Chestnut Ridge

Creation Care & Sustainable Gardening Practices Retreat, May 16 - 18 

Creation Care & Sustainable Livestock Practices Retreat, July 25-27

Chestnut Ridge will host two fun and intensive weekend workshops to inaugurate The Community Farm at Chestnut Ridge and you're invited!

Come and join The Community Farm at Chestnut Ridge for two special retreats and workshops. May 16-18th, we'll  break ground and plant out the first half-acre of The Community Farm. July 25 - 27, we'll introduce sustainable livestock practices as we install new fencing and housing for sheep, hogs and chickens at The Community Farm. Come one weekend, or come both!

Retreat leaders include Fred Bahnson from Anathoth Garden and Rich Church from Winfield Farm as well as year-round staff at Chestnut Ridge. Both weekends will include theological education and reflection as well as the introduction of sustainable and organic gardening and farming practices.

Weekend Topics

Gardening Practices Retreat

• Introduction to Sustainable Gardening Practices: A Year in the Life of Anathoth Garden
• Site Location, Fencing, Laying Out the Garden
• Building Permanent Raised Beds
• Christian Hospitality to Creation
• Working with Hand Tools
• Garden Work Session: Soil Fertility & Tilth, Amending with Organic Matter
• Gardening is Good Work: Manual Labor and Christian Discipleship
• Transplanting & Cover Crops
• Composting
• Weed & Pest Management; Drip Irrigation Systems

Livestock Practices Retreat

• A Theology of Manual Labor
• A Theology of Eating Animals
• Raising Chickens
• Chicken Tractors
• Backyard Broilers and Layers
• Fencing
• Building Corner Bracing for Fencing
• Installing Field Fencing
• Installing Electric Fencing
• Goats & Sheep
• Raising Meat Goats & Sheeps
• Goat and Sheep Breeds
• Goat Dairying and Cheese making
• Pasture Based Management
• Rotational Grazing
• Companion Species
• Pasture Grasses and Legumes
• Maintaining Pasture Fertility
• Hogs
• Raising Pigs on Pasture

Saturday Evening Celebration

Gardening Practices Retreat

We're tickled pink to have secured Charles Pettee to bring a custom blend of enjoyable bluegrass tunes for workshop participants and the local community at large. Saturday evening will be a great time enjoying music with friends and neighbors in the beautiful outdoors at Chestnut Ridge.

Listen to some of Charles' music.

Sunday Worship

Gardening Practices Retreat

Ellen F. Davis is Professor of Bible and Practical Theology at Duke Divinity School.  A lay Episcopalian, she teaches and preaches on topics relating to the church's use of Scripture.  Her most recent book, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible (forthcoming Cambridge, 2008), integrates biblical studies with a critique of industrial agriculture and food production.  Her other publications include Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament (Cowley, 2002), Who Are You, My Daughter?  Reading Ruth through Image and Text (Westminster John Knox, 2003), an annotated translation accompanying woodcuts by Margaret Adams Parker, The Art of Reading Scripture (Eerdmans, 2003), co-edited with Richard Hays, and Wondrous Depth: Preaching the Old Testament (Westminster John Knox, 2005). She has long been involved in inter-religious dialogue and is now cooperating with the Episcopal Church of Sudan to develop theological education.

Livestock Practices Retreat

Don C. Richter hails from Decatur,Alabama, and now resides in Decatur, Georgia. An ordained PC(USA) minister and educator, Don is associate director of the Valparaiso Project on the Education and Formation of People in Faith. He manages practicingourfaith.org, administers the Project’s grant program, and coordinates resources for youth and youth leaders, including Way to Live: Christian Practices for Teens, co-edited with Dorothy C. Bass (2002), and Mission Trips That Matter: Embodied Faith for the Sake of the World (2008). A graduate of Davidson College (A.B.) and Princeton Theological Seminary (M.Div., Ph.D.), Don has served as Associate Pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in Louisville (KY); he was the founding director of the Youth Theology Institute at Emory University and he has taught Christian education at Emory's Candler School of Theology and Bethany Theological Seminary. Don’s son Jonathan is a junior at Guilford College (NC), and his daughter Katherine is a sixth grader. Don’s family worships at Central Presbyterian Church (Atlanta), where he sings tenor in the chancel choir.

Workshop Facilitators

Fred Bahnson

Fred started farming with his wife Elizabeth on a small cottage farm in Efland, NC. Five years and two children later, Fred has scaled back on the Efland farm, though his wife still milks their two goats and maintains a large flock of layers. Fred's farming energy for the past three years has gone to Anathoth Community Garden, a ministry of Cedar Grove UMC, which he helped found and where he now works as garden manager. Anathoth, which provides food to roughly 40 member families from April-November, is a diversified 2 acre mini-farm boasting a plethora of fruits, vegetables, and cut flowers. In addition to managing daily operations at Anathoth, Fred also speaks, teaches, and writes about the work there, encouraging other churches to start community gardens as a way to "seek the peace of the city." Fred's poems and essays have appeared in The Cresset, Orion, Pilgrimage, The Christian Century, and Best American Spiritual Writing 2007.

Rich Church

Rich is a lawyer, farmer, and writer living outside of Siler City, North Carolina.  With his wife, Kristy, and their children, they manage Winfield Farm, where they raise cattle, goats, sheep, hogs, and chickens on pasture as well as maintaining a 1/2 acre market garden.  Rich holds both a J.D. and Ph.D in theological ethics from Duke University and formerly served as an Assistant Professor of Religion at Wingate University.  His writings have appeared in the Journal of Law and Religion, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the Cresset.

Rhonda Parker

Rhonda is the Center Director at Chestnut Ridge where she is blessed to lead a vibrant ministry to and on behalf of the church. The Community Farm at Chestnut Ridge is the culminating effort of several years of curriculum and program development around the theme "Food, Faith and Farming" which unifies all the center's programs. When not in the garden or playing with campers and staff, Rhonda enjoys leading workshops, preaching in the local church, traveling, and spending time with her three children and husband. Chestnut Ridge's mission to make the love of Christ visible in our world embodies her understanding of discipleship and community. 

How to Register

Registration for the Creation Care retreats are independent of one another. This means that if you are interested in attending both retreats, you will need to register twice. Sorry for the inconvenience, but we're not quite that technically sophisticated. Hey, at least it's a short form!

Register online for the Gardening Practices Retreat (May 16 - 18)

Register online for the Livestock Practices Retreat (July 25-27)

Payment can be made by mail or phone.

The retreats are open to all interested persons. The format of the retreats will be focused on adults. If you have a teenage person that may be interested, please contact us to discuss.

Thanks to a generous grant from the Valparaiso Project, the cost of each weekend is only $40 per person, which includes 2 nights of lodging and 5 meals (all three meals Saturday and breakfast and lunch Sunday). Persons from partner churches (Efland, Union Grove, Chestnut Ridge and Cedar Grove UMCs) may register for $30 for the event. Plan to arrive at Chestnut Ridge between 6 and 7pm on Friday evening. We'll wrap up by 4:30 pm on Sunday.

These weekend events will have limited registration, so we encourage interested folks to register early. 

Need more information or prefer to register the old fashioned way? Contact Rhonda Parker at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or call the camp office.