Abundance - so near by
The Sorrento Centre Farm is eight acres of field and forest located just two km west of the main campus of the Sorrento Centre. During the summer and fall, we've offered farm gate sales and a small market at Spes Bona - the variety plentiful and always dependant on the harvest.
Over the years, our farm has been:
- a place of bounty: natural farming methods produced a bounty of nutritious food for our kitchen and for the surrounding community.
- a place of learning: the basics of permaculture and regenerative agriculture, seeding and planting and harvesting; as well as seeking to better understand our natural and spiritual relationship to the land.
- a place where work and worship come together in prayer-in-action. As the mystic Julian of Norwich has said:
"Be a gardener. Dig a ditch, toil and sweat and turn the earth upside down and seek the deepness and water the plants in time. Continue this labor and make sweet floods to run and noble and abundant fruits to spring. Take this food and drink and carry it to God as your true worship."
Over the last couple of seasons we used permaculture and regenerative farming techniques to restore soil health, to grow fresh, naturally grown fruits and vegetables.
Our History
The farm program began in late 2008 when Mary Rawson donated her 8-acre farm property to the Sorrento Centre. This beautiful farm is what remains of the original Coubeaux family homestead. It is just a 5-minute walk from the lake and includes a cottonwood forest (which has grown up around the old cherry orchard and barn) as well as several very old Douglas fir and cedar trees, and a heritage Finnish tongue and groove cedar barn that is the oldest structure in the Sorrento area. The Sorrento Centre Farm is a working vegetable and fruit farm and provides important habitat for a number of local bird species.