Growing Peace

energies, skills, and experience of long-term lay residents Aaron Solomon, Nikolay Amirov,
and Josh Sowers, they have helped create the conditions for Deer Park Happy Farm to come
into existence at this time when the world is no longer practicing ‘business as usual.’
I asked Aaron to share what the creation and development of Deer Park Happy Farm
has meant to him in relation to building community in these divisive times.
—Mick McEvoy
In these divisive times, a revolutionary act of resistance at the center of Plum Village practice is simple yet profound: feeding each other. This is the miracle of generosity. If we want
peace in the world, we must be able to feed everyone. When we start to give the little bit that
we have, everyone is inspired to give. Suddenly we have an enormous amount of generosity
and enough to feed everyone. It seems very simple and straightforward. Yet it can be a
miracle, a source of wonder, joy, and celebration.
At Deer Park Monastery, we have just started a new Happy Farm, which has been
bringing us so much joy. Volunteers have been coming on Saturdays to help build the farm;
over sixty volunteers joined our first Happy Farm community work day on March 8, 2025.
On the farm, our aspiration is to work in solidarity and mindfulness, following our breath,
Order of Interbeing member Mick McEvoy and
Dharma Teacher Aaron Solomon share about
community farming as love in action.

HAPPY FARM
celebrating together the tender shoots of the new plants, and lending our effort together.
In this way we touch joy and the work does not feel like a burden at all. After our morning
working time, we join the entire community for a shared meal, very much in line with the
teachings of generosity and feeding everyone.
Through this shared work on the land, we embody a concrete act of resistance; this is
our love in action. We want to build a farm together so that we can feed everyone without
extracting or oppressing anyone. The revolutionary act of sharing resources, of building a
community of harmony and understanding, is itself nonviolence. In Thích Nhất Hạnh’s early
vision of community, he saw cooperative land stewardship as a way of creating interdependence without exploitation.1 He envisioned communities where “members of the village
co-op are responsible for helping each other” and where “nobody can be indifferent.” When
one person suffers, everyone is affected. This radical interconnection stands in stark contrast
to our current society’s emphasis on individualism, extraction, and wealth accumulation. By
cultivating the land together, we’re also cultivating a different way of seeing ourselves—not
as separate, isolated beings, but as integral parts of a living, breathing whole.
Each of us has a longing to reconcile. In our tradition, we see that we cannot do this by
force, but can do it through building understanding around our shared humanity. We see that
the simple acts we do every day in community—walking meditation, eating together, working
together down on the farm, or just taking care of our hamlet—all those actions in mindfulness
are seeds for the possibility of healing. In these divisive times, these seemingly ordinary acts
become profound statements of another way of being. When we dig our hands into the soil
together, when we share the harvest, and when we break bread at the same table, we’re
creating sacred spaces where healing can happen across the deepest divides.
The practice of farming mindfully teaches us confidence in the path of transformation—
in ourselves and others. The tiniest and most ancient of life forms, thermophilic bacteria, as

HAPPY FARM
they transform compost into soil, continue day after day in the work of patient transformation.
This is their love in action. In many ways, they are the foundation of our farm. These beings
remind us that our own suffering and conflict, when held lovingly in community, can begin to
transform. In these times of division and violence, our practice of cultivating community, of
feeding each other and sharing generosity, is crucial for generating the strength and love we
need to call for an end to violence, and for the transformation of oppression and the healing
of wounds.
—Aaron Solomon
1 From the recent book In Love and Trust: Letters from a Zen Master. In 1973, Thầy wrote to the director of the School
of Youth for Social Service about the moshav model, a type of cooperative agricultural community in Israel. He was
particularly interested in how these communities balanced individual family needs with collective responsibility and
mutual support—seeing potential applications for Buddhist villages. The moshav model features families with private
homes and land plots while maintaining collective planning, resource sharing, and mutual aid systems. Thầy saw in
this model possibilities for “voluntary socialization through concrete examples” that aligned with Buddhist principles
of interdependence.
Aaron Solomon/True Dharma Fulfillment (he/
him) is a Dharma teacher, counselor, trauma
healer, outdoor educator, and climate justice
activist. He resides at Deer Park Monastery,
US, where he actively supports community
building, including young adult programs and
the new Happy Farm project. He was previously
a monastic for fourteen years, living at Plum
Village, France and Blue Cliff Monastery, US,
and received Lamp Transmission in 2016. He is
also a current member of the North American
Dharma Teacher Sangha Care-Taking Council
(CTC) and the North American Earth Holder
Community CTC. Learn more about Aaron at
integratedmindfulness.life.
Mick McEvoy/True Pure Earth (he/him),
an Irish native, lives, works, and studies
in the community of Plum Village, France.
Mick brings over twenty years of experience
working with people, plants, and mindfulness
practice to his management of the Happy Farm
and rewilding projects. The farm welcomes
hundreds of retreatants annually and combines
mindfulness-based approaches with seasonal
organic food production and land stewardship
rooted in deep ecology.