Our Community
A Time to Plant
Growing on the corner of Dakota and North Ave., in Modesto CA, it was planted in 1904 by Jake Cover. The seedling grew from a planted black walnut seed collected from an unknown black walnut tree. The tree has a circumference of about 30 feet, measured 4.5 feet from the ground.
Matt Cover
Matt Cover
Our Colony
A Time to Remember
At a time of loss and grief, my brother and sister-in-law gave me sanctuary in their home nestled into the orchards of Wood Colony.
I walked those orchards and found solace in the tree's bare branches of that winter. I could see the buds of spring along the branches. They were talismans, telling me that life endures.
At the foot of one I found a sherd of thick, blue pottery peaking through the soil. It's the edge of a bowl more than one hundred years old. Used by someone who made her bread in a home within the shelter of the orchard. It, too, told me that life endures.
A Red-tailed Hawk would sometimes perch on an old telephone pole, eyes following the dogs I walked. Sometimes the hawk would ride a thermal and once it dove, between the trees behind us, as it hunted. Again, life endures.
I hold in my hand the photograph my brother took, of me and my husband, on an early March day in 2000. It shows two middle-aged people, together for more than thirty years, against a backdrop of The Orchard in bloom and it's reflection in a pool of water. We had endured. But my husband wouldn't for very long. He died ten months latter.
I carry my blue sherd with me. It is a reminder of what I learned in The Orchard. We can endure.
I went into The Orchard and found my way forward. The answer was in the life that has been nurtured by The Orchard for more than one hundred years. The growers and residents, human or other.
The Wood Colony is not a part of the City.
While the City grew and changed, Wood Colony endured. It was cared for and nutured by those in a community of families, bound together by their beliefs. The members of the Colony lived their lives, born there and buried there. Those orchards nutured the community. And both The Community and The Orchards endured.
Now others have taken up the task of helping The Orchard and Wood Colony Community to endure. People who love it for what it is. It's not that change is wrong. It's that this is not the PLACE to change.
There are not many places like Wood Colony Community left in the US, let alone California. They are more precious now because so many have been lost.
This is an extrodinary place. It preserves a history that needs to be remembered.
Cheralynne T Kastner
Originally posted on Spare Wood Colony on Facebook
I walked those orchards and found solace in the tree's bare branches of that winter. I could see the buds of spring along the branches. They were talismans, telling me that life endures.
At the foot of one I found a sherd of thick, blue pottery peaking through the soil. It's the edge of a bowl more than one hundred years old. Used by someone who made her bread in a home within the shelter of the orchard. It, too, told me that life endures.
A Red-tailed Hawk would sometimes perch on an old telephone pole, eyes following the dogs I walked. Sometimes the hawk would ride a thermal and once it dove, between the trees behind us, as it hunted. Again, life endures.
I hold in my hand the photograph my brother took, of me and my husband, on an early March day in 2000. It shows two middle-aged people, together for more than thirty years, against a backdrop of The Orchard in bloom and it's reflection in a pool of water. We had endured. But my husband wouldn't for very long. He died ten months latter.
I carry my blue sherd with me. It is a reminder of what I learned in The Orchard. We can endure.
I went into The Orchard and found my way forward. The answer was in the life that has been nurtured by The Orchard for more than one hundred years. The growers and residents, human or other.
The Wood Colony is not a part of the City.
While the City grew and changed, Wood Colony endured. It was cared for and nutured by those in a community of families, bound together by their beliefs. The members of the Colony lived their lives, born there and buried there. Those orchards nutured the community. And both The Community and The Orchards endured.
Now others have taken up the task of helping The Orchard and Wood Colony Community to endure. People who love it for what it is. It's not that change is wrong. It's that this is not the PLACE to change.
There are not many places like Wood Colony Community left in the US, let alone California. They are more precious now because so many have been lost.
This is an extrodinary place. It preserves a history that needs to be remembered.
Cheralynne T Kastner
Originally posted on Spare Wood Colony on Facebook