by Anthony Weston
So many people showed up for our 1/28 workday and/or tours that I am worried I will forget someone if I try listing everyone! Suffice it to say that all along the route from Frazier Road down to nearly the central gathering area, Hart’s Mill members and friends were at work for much of a sunny but brisk Saturday afternoon, moving brush
piles, sawing branches out of the route, sometimes from ladders, and taking down trees, hauling the cuttings back into the woods, and in general widening and clearing the road that is planned for the main community entrance.
The Land Stewardship Functional Circle is making a major push to prepare it for general use by later Spring (and it is already passable now if you hang to the north edge of the meadow and drive carefully). Soon we will enter the land down the wooded hill and then see the land spread out before us as we emerge from the trees! In the course of the afternoon there were also wildflower plantings, bark strippings, multiple tours by multiple people, reconnections with old friends and returning members, and a circle 
ceremony in 
the sun recognizing our purchase of the land and the outstanding contributions of two members. Paul Voss was honored for his signal efforts in leading the initiative to buy the land, and Jeffry Goodrum received kudos (and a flagon of beer) for his 
mighty mowing achievements.
By dusk a bonfire was blazing, beans were cooking for tacos, and some of us even stayed the night ¬– Venus super-bright and the sky in general the clearest it has seemed for a long time!
