Welcome to the Sirona Falls Newsletter!

Thanks for signing up and following along on this journey of mine. I will send monthly updates, with occasional additional emails if I am doing a studio clear out sale.

Where it all Started | 5.6.21

The Back-Story:

Happy Anniversary to me! Today, May 6th is the 3 year anniversary of the closing day when my family and I purchased this amazing property. You can see me in all my joy above, in front of the rundown 1960’s single-wide trailer that represents most of the infrastructure that came with it. Below, with my nephew, you can see what makes it all so special. Look closely and you can spot that same trailer on top of the cliffs between the two waterfalls! This is where it all began. We have not been idle these three years, and through this newsletter I will share the many projects we have accomplished in this time, and updates as we make more progress. Eventually, I plan to live and have my studio there, and host nature vacations, art workshops and more. To realize this dream, my family is helping a huge amount and in fact my parents took out a mortgage on their house to help me get the loan I needed to make this happen. That is how much they also love it and how much faith they miraculously have in me and my idea... what a lucky and privileged person I am! I have been joking that it feels like this is my wedding and baby shower and all those adulting life rituals rolled into one. Joking aside, it does feel like I am making a sacred life commitment to this land, and I am so excited. If you are interested in the full back story of my original idea, my journey searching for and purchasing this property, and more details and pictures about the property, follow the link below.

Featured Project:

Each month, I will share one project or progress update on what we are building. One of the very first projects we did in the first summer of working, was to build our first platform tent. These will eventually be “glamping” rentals, but for our first years this has been my bedroom when it is warm enough to sleep outdoors and I am working up there. I have to say, it has rather spoiled me for regular camping. I have a futon bed frame with a mattress and mattress pad so it is very comfortable, I can easily stand up inside, and it always stays dry. Essentially, it is all the joys of camping with none of the hard sleeping surfaces or damp clinging tent walls and wet stuff when it rains. It has a lovely porch overlooking the creek and you can hear the waterfalls while you sleep. I hear Barred Owls, Wood Thrushes, Scarlet Tanagers, and so many other creatures from bed. The deck/floor is built from locally sourced locust wood, which is naturally rot-resistant and insanely hard and durable. I am not officially renting out the tents yet, but I am informally renting them word-of-mouth, and offering them in trade for people who want to come help me (more below on that!) so let me know if you want to come camping this summer! It is a great home base for hiking, birding, mountain biking, and stringing up a hammock by the falls and reading a book.

Nature Spotlight:

In each of these newsletters, I want to share one of the many amazing species that I have found on my property that make it so special. There are so many incredible native plants, birds, animals, fungi, and insects; many that I have seen before and some that I am discovering for the first time.

For the first newsletter, I want to share with you about the starflower, trientalis borealis. They are about to bloom and are a tiny star-shaped flower that is such a bright white that it seems to actually glow in the dark understory of the springtime forest floor. Many flowers have four petals, or five, or many more, but few plants structure themselves by sevens. Starflowers usually have seven petals, seven stamens, seven sepals, and seven leaves. Most of the plants have just one flower, but sometimes there will be two or even three flowers from a single plant. I love them so much that I intend to integrate them into designs on my property, and maybe even my logo eventually.

Support Me:

Soon, I will be announcing various ways you can support me financially: studio sales, prints, and glamping pre-sales.

Right now, I want to know if there is anyone who wants to get their hands dirty! I have already had several people generously offer to help with work projects. We will be painting boards, putting in rock wool insulation, doing landscaping, tiling floors, putting up drywall, and about a million other things this summer. We a have more or less run out of our construction loan and are doing it all ourselves. Do you have any DIY building skills you have not put to use in awhile? Or, do you not have any particular skills but want to learn some from my master-craftsman father? I had pretty much zero construction skills when this began, and I have to say it is pretty empowering to know how run power tools and to build stuff. If you are not super local but still interested, you can plan a mini camping vacation this summer, stay in one of my glamping tents, set some time aside for working with us, and spend the rest of your time going for hikes and making s’mores!

Email me if you want to contribute a day of work sometime this summer. Let me know what skills you have or the kinds of work you prefer, or tell me you are up for anything, and I will coordinate with you and be so grateful for your help!

Sirona Falls