work together.
And although we appear separate, we are linked to, and a part of, each other.

Today our world can seem suffused with challenges, but we are “ glass half-filled” people. When we at times can feel overwhelmed, we can look for guidance to our many insightful human predecessors:

And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. William Shakespeare

A human is a part of the whole universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings, as separate from the rest. This is a optical delusion of consciousness. Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion by embracing all living creatures and the whole of nature in it’s beauty. Albert Einstein

Two things fill my mind with ever increasing wonder and awe: the stary heavens above me and the moral law within me. Immanual Kant

This is my simple religion: There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness. The Dalai Lama

Finally, on a lighter note:

• Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes. Henry Thereau
• Be yourself; everyone else is already taken. Oscar Wilde

If you Summer travels take you down our way near Pepin, Wisconsin, Do Not Hesitate to stop by to chat… we love the interruptions ! Give me a call, as we’re not always hear every day: 763-354-0880

See you on September 14 !