About Us

COURSES INFO.

WHAT IS THE PLOUGHSHARE?

How, some may ask, can an institute, such as THE PLOUGHSHARE, hope to contribute to creating a culture? An institute seems so formal and lifeless, while a culture is a living thing. We hope to answer this question in a moment, but first it may help to picture our current operations and set-up. To begin with, our present main facility has been operating at Brazos de Dios in central Texas for almost twenty years. There, we demonstrate and teach skills such as woodworking, blacksmithing, pottery, spinning, weaving, felting, sewing, organic gardening, horse farming, animal husbandry, food preservation, soap making, leatherworking, cheese making, basket weaving, candle making, musical instrument making and others. These activities take place in a traditional community artisan village. We also have a gift shop and a fully functioning 1760’s gristmill. Our restaurant serves a wide variety of natural entrees, including many that feature homemade whole-grain breads baked with our own stone-ground flour. We also serve our own natural grass-fed beef and old-fashioned homemade ice cream. Several of these activities are housed in historical, hand-hewn, timber-framed structures that we have restored and relocated to the premises. Each year, we have tens of thousands of visitors to our crafts village, working homesteads, seminars, workshops and annual festivals. This includes our collaborative work with several of the universities in north and central Texas, which regularly bring international, as well as many other, student groups for exposure to and interaction with our teaching and way of life. In addition to higher learning institutions, we have an average of 5,000 public and private schoolchildren who come on spring field trips. These visitors and students are exposed, some for the first time, to an alternative culture where the essentials of life are provided in a simple, harmonious lifestyle based on quality craftsmanship and agricultural skills that nurture values of integrity, personal responsibility, community service and care.

OUR VISION

Many will admit this is an intriguing picture, but they may still wonder about what exactly the vision and background of THE PLOUGHSHARE is. We could speak institutionally and say that it is a nonprofit educational organization—that we formed it for the purpose of rediscovering and perpetuating certain kinds of knowledge and skills, specifically those that can provide for essential human needs on a sustainable basis. And all that is true, but it doesn’t get at the heart of what we are or want. Our goal is indeed to bring these all-but-lost arts, both of life and work, within the reach of people, especially those interested in discovering a fulfillment that only comes in one way—from participating more directly and personally in providing their essential needs in an agrarian culture. And so it is also true that part and parcel of this goal, of this instruction in the crafting of goods, is not merely that they should be functional but that they should also meet the highest standards of quality and beauty.

But THE PLOUGHSHARE is more than an institution. The word institution originally meant “a summary of principles,” and its root meaning is “to cause to stand in or towards” something, and we do want to “cause” something—even certain “principles”—“to stand.” But, again, we are more than an institution, we are a people. So THE PLOUGHSHARE is unique in that the “classroom” is a life. Our goal therefore is to transmit a vision for a cohesive, integrated agrarian way of life, but one that aims toward bringing forth complete individuals and whole families in a supportive and tangible context, a context respectful of the natural environment. The “principles” that ensure all this are what we want “to cause to stand,” in both individual and community life. We also see, however, along with millions of other Americans, that the modern world, despite its often tenuous material prosperity, faces many new problems and uncertainties. These include not only the disruption of the fragile balance of human life situated in the natural world but also the loss of the type of communities and families that have historically sustained such balance and integrity. Such major social problems as drugs and alcoholism, along with lack of motivation and meaning, an increasing ill-will and hostility, a rising violence and crime—especially, it seems, among the young—are only symptoms of this greater loss. We further see that many of these social ills stem from the declining sense of any enduring cultural and social community, a community that could reinforce the value of human relationships over personal gain. In our experience, we’ve seen that such positive values as kindness, mercy, love, help, care and goodwill—all sustained by a spirit of self-sacrifice—are strengthened in the context

Homesteading Skills

of traditional ways of living, working and interrelating. So, although we teach skills to, and share our life with, people from many varied backgrounds, we have personally found our own roots in the 500-year-old, nonviolent Christian Anabaptist tradition, a tradition that produced the peace-loving agrarian Mennonites and Amish. This tradition has best served our values and goals. We certainly don’t expect, however, everyone to embrace our religious tenets—we only want to serve people in the way of neighbor loving neighbor, which our spiritual convictions command. This opens to us a way of life that we find rewarding enough to serve as an end in itself and that we believe is essential to restoring a sense of community, as well as building a sustainable culture.

We have, therefore, for over a third of a century dedicated ourselves to recapturing and nurturing all these principles and values, instituting them, along with a new level of understanding, into the present and the future to create a viable and sustainable continuity of culture from one generation to the next.

OUR HOPE

Though our educational organization for the public has been in operation for around eighteen years, our roots, as suggested, run much deeper. Our teaching facilities have, over the last third of a century, grown out of our personal efforts to build a sustainable life in a voluntary, integrated agrarian community setting. The personal rewards of those efforts, along with the interest expressed and requests made by so many others, have led us to launch THE PLOUGHSHARE in order to share our knowledge and experience with any who want to learn.

The fact that, as we’ve said, the spiritual roots of our own community are drawn from centuries of the nonviolent Anabaptist peace tradition has a bearing on where we locate. To put it differently, we can therefore also say that goodwill towards, and cooperation with, our friends, neighbors and the larger local community have always been guiding principles in our efforts. So we naturally want to locate future sites only in areas where our lifestyle, values, traditions and goals would be welcome. For instance, we are currently looking in the Northwest to open a new educational facility where the “curriculum is a life.” This would possibly also include a restaurant and a gift shop, as well as guest lodging. A number of factors have drawn us to the Northwest at this time. Obviously, a new location on the other side of the country would bring our services within local range of many more people (though many people do currently travel long distances to attend our workshops and seminars). Also, we need a location with a climate better suited for hosting summertime classes (central Texas is not, to say the least, a top summer destination). Other differences in the climate (such as rainfall and elevation) would also provide opportunities for agricultural approaches differing from those we currently use. All of these factors would aid in making this new facility an opportunity for expanding the concept of a sustainable culture. We will build in a way that strives to be completely self-sustaining with regard to water, energy and other such essentials. This would also allow us to further expand the scope of methods we teach in order to address a wider range of situations that people face. In addition, given the general interest throughout much of the Northwest in preserving the natural environment—for example, utilizing local renewable resources and so forth—we anticipate that our vision for a sustainable culture might have a broad appeal and prove beneficial there as well. In some cases, of course, our personal views might differ from those we interact with, but by seeking to focus on our common interests, while maintaining a shared respect for our differences, we have in the past sustained mutually beneficial and friendly relationships with a broad cross section of society, including people from many different ethnic backgrounds and beliefs, as well as from widely varied social, political and economic situations. We have also, over a period of many years, contributed millions of hard-earned dollars, both directly and in instruction hours, to helping those who, like us, needed just a little help in order to help themselves.

CONCLUSION

For over a third of a century, we at THE PLOUGHSHARE INSTITUTE FOR SUSTAINABLE CULTURE have experienced, and now share with others, the reality of this way of living, a way of life in which they, too, can learn and grow together in the skills and knowledge that bring forth not just sustainable agriculture, but a sustainable culture, a sustainable life.