We had an amazing work day last Sunday! Some of us camped the whole weekend since we were celebrating our Aries Wonderlanders! The weather was beautiful, we saw a couple of beavers, we had lots of fun, and also got a lot done!

We are so proud of Natalie! Her interview with Alexis Nikole Nelson was amazing!

It is hard not to despair as funding for restoration and regenerative agriculture (and so many other important areas of life) gets cut, and we see amazing projects being halted… but we know that collaborating and supporting each other will bring us forward to sustain life.  

In the midst of bad news, we have a bit of good news to share with you all: Wonderland Community Project has been awarded a stipend by Climate Land Leaders for planting 40 new trees in our growing agroforestry operation!

The Mighty Beaver and the Midwest Beaver Summit

In our community we have been discussing what we want our relationships with our volunteers to look like since the early days. We’ve wondered how to provide space for them to build their own relationship with the land along with boundaries and agreements and what we can offer to them in reciprocity.

To celebrate Earth Month In April, Wonderlander Natalie Evans will be interviewing Alexis Nikole Nelson on “The Art of Foraging” for the Illinois Libraries’ event “The Art of Foraging”, Thursday, April 10th, 7-8pm CST on Zoom.

Four years ago, in spring 2021, we were starting to sow the seed that became Wonderland Community Project. The land as bridge to ourselves - as that-which-we-became.

Reflections about our first grief retreat of the year which centered mending, resting and weaving and Atena O Danner’s poem “Mending”

During our March Work Day we built our first Beaver Dam Analogue to restore the hydrology on the fen

On growing, saving and sharing seeds from Palestine.

We set up a trailcam in December and these are the neighbors who showed up!

A compilation of mutual aid collectives, podcasts, books and more!

It’s an honor to open up the space and provide simple sustaining elements like time spent outside and a shared meal while allowing the retreat to take whatever shape the participants need it to be. Grief takes time, and though it’s not as containable or schedulable  as other necessities added to our calendars-  we can make space for it so that we are not neglecting it/neglecting our sadness. Allowing ourselves to grieve openly creates space for deeper connection and solidarity with others.

As the current stewards of the land, we look at the actions of the previous stewards and ask: What values did the settlers bring with themselves? How did these values guide their land stewarding practices? And how did it differ from the Indigenous nations who had been stewarding this Land for millennia?

We’re inviting you to join us as we continue to make our shared values real. Climate change is the ultimate both / and proposition, and we have established a model for combining full lives with building a rich community project that embodies adaptation as mitigation. Each family and community member brings their own passion and skill set, and our volunteers and local support have shown up to provide everything for the Land in the past three years – from transporting hundreds of bare root seedlings by Greyhound, to educating us on the proper use and care of traditional farm tools, to locating and donating critical resources like mowers, generators, and more.

We had a great work weekend last weekend! We hadn't camped all together in a while and it felt good to be there stewarding the Land in community!

In April we had the honor to be visited by the @youngculturalstewards and their program small is all - a virtual apprenticeship program centering BIPOC youth from the South & West Sides of Chicago.