Snake River Music Gardens
Quarterly Pictorial Newsletter
Volume One, Issue One
September 30, 2023

NOTE:  DUE TO TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES WE HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO ADD PHOTOS.  FOR THE FULL PHOTO NEWSLETTER EMAIL LINDIANNA@YAHOO.COM AND ASK FOR THE PHOTO NEWSLETTER.

Food Sovereignty Issue
Introducing Correspondents and Projects
Snake River Music Gardens Quarterly Pictorial Newsletter will be published September, December, March and June.

Music Garden Press, 2023

Publisher, Editor and Writer:
Lindianne Sappington
Photo credits: Agaba Josephat, Art Sappington, Gumisiriza Julius, Lindianne Sappington, Patrick Arina, Simon Tumwijukye, Waiswa John Billy

Cover Photo: Apricots, Baker County, Snake River Music Gardens file photo

Table of Contents

Food Sovereignty in Baker County

Scholarship Announcement

Comment on Ukrainian Farmers

Snake River Music Gardens Seeks Permanent Home

Introducing our Ugandan Correspondents

Community Choir to Revive

Summary

Food Sovereignty in Baker County
By Lindianne Sappington, September 3, 2023

 

In August 2023, Snake River Music Gardens introduced the Food Sovereignty and Local Self-Governance Ordinance of 2023 to the Baker County Commission.

 

Food sovereignty, a world-wide movement, “is the unalienable right of all people to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their inalienable right to define their own food and agriculture systems.”
Baker County people--indeed, all people on earth--possess the God-given right to produce, process, sell, purchase, and consume local foods of their choosing.  Food sovereignty includes raw milk & dairy products, locally slaughtered meats, raw farm products, and bake sales.

 

Curtis Martin, former president of the Oregon Cattleman’s Association, told the Baker County Commission, “The County Commission should dig into this.  This will mean the return of local processing.  In corporate processing there is little scrutiny of chemicals.  This could be a viable economic opportunity for Baker with the brand Baker County grown, raised and processed.  This ordinance will return Baker to 50 years ago when we had control by the local representation of our county.  We had a much better food chain and food security 50 years ago.

 

“For the consumer, there’s a closer linkage when the consumer knows the producer.  The processor knows who produced the meat; if it was a bad product, the processor will let the producer know.  This ordinance reinforces food safety.”

 

Visit www.bakercountyoregonfoodchoice.com to view/download the full ordinance and the public education brochure.

 

Photo: Cattle Graze in Well-Managed Forest, Baker County

Bumblebees in Teaching Garden

In August, we (Art and Lindianne Sappington) noticed new visitors to the echinacea flowers in the Teaching Garden: native ground-dwelling bumblebees.  This is encouraging because in 2021 and 2022 numbers of bumblebees had declined from former years, possibly due to neonicotinoids in the seed supply.

Photo:   Bumblebees on Echinacea, August 2023

 

Snake River Music Gardens Announces Scholarship Program for Music Students

By Lindianne Sappington, September 26, 2023

Baker Music Garden, our music teaching studio, offers a scholarship program for Baker County’s talented music students from low-income families.  The program features a musical instrument library from which instruments can be rented for a nominal fee ($5/month), scholarships for music lessons ranging from absolutely free to reduced family rates, and piano tuning for low income families.

 

Why Does Snake River Music Gardens Offer Music Scholarships in Baker and Support Students in Uganda?

We were fortunate to receive, from our parents, food, shelter, love, encouragement, and sufficient education to start us on the journey of life.  Because our parents have passed beyond, we can no longer thank them for the gifts they gave freely to us.  So we pass on our gifts to deserving young people.  Those we help in Baker and in Uganda are carefully vetted for faithfulness, productive plans and dreams, diligence, honesty, sincerity, a heartfelt desire to learn, creativity, persistence, and responsibility to family, community and nation.

 

Snake River Music Gardens particularly treasures our cooperation with Waiswa John Billy, Director of Youth in Act – Uganda and His Grace Children’s Home, an orphanage of 35 children.  Emails, teleconferences, and exchanges of photos and documents have established trust and mutual respect.

 

The support we provided is no more than 1% of what is needed to fully fund Youth in Act – Uganda’s Food Forest Program and His Grace Children’s Home’s proposed purchase of 10 acres with 60 beehives.

 

Just our minimal support gave Waiswa John Billy and his agricultural officer Joseph Mulopi enough peace of mind to author the Strategic Plan 2023-2028 to avert famine in Africa.  You can find the strategic plan www.spiritualfamily.net under Youth in Act – Uganda.

 

Comment on the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Arthur and I have devoted 50 to 80 hours a week to viewing raw footage and military analysis of the war from UK, India, Australia, Canada, US, Ukraine, Russia, and Israeli sources.  Russian invaders have destroyed hospitals, schools, churches, wheat shipping facilities and Ukraine’s sunflower oil plant.

 

Ukraine is truly the breadbasket of the world, #2 in wheat production, #1 in sunflower oil production.  Ukrainian farm mechanic shops  have contributed vastly to equipping the defense of Ukraine, all the while managing to plant their crops in fields littered with Russian equipment and explosive mines.

 

There is a lesson here: what is the historic significance of agriculture, of having a strong, independent, knowledgeable, united farm population?

 

A farmer is a backyard mechanic and welder who can repair any part on his tractor, put the tractor back together and have it back in the field in hours.  The farmers of Ukraine have been towing Russian wrecks off battlefields, and rewelding the vehicles for Ukrainian military purposes.  The farmers of Ukraine are turning tractors into armored automated mine clearing vehicles, so they can clear their fields of mines and plant their crops, crops that feed Ukraine and the world.

 

The historic lesson is: to overpower invaders, strengthen your farms.  American farm boys won World War II.  Ukrainian farmers are holding their own against the Russian invaders.  If the forces of truth, goodness and beauty are to win in Africa, it shall be because the farmers of Africa are strong and understand their God-given rights.

 

Snake River Music Gardens Seeks Permanent Home

 

In our first two years, we established Baker Music Garden serving 25 families, started the Teaching Garden with beehives at 5th and D, supported His Grace Children’s Home and the Food Forest Program in Uganda, published the booklet The Truth about Genetically Modified Foods, produced a concert and an initial student recital, and sponsored Baker’s Food Sovereignty Ordinance.

Now we seek a permanent home in Baker County for Snake River Music Gardens.  On the residential/ educational property we will develop a ground floor music teaching studio, teaching kitchen and  gardens, poultry, animals, apiary, hemp acreage, repair workshops, library, guest rooms, outdoor youth camp and rehearsal space.

If you know of such a property, either for sale, or owned by a family who would enjoy having their rural property developed by a non-profit to benefit the community, the economy, and humanity, please contact us through www.snakerivermusicgardens.org.

 

Introducing Our Ugandan Correspondents

Agaba Josephat, pictured above translating the Uganda Constitution, spearheads the Uganda Constitution Translation Project.  Photo below, elders translating.  As eldest son in a family of orphans, Josephat supports his siblings.  With Snake River Music Gardens support, Josephat is now bound for university.

 

Simon Tumwijukye, pictured above working in his field, is a singer, peasant, and as eldest son, cares for his orphaned family of siblings (photo below).  With Snake River Music Gardens support, Simon aims to become a mechanic and engineer through an apprenticeship program offered locally.

 

Patrick Arina, pictured above with the pomelo, a native African fruit tree, writes, “In my area actually most people do inter-cropping, for instance vegetables like amaranth (doodo) can be planted with African eggplant (entonga), and spinach in the same garden. I have already grown amaranth and African egg plants together and they are looking good and healthy.  My dream is to research out new crops that can be planted together and set up a garden where people in my area may come and discover  crops new to them.”  With Snake River Music Gardens support, Patrick plans to purchase land for his research garden and attend university to study business administration.  Patrick continues, “I’m working to expand agricultural productivity in western Uganda.  Most Ugandan youth have neglected agriculture and opted for white collar jobs with the result that today unemployment in Uganda is at a higher level.  The logic is very simple: acknowledge and embrace agricultural productivity.”

 

Julius Gumisiriza, pictured above at Uganda Christian University Kabale, Bishop Barlam University College. and his wife, Cossy, live in service to humanity.  Julius wrote Great Adventures in Uganda’s Fifth Epochal Revelation and Food Forest Program, published by Music Garden Press.   The book can be read at spiritualfamily.net under Julius Gumisiriza.

 

If you have never before encountered the Urantia Papers, Julius’ book contains a powerful and simple introduction to the Urantia Papers, also known as the Fifth Epochal Revelation.  Supported by Snake River Music Gardens and spiritualfamily.net, Julius is studying business administration and accounting.

 

Community Choir to Revive in Baker!

Baker’s Community Choir had stopped operating during COVID, but is now reviving.  Snake River Music Gardens director,  Lindianne Sappington, has been asked to direct the community choir.  Rehearsals are every Monday evening 7:00 - 8:30 PM at the Presbyterian Church.  The first concert will be December 8, 9 and 10 at the Baker Heritage Museum.

 

Summary

This newsletter links the people of Baker County, Oregon and the people of Uganda.  This linkage is not an accident.  Both populations share devout agricultural cultures, enduring family values, multi-generational agricultural and ranching traditions, and a strong emphasis on education.

 

Uganda’s population is young—average age 15.

 

Snake River Music Gardens has identified and developed working relationships with deserving individuals and orphanages in Uganda.  We have committed our resources and wisdom to Youth in Act – Uganda, mugachild.org, World Gospel Ministries and Savannah Rose Children’s Home, as well as to the individuals introduced above.

 

We invite you to visit  www.snakerivermusicgardens.org and become a monthly supporter.  A monthly donation of $5 or $10 to our general fund can make possible an education, feed an orphan, or help purchase acreage for the food forest program.

 

Donations earmarked for Baker can give a music student a scholarship, purchase a musical instrument for a deserving student, tune a piano, or be devoted to developing Snake River Music Garden’s permanent facility.

 

Thank you for reading our newsletter!  We look forward to your thoughts and comments.

 

Photo: working with beehives in
Teaching Garden at 5th & D