Events in 2026
-riv
We've got a lot planned this year that we're very excited to share with you. Here are four flyers representing our 2026 event schedule as a whole, Intuitive Plant Medicine Workshops led by Sacha Louise, our very next workshop: Love Your Soil, and workshop in March: No-Till Organic Garden Planning Workshop. Click each image for more details.
We had our first workshop of the year on January 10th - Natural Disaster Prep and Homestead Challenges. Lee and Jennifer Ruff, of End of The Road Farm (Climax, KY), led a very informative event that welcomed familiar and new faces. They've got 11 more Homesteading Series events planned with us this year. The next one will be hosted on Feb 14th themed towards loving your soil! They have a lot to dig into with this one. Attendees will learn about soil health, testing, and how to amend their soil in regenerative ways. Folks are encouraged to bring in soil tests (recent or old). Hope to see ya there!
Healthy farms exist only with healthy soil.
Did ya'll know about this cool free resource?
Local extension offices provide up to 10 free soil test a year. For anyone able to get their soil tested before the workshop, or for anyone who already has a soil test they can bring in, they can get some practice with the soil test worksheets the Ruffs' will provide.
Go to your county extension office to get information regarding soil test. You may also view the UK extension website for any additional information about soil testing - all soil tests through the county extensions will be processed at UK.
Aside from our 12 Homesteading Series Workshops, we have quite a bit more planned this year! As you may expect, we definitely will have more (five) Mushroom Inoculation Workshops led by Ron Owens. Andrew Ozinskas will lead several Tree, Plant, and Fungi Hikes at our Wilderness Site. Sacha Louise will lead 4 (one per season) Intuitive Plant Medicine Workshops at our Wilderness Site. Julie will lead a Plant Choir curriculum. Loki will lead 4 Trail Maintenance Days at the Wilderness site, (again, thanks to all of the good training from the Trail Maintenance Certification they acquired from Mike Riter of Professional Trail Builders hosted at the Hindman Settlement School), River will lead a few Volunteer Garden Days at the office, one or more Art at the River Day at our Wilderness Site, and a Movie Night at the office. Timi will be kicking off our new Book Club with 5th Sacred Thing. In the summer, We'll host a Cookout Day down at Laurel Lake, and of course we'll have River Day at the wIlderness site. Looking to be a vibrant year!
Healthy farms exist only with healthy soil.
Did ya'll know about this cool free resource?
Local extension offices provide up to 10 free soil test a year. For anyone able to get their soil tested before the workshop, or for anyone who already has a soil test they can bring in, they can get some practice with the soil test worksheets the Ruffs' will provide.
Go to your county extension office to get information regarding soil test. You may also view the UK extension website for any additional information about soil testing - all soil tests through the county extensions will be processed at UK.
Aside from our 12 Homesteading Series Workshops, we have quite a bit more planned this year! As you may expect, we definitely will have more (five) Mushroom Inoculation Workshops led by Ron Owens. Andrew Ozinskas will lead several Tree, Plant, and Fungi Hikes at our Wilderness Site. Sacha Louise will lead 4 (one per season) Intuitive Plant Medicine Workshops at our Wilderness Site. Julie will lead a Plant Choir curriculum. Loki will lead 4 Trail Maintenance Days at the Wilderness site, (again, thanks to all of the good training from the Trail Maintenance Certification they acquired from Mike Riter of Professional Trail Builders hosted at the Hindman Settlement School), River will lead a few Volunteer Garden Days at the office, one or more Art at the River Day at our Wilderness Site, and a Movie Night at the office. Timi will be kicking off our new Book Club with 5th Sacred Thing. In the summer, We'll host a Cookout Day down at Laurel Lake, and of course we'll have River Day at the wIlderness site. Looking to be a vibrant year!
DONATION IN MEMORY OF TAMMY CLEMONS IS UP
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We've just installed a donation link on our homepage to offer folks the option of donating to ASPI in memory of Tammy Clemons. You may also click here to donate in memory of Tammy. |
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Hartmans Wholesale Order
It is time for our annual community plant purchase! We will be ordering Hartmans wholesale plants for ourself and our community members. For anyone interested in joining in on the order, please:
Email should contain:
Name
Phone number / best way to reach you
Plants - variety and quantity
DUE on Friday, Feb 27th.
We will be placing our order at the end of Feb.
We'll contact you as soon as we have your plants. We can arrange payment in person or online.
- View Hartmans Wholesale options here
- Email ASPI your order to [email protected], or fill a form out at the office!
Email should contain:
Name
Phone number / best way to reach you
Plants - variety and quantity
DUE on Friday, Feb 27th.
We will be placing our order at the end of Feb.
We'll contact you as soon as we have your plants. We can arrange payment in person or online.
Calendar scratchings
-Mark Spencer
A calendar is a simple chart of time, a remembrance of days - and for some, accumulated scratches on a prison wall to mark time's passing. A marking of what we consider most important: our values, our families, our very outlook and expression of how we experience the world. We value a simple life, with human priorities in order. We value a movement through the world that is not led by negative ideologies or corporate enslavement to our lowest natures. We value a rising world, transformed with increasingly fair & just co-creation - a kingdom of heaven.
The Simple Lifestyle Calendar is a black & white wall calendar (11” x 17”) offering a unique collection of special days, celebrations, moon phases and seasonal lore - all printed on recycled paper. Wisdom, wonder, quotes and humor - with 365 suggestions to help us tune into the simple, natural rhythms that lead to a more balanced and fulfilling life.
2026 marks the 49th year that ASPI has created the Appalachian Simple Lifestyle Calendar, the first one coming actually from Washington, DC, where it referenced Al Fritsch's book: 99 Ways to a Simple Lifestyle, Indiana University Press, 1977. The first editions chose photographs by contests until we came to Kentucky, when we began working with Warren Brunner in Berea, whose rural Appalachian photos exhibited a natural rural charm that exactly matched our approach and appreciation for mountain wisdom and people. This match has continued for 40-plus glorious years.
Warren Brunner moved to Kentucky from Wisconsin and eventually took over a photo studio with prime location on Berea's triangle square. Warren was present for the 1964 War on Poverty, and always honored his subjects’ wisdom and dignity, unlike many of the exploitative 'poverty' photos of that time. In the late 1980s I went on several photo expeditions with Warren, his tag line being, "There's a road I've never been on!" Collecting photos for our "Appalachian Crafts" themed 1988 calendar, we traveled to Cherokee, NC, to meet up with a Native American weaver, who told us of a ceremonial native wooden mask carver, leading us to a man who carved bespoke peace pipes from catlinite stone, etc. This was Warren's unobtrusive method, where I would chat with the artists while he orbited his subject, snapping photos like an interested firefly.
Through the years I have had my grammar sternly corrected, told to fix my possessives in order not to perpetuate the stereotype of mountain ignorance, and have been sent the names of people whose birthdays should also be honored. Perhaps the most uncanny experience of this was handing the fresh-printed calendar to a friend who randomly opened it to the middle months and immediately found a typo. I swear this was the one and only mistake of that year, and I vowed to let her, heretofore, scan it pre-published.
I once met a person who, after a little chit-chat, informed me they had discovered our Simple Lifestyle Calendar hanging in a yurt in Nepal during their Peace Corps period, balanced out by the customer who told me "I love your calendar - read the new saying every day whilst sitting on the commode." I have made many friends through this calendar and they often will read me the day's quote or quip: sometimes profound, sometimes silly, but always a connection for like-minded people. We have some subscribers who have ordered for 40-plus years, and sons, daughters, and grandchildren who continue their parent's tradition of calendars for New Year gifts. We here at ASPI are profoundly grateful for all our supporters who keep our work going into the present.
The Simple Lifestyle Calendar is a black & white wall calendar (11” x 17”) offering a unique collection of special days, celebrations, moon phases and seasonal lore - all printed on recycled paper. Wisdom, wonder, quotes and humor - with 365 suggestions to help us tune into the simple, natural rhythms that lead to a more balanced and fulfilling life.
2026 marks the 49th year that ASPI has created the Appalachian Simple Lifestyle Calendar, the first one coming actually from Washington, DC, where it referenced Al Fritsch's book: 99 Ways to a Simple Lifestyle, Indiana University Press, 1977. The first editions chose photographs by contests until we came to Kentucky, when we began working with Warren Brunner in Berea, whose rural Appalachian photos exhibited a natural rural charm that exactly matched our approach and appreciation for mountain wisdom and people. This match has continued for 40-plus glorious years.
Warren Brunner moved to Kentucky from Wisconsin and eventually took over a photo studio with prime location on Berea's triangle square. Warren was present for the 1964 War on Poverty, and always honored his subjects’ wisdom and dignity, unlike many of the exploitative 'poverty' photos of that time. In the late 1980s I went on several photo expeditions with Warren, his tag line being, "There's a road I've never been on!" Collecting photos for our "Appalachian Crafts" themed 1988 calendar, we traveled to Cherokee, NC, to meet up with a Native American weaver, who told us of a ceremonial native wooden mask carver, leading us to a man who carved bespoke peace pipes from catlinite stone, etc. This was Warren's unobtrusive method, where I would chat with the artists while he orbited his subject, snapping photos like an interested firefly.
Through the years I have had my grammar sternly corrected, told to fix my possessives in order not to perpetuate the stereotype of mountain ignorance, and have been sent the names of people whose birthdays should also be honored. Perhaps the most uncanny experience of this was handing the fresh-printed calendar to a friend who randomly opened it to the middle months and immediately found a typo. I swear this was the one and only mistake of that year, and I vowed to let her, heretofore, scan it pre-published.
I once met a person who, after a little chit-chat, informed me they had discovered our Simple Lifestyle Calendar hanging in a yurt in Nepal during their Peace Corps period, balanced out by the customer who told me "I love your calendar - read the new saying every day whilst sitting on the commode." I have made many friends through this calendar and they often will read me the day's quote or quip: sometimes profound, sometimes silly, but always a connection for like-minded people. We have some subscribers who have ordered for 40-plus years, and sons, daughters, and grandchildren who continue their parent's tradition of calendars for New Year gifts. We here at ASPI are profoundly grateful for all our supporters who keep our work going into the present.
Frozen time at the wilderness site
-riv
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Updates, shoutouts, and overflowing gratitude
-Timi Reedy
Greetings All!
We here at ASPI hope that 2026 treats you well, and you experience peace, health, and abundance, along with the rest of our precious world.
We are planning many events and activities that will serve our community and the natural world. Some of these are continuing the patterns we have been establishing over the past several years and some are decades old patterns, and some are brand new. We welcome you to participate in as many as you are interested in. They are family friendly, free, informative and educational. Snacks are provided by local Rockcastle Farmers Market folks.
New on the horizon this year - ASPI will be getting on some EV free charging maps for folks who need a charge getting from here to there. A class 2 charger will be available for folks at the ASPI office (50 Lair). These chargers will be provided their energy by the sun and there will be a QR code on our page for a donation. As soon as we amp up our solar at the wilderness site we will provide the same service there.
Mountain Association is working with ASPI for technical support, helping us get our online storefront up and running, and our webpage and other systems synchronized for smooth running. Enough can't be said about them and the ways they help and support our community, and region, oftentimes behind the scenes (Josh Bills). We are so grateful.
Which leads me to express gratitude for the folks who devote themselves to ASPI and continue to lift it into its next incarnation, like the phoenix it is!
Mark Spencer has carried the calendar this year from start to finish and has almost sold us out of calendars and cards. Thanks everyone for your continued support of our calendar, Mark is truly an artist. He does so many other miscellaneous tasks for ASPI - it would be impossible to mention them all. He is also our media go-to guy. He films everything we do and will be putting these up on youtube this year with creative edits.
riv and Loki keep our wilderness site neat and work on infrastructure there as well as helping with the website, this blog and email, flyers, gardens, again the list is too large to cover.
Earl Guthrie has recently joined our team and is gifted in so many ways that we still have not been able to fully incorporate him to his fullest yet. He keeps the place looking super fine and is gifted with media and in many other ways that I am sure to expound on down the road.
Our volunteer board kicks in wherever they are needed and contributes so much behind the scenes down to tasty healthy snacks for our events.
All this is accomplished with joy, shared values, good attitudes. One of the places I wake up and think it is an ASPI day and am looking forward to the community and the work.
So grateful for this that Father Al built and left us to continue in his honor!
Grateful for our community and all the folks who come and participate and for the children, and the folks who support us from afar. We are slowly, naturally building community for humans and the natural world.
Would that every living thing be so blessed.
Timi
We here at ASPI hope that 2026 treats you well, and you experience peace, health, and abundance, along with the rest of our precious world.
We are planning many events and activities that will serve our community and the natural world. Some of these are continuing the patterns we have been establishing over the past several years and some are decades old patterns, and some are brand new. We welcome you to participate in as many as you are interested in. They are family friendly, free, informative and educational. Snacks are provided by local Rockcastle Farmers Market folks.
New on the horizon this year - ASPI will be getting on some EV free charging maps for folks who need a charge getting from here to there. A class 2 charger will be available for folks at the ASPI office (50 Lair). These chargers will be provided their energy by the sun and there will be a QR code on our page for a donation. As soon as we amp up our solar at the wilderness site we will provide the same service there.
Mountain Association is working with ASPI for technical support, helping us get our online storefront up and running, and our webpage and other systems synchronized for smooth running. Enough can't be said about them and the ways they help and support our community, and region, oftentimes behind the scenes (Josh Bills). We are so grateful.
Which leads me to express gratitude for the folks who devote themselves to ASPI and continue to lift it into its next incarnation, like the phoenix it is!
Mark Spencer has carried the calendar this year from start to finish and has almost sold us out of calendars and cards. Thanks everyone for your continued support of our calendar, Mark is truly an artist. He does so many other miscellaneous tasks for ASPI - it would be impossible to mention them all. He is also our media go-to guy. He films everything we do and will be putting these up on youtube this year with creative edits.
riv and Loki keep our wilderness site neat and work on infrastructure there as well as helping with the website, this blog and email, flyers, gardens, again the list is too large to cover.
Earl Guthrie has recently joined our team and is gifted in so many ways that we still have not been able to fully incorporate him to his fullest yet. He keeps the place looking super fine and is gifted with media and in many other ways that I am sure to expound on down the road.
Our volunteer board kicks in wherever they are needed and contributes so much behind the scenes down to tasty healthy snacks for our events.
All this is accomplished with joy, shared values, good attitudes. One of the places I wake up and think it is an ASPI day and am looking forward to the community and the work.
So grateful for this that Father Al built and left us to continue in his honor!
Grateful for our community and all the folks who come and participate and for the children, and the folks who support us from afar. We are slowly, naturally building community for humans and the natural world.
Would that every living thing be so blessed.
Timi
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