The December Sweat-lodge last Tuesday was a tight experience for our participants, with many guests coming from far away to share the experience. Less tight was our work-shop weekend with a couple of enthusiastic guests helping the gardeners cover our blue-berry bushes with blankets of leafs and later been walked around the Hostel property, led by Tom, rewarded with tea in his tree house.

We�re happy, and proud, to announce that we�ve installed a solar powered pump to water our lake garden. Under the supervision of Murray, Matthew with help from MikeJoe, have built, carried, experimented, climbed, dug and drilled our Hostel one big and important step closer to self-sustainability.

Meanwhile, the rest of the staff has given the kitchen, as well as the sweat-lodge area a clean up and an extra polish, we�ve kept working on our organic garden as well as the new no-till garden out by the lake and almost managed to, finish off our on-going graywater system project – thanks to Matthew for all of his work on that.

The road to Fall that the Hostel has traveled along for some time suddenly took a sharp turn at the end of last week and promptly led us on to the winterway. We did what we could to save the last of the summer crops: the zucchinis, the rosehips and the pumpkins, we brought down the blankets that were stored in April and loaded the woodstoves to keep our guests warm.

Sadly, the chickens pushed one of our dear roosters, Einstein, out from the heat, and he froze to death sitting on a bed of hay. We said our farewells and carried him out in the forest, to feed some of the other critters around here. Death to life, fall to winter, it all circles around the domes.