Dear friends of the Helenenhof,
Never before has there been so much laughter and so much crying at the Helenenhof as in 2024. This year felt like an endurance test for us and demanded more from us than any year before. So much has happened that certain things are still waiting to be integrated. Nevertheless, 2024 was also a year full of gifts - even though not every one of these gifts was easy to chew and digest. Often, however, it is precisely the chewing of the tougher ‘foods’ that promotes the health of our teeth and gums! But it is certainly not a good idea to bite on something that is harder than the teeth themselves. We are learning and experiencing this right now.
At the end of 2023, we published an open letter in which we reflected on the past seven years and dreamt into the next seven-year cycle. If the first seven-year cycle represents birth, infancy and kindergarten, then the second cycle, which we began last year, is analogous to primary school. And so in 2024, Helenenhof went through the first class.
As we had expected, we experienced the year 2024 completely differently than the previous seven years! Everything now seemed to take on additional dimensions - socially, practically, thematically. And as in class one, this year we also got something of an introduction to what we will be engaging with from now on - all that, which we’ll be take apart to understand and hopefully one day be able to put back together again!
Every season, there comes a time, if not several times, when I (Serena) find myself at the end of my strength and ask myself the question: ‘How can this possibly continue? Because it just cannot go on like this.’ 2024 was no exception for me in this regard. I am currently dealing with this question more intensely than ever before.
Although the plants only started to show a little interest in growing around mid-June, the Helenenhof garden turned out beautifully in 2024 – with abundant harvests. This was only possible because the garden team, despite frequent crop failures and having to deal with the cold, the wet and the stagnant soil, managed to muster up a great deal of resilience and just as much stamina. Even in the midst of such ‘unromantic’ circumstances, people can actually learn to love!
An absolute highlight of the year was getting to know Luisa, our housemate and garden colleague at Helenenhof, better every day. Even though almost everything turned out differently than we had initially imagined, it was such a wonderful and unique experience for me (Serena) to work with Luisa in such a beautiful, mutual, mirror-like way. We both learned more from our similarities and less from our differences. But this inspired us in a natural way and spurred us on to wanting to grow out of our "little shoes". I am deeply touched and grateful for Luisa's presence and look forward to what the future will bring.
In that letter from 2023, we mentioned that the Helenenhof was in a sense bursting at the seams – it grew quickly and is also ripe for further growth. But at the same time, it has pretty much outgrown the existing infrastructure. We also described that continued future growth will require great leaps both financially and socially in terms of the community's involvement at the Helenenhof.
On the financial side, we did experience a major leap, even a revolution! Our fundraising campaign for the greenhouse was a huge success, as we were able to raise almost €33,000 in a short period of time.
Our godparent programme, in which individual people and groups provided financial support for Luisa, was just as successful, so much so that there are already potential sponsors for the coming season, who are more or less on a ‘waiting list’ to join the list of sponsors, or as it were, godparents. Luisa being on board was a major reason why the past year was so successful on many levels!
We are incredibly grateful that the Helenenhof community has stepped up to make all of this possible!
In addition, AUI is constantly welcoming new members who make one-time, monthly and annual donations! We also regularly receive donations from people who are well known to us privately, but also from people who are (as yet) unknown to us. Such gifts are always very helpful, especially in the spring when we are preparing for the coming season.
The wishes we had for 2024 have also been fulfilled in a very special way in the social sphere regarding processes on the farm: the core group of people who regularly participate on the farm has grown. At the same time, these individuals have developed deeper relationships with one another and with the farm, and they have also become ever more reliable.
This growth was most evident with the construction of the greenhouse. For the first time, people other than us (Serena and Jared) took on leadership and organisational roles and they also came to Helenenhof independently to continue working on the greenhouse project.
This year, we also saw the emergence of another group of participants who basically took over all the processing and preserving of fruit and vegetables in the Helenenhof kitchen – and not only producing the familiar products of recent years! They also worked very creatively and helped to transform the fresh, but only temporarily storable harvests into new types of long-lasting treasures. This great initiative and participation has brought a whole new quality to the farm and we look forward to seeing how the next steps will look and be taken.
The growth and development we have experienced over the past year seems to indicate that we are moving in the right direction in many ways! At the same time, however, we recognise that growth and development can sometimes be too much, too soon. Therefore, our focus for the coming season is on slowing down the pace and catching up on what has been neglected, bit by bit.
In this sense, ‘catching up’ means first looking back at the developments of the last year, and even the last several years, which have led to the current situation on the farm – in as holistic a way as possible. The next step will hopefully be to take note of everything that has been left behind, everything that has been neglected on the way to these present conditions, everything that, if we had noticed it and acted at the right time, would have contributed to a more complete picture of what we imagine to be the highest potential of Helenenhof.
This exercise in reflection gives us the opportunity to address the question: ‘To what extent is that which we truly wish from our hearts recognisable and tangible in our actions and in their effects?'
If we take the greenhouse as an example, we can see that we have achieved certain goals on the outside, for example, that all the glass was installed before the end of the year –which, on the one hand, is very remarkable! However, this dogged determination has caused collateral damage in some other areas, which unfortunately significantly compromises the integrity and spirit of the project.
Such an outcome is often primarily the result of decisions we make at particular moments when our priorities are simply misaligned. If someone (for example) wants beautiful cabbages and uses nitrogen from a can to achieve this, then the stability, health and integrity of the plant are sacrificed for the sake of an illusion that only pleases a superficial view. But we all know that a healthy plant needs integrity at its core, stability in its foundations and well-being in its environment to truly reach its potential.
What we can see now, after all these years of work at Helenenhof, is that a certain paradigm of one-sidedness has become established in our approach to the farm. So far, the focus has been more on form and relatively little on substance. Form without substance is insufficient! It is therefore important to us to become more creative in order to better support the farm in its development, here and now. This requires that we proceed with the utmost vigilance and deep awareness in order to be able to evaluate whether the form of Helenenhof actually reflects the substance of our highest ideals.
We humans have been given the challenge of navigating a path in the world, from the place where we currently are to the place where we want to be. And the question arises as to how we can find our bearings, to always have the direction clearly in front of us, to have the strength and courage to stay on the right path and to have the flexibility and openness to integrate changes and to embrace them when necessary.
As we see it, there are three main movements that accompany us on this path: seeking love, perceiving love, and then serving love. This is the core of our striving in our work on the farm and in our lives in general. Often we have been less successful than we had hoped. However, it has become more and more clear to us what it takes to walk and maintain this path.
For me (Serena), it is clear that if this project is to have a future, some profound changes are needed in the way I approach work, social issues and myself. I would therefore like to focus this season on listening in general. This requires a lot more calm than I have had in my life so far. However, this does not necessarily mean that I will work less, but that I will not try to do a thousand things at the same time. I hope that this will enable me to bring more awareness to each individual activity.
In order to develop and implement such changes to the practices and procedures at the Helenenhof, we need to take a closer look at some aspects of the way we have been doing things so far. We hope that this will enable us to find new ways to create the necessary space for the changes that need to be made.
For several years we had a kind of ‘open field’ where everyone could simply walk in and harvest, regardless of whether they had been to Helenenhof before or not and whether we or someone else from the farm happened to be there at all. However, this approach led to some very difficult situations, because, in short, not everyone knows how to behave in a garden, and even those with gardening knowledge and experience do not necessarily know exactly which methods we use and what specific intentions we have for each individual culture.
At the same time, however, we also know that not everyone lives close enough to Helenenhof and also has enough free time in their lives to get involved to the extent necessary to learn all these plant- and farm-specific subtleties.
So the first big question in this context is: How can we best implement our ideal of ‘universal basic nutrition’ in the face of these practical challenges?
Furthermore, our concept of the ‘open field’ has led to a constantly growing stream of spontaneous visitors, each of whom brings their own unique qualities into the space, which has undeniably led to many wonderful encounters. However, this can also often lead to chaos and frustration, because both our practical work and our interpersonal, communal processes are very often interrupted by it.
And so the other big question that arises is: how do we reconcile our desire to create an open space for human encounters with our need to be able to concentrate on our work?
This season, we will try to find some answers to these big questions in the form of experimental guidelines that will hopefully bring a living structure and a rhythmic stability to the form of the Helenenhof. For example, we are considering certain ‘open times’ when unannounced visits are welcome.
We will be introducing these changes over the next few months in a series of consecutive updates on the AUI-Helenenhof website.
Finally, we have saved the best news for last: we are delighted to announce that Luisa will be staying at Helenenhof again this season, at least until the end of October.
We will soon be reopening the god-parent programme for those who wish to support her work this season. The sponsors who are already on the ‘waiting list’ from last year (mentioned above) will cover the months of March, April and May and the reopening of the programme, along with all relevant information, will be included in the upcoming website updates (also mentioned above).
We are very grateful to all of you for the openness with which you partake in our process, even if it is only by reading this rather lengthy text all the way to the end. But the support and openness we have always received from you is really much deeper and more comprehensive than just reading this text. And now, as we open a new and exciting, albeit unpredictable chapter, we will continue to be grateful for any support that helps us move forward together on this path.
Love,
Serena and Jared
