Gallerya commitment to real food
One of the things that make RDS so drastically different than any other place is our uncompromised attitude towards the food we eat and serve. It costs a lot to provide real food to a group of hungry mouths! Yet we’re not willing to compromise on this incredibly basic and important aspect of life which is why you’ll never find commercial vegetable oil at RDS, or any processed packaged food. We use raw butter and locally pressed coconut oil as our cooking oils. There’s always some kind of chicken or beef broth simmering on one of our wood fired stoves. Fresh fish, real chicken and real eggs from our truly unique flock, raw cow and goat milk as well as kefir, cheese, and yogurt, raw honey, etc. These are some examples of the food that make up our delicious meals. Great efforts and constant work is required to maintain this commitment, so far from what is usually available everywhere under the names of “food”, “organic food”, “natural food”, “local food”, and many other combinations, somehow always ending with the word “food” but rarely having anything to do with what the human body needs.
Our understanding as to what food actually ought to be in terms of nutrition and impact is the result of many years of uninterrupted and multi-sided research, work, and experience.
Tropical squash soup with raw sour cream
We have never bought any commercial feed for any of our animals and we have never offered industrial food to anyone coming to RDS. This is something we are absolutely committed to. We believe this attitude is so essential it ought to be understood by anyone more or less thinking without any wiseacring or excuses. Yet I have never found a place, despite years of traveling on most continents during my intentional searches, where this very basic integrity was carried through.
Cooking with wood is an irreplaceable pleasure. RDS intern Caitlyn is cooking a chayote crisp on our cast iron pot.
In the same way, at RDS you won’t find the typical cramped bunk-bed setup covered with foam mattresses. Simply because we are not interested in purchasing foam while teaching about natural building, homesteading, integrative farming, and all around real living. We put in the extra effort so that our mattresses are made up of either natural latex or simply cotton (futon mattresses).
When we first decided to run internship programs to further some of our educational and outreach aims we had to determine an economically feasible way to accept interns who are interested in acquiring the uniquely well rounded real-life skills we offer here at RDS, and who are seeking a different experience of communal living and personal growth in this very special place. Being a non-profit organization with no aims of monetary profits whatsoever we devised the lowest possible price that would cover some of the basic program’s expenses. Except for the satisfaction we get from our work and its impact we don’t make any profit from the program. We never considered compromising on the principles of food and nutrition that are so important to us in order to offer lower rates and/or make profits.
Part of our mission is to provide skills – and participants in our programs leave transformed by their experience, having acquired a whole new realm of possibilities, real-life skills, and a renewed sense of self-understanding, purpose, and freedom. We require a 3-month commitment and accept only up to 10 interns per program. Our communal meals follow nutrition principles of traditional foods. Principles that have been established by life itself over millenniums of evolution but aren’t easily available in today’s world. Certainly not cheap to get or produce.
