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These informal reports, filed every couple weeks by Sensei (and e-mailed to interested members), are meant to provide snapshots of what's happening at Chapin Mill, plus the who, how, when, and where of it.
With a twinge I see that six weeks have passed since the last Dispatch. Where did that time go? It's a measure of how thin the staff has been spread this spring and early summer, trying to meet the demands of both Chapin Mill and Arnold Park. November sesshin at Chapin Mill is starting to look less likely.
North of the Creek: Another milestone in the development of the Chapin Mill Retreat Center to report: a zazen beachhead has been established in the new building. Staff members are now having daily sittings
in the chair zazen / multipurpose room, which is next to the dining room, on the main floor. Until we finish the huge basement room, which will be used as the temporary zendo for sesshin, this future multipurpose room will serve as the "temporary temporary" zendo. For sittings outside sesshin we might even continue to use this smaller zendo until we have the "ultimate" zendo built, as part of Phase II.
Probably the most noticeable change since the last Dispatch is the progress on the exterior shingling. No longer is the building facade divided by a great, white patch of exposed Tyvek paper. Although the toughest (i.e., highest) ten per cent of the building remains to be shingled, it looks awfully good now - and whole.
More refinements to the grading have been done, with the whole area in front of the building looking pretty finished. The narrow fire road is done, and the rest is ready for the laying of topsoil that precedes grass planting and other landscaping.
The biggest hurdle yet to be cleared in order to get our Certificate of Occupancy is the kitchen. The Kitchen Subcommittee has been meeting repeatedly to design the very best kitchen we can for our purposes, and because of code requirements this task is proving to be more complicated and time-consuming than we'd expected. The next Dispatch will have a longer report.
South of the Creek: The gardens - flower, vegetable, and other - kept the outdoor crew (of two people, mainly) more than busy through the month of June and into July. They recently harvested the first crops of the season: lettuce, collards, spinach, and radishes. Kadi Sprengle, who is in charge of the vegetable and flower gardens, has been using the resources of the local cooperative extension. As it turns out, one of the master gardeners there, Dale Jacobs, has sat with our Buffalo Sangha, and he and his wife Mary have an organic farm that Kadi has been visiting.
The throng of giant, old junipers in front of the farmhouse was taken out, leaving that area looking refreshingly open and clean, and the view from the farmhouse toward the pond no longer bisected by the flagpole that had stood there. No sooner were the junipers gone than one of the snapping turtles hauled itself out of the pond, waddled over to that area, and laid three little skandhas of eggs before returning to its water abode.
Kadi and Trueman have managed so far to hold their own with the most visible weeding and other maintenance. But they will need reinforcements. They have come up with an "Adopt-a-Garden" program that requires as little as one day a month of work. Meanwhile, neighbor Greg Post, jack-of-all-trades, is coming to prune the long-neglected orchard behind the farmhouse. Now we can look forward to our own apples, apricots, pears, cherries, and crabapples in future years. In fact, the cherries are already being picked and made into pies!
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