photo credit: Lauren Spates
Volunteers working the land at Teravana near Cazadero.

Shovels scraped and Bob Marley vibed through a speaker as three long terraces rose out of the grass on an open hillside in Cazadero.

Log by log, more than a dozen volunteers from Santa Rosa, Sebastopol, Oakland and Berkeley lay three long rows perpendicular to the slope, backfilling them with dirt to create a trio of flat planting beds. 

The volunteers were there for a nonprofit named Teravana, a mash-up of the Latin word for earth and the Buddhist principle of nirvana.

Teravana has many goals, but its staff hopes to achieve them all via “regenerative agroforestry,” a farming method that combines crops, trees, plants, and livestock to produce food in a self-sustaining system that mimics the natural ecosystem. 

A grant last year allowed Teravana to plant a community garden, and its harvest went to a local shop and food pantry. This year, Teravana earned another grant that will help them tend the land, says Dana Ngo, the group’s lead ecology advisor.

“[The grant will] support us more in that work in regenerative agroforestry and learning how to bring native foods back. So, like, how to eat acorns, manzanita berries…how to work with the animals in a way that supports the soils and growing food in a way using indigenous practices…so showing that diversity and doing it all in a way that supports the health of the soil and inevitably, the watershed, so that we can continue to have a good source of water here,” Ngo said.

Another Teravana goal is to provide a space where people can put their phones down and enjoy the outdoors, said owner Suvas Vajracharya, who purchased the 700-acre property in 2019.

He spent two decades working in healthcare tech and used the word “eloquent” to describe how technology has connected us to one another digitally. But he also sees how we’re increasingly disconnected from one another and from the land and nature around us.

“And so that type of connection has actually been diminishing over time, and so that's another part of what we want to do at Teravana is to not forget that we were part of something bigger that we could connect to and feel whole, even as we're, you know, being distracted by the technical connections that we have now,” Vajrachaya said.

This approach speaks to teacher Allyson Shoemaker, who plans to bring about 60 sixth graders to Teravana this summer to camp and frolic outdoors. 

Shoemaker had already visited the property once on a scouting mission for her field trip, but she came back for the earthworking because she appreciates Teravana’s ethos and wants to spend more time on the land before she brings a few dozen 11- and 12-year-olds on an overnight stay. 

Shoemaker’s even looking forward to the road trip from Santa Rosa to west county, twisting along River Road and 116, Caz Highway, and then King Ridge Road as the group winds its way to the property. 

“I'm so excited for them to take that drive and to just be immersed in the school bus ride. Getting to be passengers and, like, sort of active participants in viewing this insane nature around them before they even get to sleep in it,” Shoemaker said.

The nature around them will be wild and varied, says project leader Ja’Red Kennedy, with the property encompassing three different ecosystems.

“There's high ridge pine ecosystem, then there's pond or riparian ecosystem, and then there's the oak and grassland. So if you're interested in studying any of that, or being immersed in any of that you can get into all three of those in one day,” Kennedy said.

Vajracharya hopes these ecosystems will interest students of all ages. He’s spoken with researchers at UCSF and UC Berkeley who see an increased sense of climate change anxiety among students. 

“They're developing this course where the students would benefit from learning about personal resiliency in the age of climate change. And so they've met here in Teravana to talk about how to coordinate this amongst all UC systems, and so we are looking to support that program,” Vajrachaya said.

Vajracharya and Ngo are also hoping to merge it with an elementary program in Guerneville and then on to local high schools.

Teravana says its overarching goal is “to heal the planet and the people.” And Shoemaker says the group is on its way.

“We've been here for two hours, and there's so many people here that are from other areas that are giving back to the community, and then we're building a little community here, and this place is just so full of a sense of belonging and a sense of groundedness, and is really, I think, taking us back to our roots while allowing people to give back, which in this day and age, feels like something that is more important than ever, right, is being in community and giving back to that community,” Shoemaker said.