Story of the place
Forest Sanctuary was a country church for more than a century — built and dedicated across 1849 and 1906, with stained-glass murals and a pipe organ that still plays. It sat empty before we bought it in 2024. Since then, neighbors and volunteers have been bringing it back, season by season.
2024 — First, make it safe
- We bought the old chapel and secured it — doors that would hold, windows that would close. It had sat empty a long time, and the first job was simply to make the building safe to stand in.
- The basement had been flooding for years. We dug it out, dried it, and put in a sump pump so the water would never come back — the unglamorous, foundational work that everything else depends on.
- We cleared years of debris — the accumulated leavings of a building that had been waiting. Room by room, the place began to come back to its original shape.
- We lined up the roof and the brickwork, stopping the slow leaks that had been wearing the building down for a decade. A dry building is a building that can be loved.
- That first year we held community suppers and seed nights — simple meals and shared work, even before the rooms were finished. The building came back to life because people came back to it.
- We opened the library and a quiet room — the first spaces ready to share. Even then, the heart of the place was already here: books, quiet, and a door that was open.
2025 — Make it a vessel
- We made the chapel ready for gatherings, quiet, and meals — the room finally able to hold what it was always meant to hold.
- We fixed up a guest room and a real bathroom, after two years of making do. Read the whole story: While Val Was in Greece, BJ Built a Bathroom.
- We restored the kitchen — a seed catalog, a hymnal, and the holiest room in any church. Read about the kitchen.
- We broke ground on the garden and planted the first beds — heirloom food and medicine, laid out after the southern Indian jyotish chart. Rain, roots, and what's still growing.
- We put in good sound and projection, so the room could carry music and gatherings the way it should.
- We opened the art studio and gallery — a place to make things and show them, the domestic arts practiced and shared.
- We set up a corner for recording music — and then BJ turned it into something more: a sky of acoustic clouds and a summery glass light. Read about the recording studio.
- We started the evening sittings — a quiet at seven, open to anyone who needs to sit for a while. How we keep the sanctuary quiet.
2026 and on — Garden, guest rooms, and opening wider
- A peace pole, with the worldwide “May peace prevail on earth” friends — a marker in the ground for what the place is for.
- Morning and evening quiet at seven — the rhythm of the day, kept simply, open to all.
- Sunday music shares and monthly sing-ins — singing out loud, for the joy of it, never a performance.
- Food grown for the block, for guests, and for volunteers — the garden feeding the people who keep it.
- A second season in the garden with local families — the beds deeper, the roots more established, more neighbors learning the rhythm.
- A fall work-retreat to finish the guest rooms — a season of shared work to close the year.
- We've brought on an experienced caretaker to steward the property in our absence — the building cared for even when we're away.
- Roof and brickwork completed — the long job of keeping the building dry, finally done.
- Doors opening wider to music and skill-sharing groups — more ways in, more hands, more voices.
- A Harvest Sing-In to close the year — gathering the season's music and the season's people, together.
