Kedili Farm; photo-essay

Kedili Camphill Village Initiative, Caucasus Georgia

Nestled among hills high above the expansive Alezani valley, six old stone houses cluster around an ancient crossroads. One graying, oversized electric box whirrs away in an encripted industrial message, distracting but not drowning a subtler musical memory of village activities long past. No one lives here anymore, but can't we imagine the bustle of morning activities, the cool evenings standing around chatting with neighbors after dinner? Today, it's Christmas day, a winter dawn; outside the trees are bare, mud frozen in the tractor tracks, but the slow warming glow of daylight seems to chase the shadows to their holes, at the same time tugging a few song birds to life. I look around. There are stories here, history, a sense that generations have lived and labored their dreams into this land, though everything is grown over now, and I can barely make out where the central road might have been. This was Kedili village; kedi meaning ‘small hill’, -eli meaning ‘waiting for’. A small hill waiting... waiting for what? It feels true though, this little hill IS waiting for something.

From one house on the ridge a thin curl of smoke rises. A new family has moved into the village, new life once again promises to bring sounds of laughter and the working of hoes in the earth. The sun has risen, and today is Christmas day. The Great Caucasus Range stretches in an unbroken chain from East to West, from Daghestan to Chechnya in immediate view, but for the condors, those great lions of the clouds, these mountains stretch from sea to sea, Black to Caspian, and further.



A view of the Alezani Valley and the Great Caucasus Range from Kedili Village.
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“Gamarjobat Misha” I say, greeting my new friend. “Ras aketeb?” -what are you doing?” Misha looks at me, his face crinkling up in a smile. For a response he comes over and gives me a big hug around the waste, he only stands about four and half feet tall! Misha has a saw, and he is clearly cutting a big branch into firewood-sized pieces, but I suppose my attempt at the kartuli language just has him laughing. Nontheless, we make progress as friends, me holding the branch while Misha saws, then he holds the branch while I saw. Misha has down-syndrome, and lives on the farm permanently now since both his mother and father have passed away. Like many people I have met with his particular condition, he carries a feeling of contentment, happiness, and enjoys to work, laugh, and give lots of hugs, especially when conversation is pointless.



Sunrise on the main house and outbuildings.
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I helped Misha bring in the firewood and noticed Patty out at the cistern in the orchard filling a bucket of water. I skipped outside in the early morning light to try to catch a photograph of her, but she was too fast for me and came at me with her full buckets, a shy grin on her face. Patty always seems to be working, whether it's cleaning up the dishes, sweeping, or dusting minute quantities of dust off the shelves. She softly sings Georgian melodies while she works and a couple times, when I recognized the tune, I joined in with a bass harmony. I've been in the Republic of Georgia for almost four months now, studying music. Later, Patty shows me a picture of her winning a medal in Ireland at the Handicapped Olympics. Only eighteen, she grew up in an orphanage in Tbilisi and now also lives permanently at Kedili farm.

Over the rise from Kedili farm stands Bodbe convent, the spiritual resting place of Saint Nino "Enlightener of Georgians," who in the fourth century so fervently exercised her faith in a Christian God that the king and queen of the Kart valleys converted to her faith. Pilgrims have come for centuries from all over the Caucasus and Byzantine christendom to pay homage to Saint Nino, honoring her important impact on this land as a magnificent prophet of spiritual Christianity (name day January 13th).

As I stand watching the sun rise on Bodbe Monastery in the near distance, Lali comes over saying, Joni, modi, chven vchamot. Mere, chven sopels gachveneb, "John, breakfast is ready, then we will go on a tour of the village so you can understand what we are doing here.” We sit down to table with Misha, Patty, two co-workers, and Lali’s husband Gela. Our breakfast is fresh cheese made downstairs in the cheese room, canned tomatoes from the summer garden, and bread from the next village.

There are several empty chairs and I am able to gather that three handicapped villagers normally live here full time while three villagers commute from their nearby villages. Lali used to drive around and pick up as many as twenty other villagers in the nearby region, but the van finally died last year beyond repair, so now those who wish to come must find their own transportation.

Lali and her husband Gela are the driving force behind Kedili Farm, an Anthroposophical initiative Camphill community in the heart of the Caucasus mountains. The ideas of Rudolf Steiner became popular in Georgia as early as 1918, when a post World War One generation of Georgian intellectuals brought new ideas back from Europe. During the 1960s, a famous writer Constantine Gamsakhurdia (father of future Post-Soviet President Zviad Gamsakhurdia) championed the ideas of Steiner as a new approach to spirituality and social order. Followers of Rudolf Steiners ideas created the first Camphill in Scotland in the 1930s, an intentional community aimed at integrating handicapped individuals into a holistic social and working environment. Presently there are over one hundred Camphills worldwide.

In the 1990s, a daytime Camphill initiative and Waldorf school began in the capital of Georgia, Tbilisi (two hours west of Kedili), as well as a Christian Community. Lali spent a year in Belgium living and working in a Camphill community, where she learned many skills including biodynamic farming. She began this village three years ago, and struggles to keep it afloat with the meager donations she can raise from Holland, and selling cheese.

“These are apple trees, these are fig, and plum, and those over there are persimmon and pomegranite,” Lali says, pointing to neat rows of young trees on a gentle slope below the main house. Signs of gardens appear near the trees, but before I can ask, Lali says, “here is our tomato patch, over here we grow most of the vegetables for the farm, but it only really sustains us during the harvesting months in the summer and fall.” This is a simple life here, with rare electricity, a large outdoor cistern for water supply, refillable gas containers for cooking, and wood stoves for heat.



Here is one of the new purchases, an old house waiting to be renovated to receive new community members.
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As we walk down the hill through the orchard, we come to an old stone house, weathered and appearing to grow straight out of the ground, its simple rock walls mere extensions of the rocks in the yard. This house, along with another of the six old houses in Kedili village, were purchased by the community with a grant from Camphill friends in Belgium.



This is also a new purchase which needs major renovation work to make it habitable again. Because of it's strong light facing direction and beautiful porches, art studios are being planned for this house, as well as living space.
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Walking across a patch of old grass that used to be the center of this village, Lali leads me to the other recent purchase, “I think this second house will be ideal for an arts studio, for weaving, music, and eurythmy. This house somehow has a good feeling about it, with the morning light coming onto the balcony... it has a spiritual sense about it, and faces west.” I peer over the fence at a two story house that looks like it might fall down anytime. However, she is right, there is a lightness to the yard, and especially the balcony has an appeal to it.

As I turn around, I see the farm house on the ridge just above us, the orchard stretching down towards us, and suddenly I realize this village does not have much longer to wait. A new community has arrived, bringing with it the promise of love and care, and most importantly, a haven of safety and understanding for a vulnerable community of handicapped people who live in a society without social welfare. Here an idea is becoming a community, a place to call home has arrived.



This is a traditional tone, or baking oven, on the property. A fire is maintained all day long in the deep round clay oven, and fresh dough is stuck to the inside walls where it quickly becomes the famously delicious Georgian 'tone puri' -literally 'baked bread.'
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Lali and I walk out of Kedili towards Bodbe, and now in the distance I can see Sighnaghi, a fortified hilltop town replete with towers, arches, and gates from the early 18th century. King Erekle made this town a regional center, bringing in many artisans from near and far, building the wall to protect local populations against invading Persian armies from the southeast. Views from Sighnaghi are stunning, the Alezani valley stretches thirty miles across to the Great Caucasus Range, visible from horizon to horizon.



Sunrise over the fortified hill fortress town, Sighnaghi, with a backdrop of the Great Caucasus Range
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Georgia is not ready for tourists yet, but it is ready for workers. Please come and help support Lali, Gela, and the whole community at Kedili, this is the work of a lifetime.




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How does this farm run?

Money is scarce here, the community survives from donation to donation. As much as money is needed, labor is needed. The two houses purchased in 2003 are as yet unrenovated, much of the land still unused. Of an estimated basic yearly expense budget of twenty thousand dollars, the community survives with personal and foreign donations totaling about ten thousand dollars.

Several successful projects have included the construction of a cheese production center, where enough cheese is produced to provide a surplus which can be sold locally. Also, an investment of fifty dollars for weaving supplies yielded one hundred and eighty dollars for the produced textiles by community members. While these small incomes cannot support the community at present, small strides point to a future of increasing self-sustainability.

Recent hardships have included the failure of the community vehicle, which was used to bring interested regional handicapped members to the community (at least ten daily). Now, handicapped members in the region must find their own transportation, a difficult prospect (only three have been able). Also, of a herd of eleven cows, producing the necessary milk for cheese production, only five remain due to theft and the recent killing of two cows by wolves! Though the community has struggled with these setbacks, Lali is determined that the community be a functioning dairy farm, and hopes that donations will come in to buy more cows. A good cow costs one thousand dollars locally.



Main house, construction on renovated kitchen, East wall.
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Immediate projects include the addition of two bedrooms to the main house (currently a five room house), so that house parents can live on site. Currently only three villagers and one co-worker can live in the main house. Successive immediate projects include an upgrade of the electric, gas, and sewer systems, and the renovation of the other two houses for habitation. As with any Camphill, there is an abundance of work to be done in the gardens, the dairy farm, and in outreach to the handicapped in the region.

The community has a good amount of land to work with, thanks to the recent acquisition of the two Kedili village houses, and the donation of Gela’s family farm to the organization. Gela’s family has long lived here, just outside Kedili village. Local support seems strong; I met at least three co-working adults from Sighnaghi who spend time here working on the farm and in the main house, cooking, cleaning, teaching arts, gardening, and herding cattle.

A single loom sits next to a table of silk and folk instruments in the living room. Paintings adorn the walls, and as a Christmas gift, I brought a set of colored pencils. Patty, Misha, and I colored several pages of my journal with red and yellow swirls, blue boxes, and Patty even drew our farm house with fruit trees and flowers outside. Misha was tentative at first, alternately picking up the blue pencil then putting it down before ever making a mark. Eventually he found great satisfaction in making rectangular boxes with lines in them!

Support has been strong from Europe from friends such as Jan Borghs from the Vidar Community in Belgium (near Merksplats), an individual named Rene from the Nederlands who has been coming for three successive summers to work in the gardens, and the Kordaidi Foundation in the Nederlands. Lali speaks some English and Dutch, and several foreigners have settled locally, including an American painter who lives permanently in Sighnaghi. As Bodbe is an international pilgrimage destination, with Kedili village close by, opportunities for work/board/living collaborations abound.

Kedili Village is an inspiring place and has so much potential. Commanding one of the most beautiful locations in this beautiful land, it is the ideal place for a group of volunteers to come with tools and a will to work. Funding for daily existence is needed, as well as for ongoing projects to open up this community to the great need that exists here. Lali says she personally knows and has visited one hundred families in this part of Georgia who have the honor of having a handicapped person in their family.



The wooden parts of this house are falling apart and will need to be replaced, such as this sagging porch. The stone section of the house seems solid.
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Christmas Day:
At the breakfast table, we each held a candle in our hands and quietly lit them to symbolize the birth of Christ. Lali lead us in a traditional 'Alilo' Christmas carol, we attached the handmade candles to the table top, and ate quietly, each absorbed in their thoughts.

After breakfast, I went outside to work with Gia, one of the coworkers. Our tools were two ancient blades attached to split wooden handles which we repaired with bits of wire. Our foe: the dreaded wild rose bush, which has such strong roots that even when cut to the ground, it grows back within six months. We hacked and hawed a patch of the future tomato garden, clearing a good section in preparation for turning the soil in the spring months.

Misha stood nearby and chattered with Gia, though I couldn't understand very much of his Georgian. By midday, I needed to go, so we went inside to say our goodbyes. Patty was shy, Misha acting like I was a longtime relative. The co-workers urged me to come back again, and as I shouldered my pack, I made the proper overtures in Georgian; "kargad ikhavit, nakvamdis, nakvamdis" -"How good it has been, this time together, goodbye!"

Kedili village stands quietly in full sunshine. There is no movement, no activity, and one still has the feeling that the hill is waiting for something to happen. And yet, I can feel that a new impulse has arrived in town, and Kedili will not wait much longer.


Georgia is not ready for tourists yet, but it is ready for workers. Please come and help support Lali, Gela, and the whole community at Kedili, this is the work of a lifetime.




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Where in the world are we?

Today this land is called the Republic of Georgia, a former autonomous region of the vast Soviet Empire, before that part of the Tsarist Russian Empire, and before that an occupied land by Persians and Turks. But the people here are much older than empires of the last millenium. This is the land of the Karts, a non-Indo European language group of peoples said to have Sumerian and Hittite roots. The oldest human skeleton discovered in Europe was recently found in nearby, dating 1.8 million years old and changing theories of humanoid migration out of Africa. The cult of the grape existed here in 5000 B.C., well before similar cultures existed in Ancient Greece, as evidenced by grape seeds found on ancient clay vessels. During Greek times, Jason sought the Golden Fleece here on the shores of the Black Sea. So many languages exist in this region, that Roman officers needed 120 interpreters to do business in one Black Sea port.

Perhaps the most important cultural event to follow the well-established cult of the grape was the advent of Christianity in 337 AD following Saint Nino’s conversion of the King and Queen of Kartli. Syrian monks came and built monasteries in the sixth century from which time monasticism has played an enormous role in the spiritual development of this people. In the deserts just south of Kedili village, handhewn caves dot the cliff sides where five thousand monks used to live, and visitors can still see 9th and 12th century frescoes. http://www.villageharmony.org/monasticism

During the Golden Era of Georgian civilization, 950-1250 AD, great cathedrals were built, and the Georgian Natian stretched from the Caspian to the Black Sea and included much of what is today Armenia, Northeast Turkey, and Azerbaijan. Great works of literature were written including Shota Rustaveli’s ‘The Knight in the Panther’s Skin,” an epic poem akin to the Arthurian legend in its chivalrous, moralistic tale of friendship, love, and honor. During this time, intellectual centers in Georgia and on Mount Athos, Mount Sinai, and Jerusalem produced books of philosophy and logic, hymnographers produced great works of music and poetry, and an illustrated chant manuscript tradition flourished. This era of grace from invasion ended with the unprecedented ferocity of the Mongol hordes, who invaded Georgia repeatedly in the early 13th century.

Ancient history abounds in this region, with many bronze age artifacts still being found here. Remnants of ancient cultures still exist in the carving traditions, in martial arts, dancing, traditional cloth design, and folk singing.

The arrival of the Russians in 1810 ushered in the modern era, bringing western civilization and culture. During this time Georgia experienced a degree of peace, but folk cultures began to pass away with each successive generation. Folk cultures suffered perhaps the most under the intelligent suppressions of the Soviet regime, where for example, whole mountain populations were displaced to concrete city suburbs in the lowlands to work in factories. Factory living replaced traditional arts and lifestyles.

Christianity was also heavily suppressed, monks and priests were killed, exiled, and generally derided by a society trained to see them as unneccessary and fanatical. Close to my heart is the one thousand year old oral tradition of three-voiced chanting which, on the brink of extinction at the turn of the twentieth century, was saved by a few key archivists who learned western music notation and transcribed thousands of chants from the few remaining master church-singers. Eight thousand chants were notated: a mere fraction of the estimated number of chants known in the middle ages.

Georgia is not ready for tourists yet, but it is ready for workers. Please come and help support Lali, Gela, and the whole community at Kedili, this is the work of a lifetime.