In this engaging conversation, Yasoda Mensah, a long-time practitioner of Bhakti Yoga, shares her inspiring journey and dedication to spirituality, community, and sustainable living.
Learn how she integrates Bhakti Yoga principles into her life’s work at Three Leaf Farm Den and Trifolia Natural Products, offering hands-on experiences that connect people with nature, self-realization, and a higher purpose. Through personal stories and practical insights, Yasoda reveals how spirituality can manifest in everyday life, from organic farming to community building and beyond.
HARI-KIRTANA DAS: Welcome, everyone, and thank you very much for joining us for another community conversation. I am very happy to see all of you and very happy to welcome our guest for this particular conversation, Yasoda Mensah.
Yasoda, thank you very much for being here. By way of introduction, Yasoda is the director of Three Leaf Farm Den and the owner of Trifolia Natural Products and Botanicals. She is dedicated and her projects are dedicated to the to education, sustainability, utility and self-realization. She’s been a practitioner, educator, and counselor in the Bhakti yoga tradition for over 30 years and has lived and worked on three continents, during which time her passion for and knowledge of the earth, the environment, health and herbal medicines has grown and deepened.
Yasoda is deeply committed to the environment and sustainable agriculture practices and respect that respect the earth and its myriad of life, plant based and otherwise. She enjoys collaborating with local organic farmers and growers to bring the best quality produce to the table and works with the Gita Nagari Yoga farm in conducting herb walks and workshops and classes as part of their retreats throughout the year. Yasoda holds a bachelor’s degree in microbiology, a master’s in therapeutic herbalism, and is a certified facilitator through the Institute of Applied Spiritual Technology.
Yasoda, welcome and thank you again for being here and welcome all of you who came in while I wasn’t looking. I’m very grateful for all of your attendance here. And I’m looking forward to our conversation. Yasoda, you’ve been practicing bhakti yoga for almost four decades now. Can you tell us how you got started on the path of Bhakti yoga?
YASODA: You know, I think about this question a lot. I’ve been asked it a few times, and I think with, with everybody that it’s not a one off thing. I when I look back over the time of my coming, finding out about this path and, and coming on it, it, it feels like and I’m probably going to use a lot of allegory in this conversation, but it feels like you are walking along or you find a path. You know, like when you’re in a forest and you, you see a clearing. Like when I take people through a forest bathing or through herb walks and we go through like a forested area. What I’m really doing is following where the deer have been because that’s the deer. Push all the brush bush and brush aside and, and we follow where the deer goes.
So there’s actually a path there that if you were not looking for it, you wouldn’t see it. But if you are looking for it, you see it. So I kind of feel like that is how I came into bhakti. Like there were little pebbles on the way that got turned over. And somebody gave me a book here. I heard some something on the television here. I saw like, devotees chanting in the street here. And so all of these little things came together and they were like pebbles being turned over on a path until, Hello. Oh, this is actually this is actually a way to go.
So it’s it was a that was a process over a number of years. It actually, I would say it started when I was 12 and I was watching a popular music program in England called top of the pops, similar to Soul Train or something that you’d have in America, you know.
And they, the Bhakti devotees were, were chanting on that program and it was like, who are these people? But at 12 years old, you don’t really think more than that. And then at 19, I got a book, and at 21 I got more books and at 22 the Bhakti Tirtha Maharaj a swami in the back in the Bhakti movement came to my university and gave a lecture, and all of these things kind of just accumulated into a, I think, just like a waking up of, you know, and, and a waking up and a and a realizing that all the questions I had been asking up until that point, like, who am I? What am I doing here? What is this really all about?
And those questions had been I’d been asking those questions since I remember writing poetry at 16. What is life all about and why are we here? And why is there so much suffering in the world? And it’s got to be more than this, you know? So those are the questions I think that that were answered as kind of the light kind of started going on. So other than a, you know, a chronological, okay, I got this book at this time of the year and I got this book at this time and this. So like the on the flipping over of pebbles is what came to my mind when I thought about that. So yeah.
HARI-KIRTANA DAS: That’s a wonderful analogy, and I’m so happy to know that the deer on your property do actually serve a useful purpose..
YASODA: You know. It’s interesting when I, when I take people through the deer path, we follow the day path and then the, the, the first pioneers followed those paths as well. And then the first roads that were made were those paths. And then as the, as, you know, urban sprawl and all of that kind of stuff evolves. Those are actually the roads that that we follow now. So we’re all actually following deer.
HARI-KIRTANA DAS: Oh. All right. You know, I hadn’t really thought about that, but that’s probably true. We have deer in the forest that run through the national parks here in DC and the trails that we have probably originated in precisely that way. So I, I will give more thought to that next time I go for a walk in the woods. So then how has your journey on the path of bhakti yoga impacted you? You how has that affected your life? clearly, there were questions that you had that were answered or at least responded to in some way, the this path must have responded to the contents of your poetry as a teenager. So what was the promise that you saw? And in what way has that promise been fulfilled for you, and what remains to be fulfilled through your journey on the path of Bhakti yoga?
YASODA: Interesting. When I’m working with my mentors, I there’s a little, a little story that it’s very, it’s very short, but to me it reveals a lot. So this this man gets on a gets on a subway train with two little boys and, you know, sits down, the train starts off, and the boys start running around and j ping on the empty seats and swinging around the poles and everything. And the other passengers, you know, are looking at the looking at the man, the father, you know, like what’s going on with you? Can’t you control your kids? And the father is kind of, like, zoned out. And the kids are running around making a noise, making a ruckus.
And then the woman that’s sitting opposite the man finally gets, you know, has enough of it and finally, you know, turns to the man and says, what’s going on with you? Can’t you control your kids? They’re making a lot of noise. Keep them under control. They’re disturbing everybody. And the man looks at her and says, oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize we just left the hospital. Their mother just passed away. And that’s where we’re coming from. And so that information really changed the way the woman then, you know, of course, hearing that she became very compassionate and empathetic and oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. And now the children running around has context and has has a new light. She’s seeing the whole scene with a new perspective.
And I feel that’s kind of how this path of bhakti has been for me. The first thing has been knowledge and information. I really feel that we swim around in so much ignorance, you know, of how things really work or what things really are. Or even who we really are.
You know, that’s the first thing, is who? Are we? What are we? Who are we? Why are we those questions and not even knowing those three things, who we are, what we are, and why we are, has us in so much darkness and ignorance that we’re. It’s like just bumping around in a dark room, you know, you’re thumping your toe on this and you’re tripping over this and somehow you can feel something and it feels like this and you think, oh, this is a pillow, you know, and it’s actually a dog or something, you know, it’s soft and warm and you think, oh, I found find a pillow? And actually, you found a dog. So for me, Bhakti has been like the light going on. Like illumination. Understanding who I really am, understanding why I’m here, understanding why I’m here.
And these things. When you get that information, when you get knowledge, the way that you see things, the way that you approach things, the way that you allow things to affect you is completely different because you’re coming from a platform of deeper realization of something that’s really solid.
And that’s kind of how I feel. Bhakti has been for me is that I’m, I don’t know what’s what’s my end game is I know that I know that my intent, my desire is to be able to serve unconditionally and ultimately the highest, the highest expression of that is serving the Supreme.
But as I’m doing that, I’m also trying to serve everybody else. In fact, if you serve the Supreme, you do serve everybody else. And so that’s… I don’t know what the end goal will be. I would like it to be unconditional, unending, eternal service loving service because I feel that as I, as I walk along that path and as I get deeper and deeper into the realizations of things around me, and I and I obtain more knowledge that helps me with that, I become more joyful. It’s more blissful. The suffering is a choice. And when you don’t have to do that, when you don’t have to suffer, it’s so much more fulfilling and relaxing and, you know, and things.
Not that I’m not like I’m walking around in the world with my head in a cloud. Things happen. I mean, the last rains that we got here, I ended up with a foot and a half of water in my basement, which was not fun, but it wasn’t completely devastating. You know, I didn’t throw myself on the rocks, and oh, my God, you know, it’s just. Okay. It’s what happens. I should have been more thoughtful about how to prevent this and let me see what I can do in the future.
So you know, we talked about talking about perfection and imperfection. Imperfection or, you know, finding perfection and imperfection. And so we make mistakes and we do silly things, but we learn from that. And I feel that that’s what this path is, is a series of, of lessons where we learn more, not just about ourselves and about other people and about the world, but about what real joy and bliss there is waiting for us at the end of this path. And, and on the path as well, you know, is It’s both the means and the end.
HARI-KIRTANA DAS: You know, I’m glad you connected that to the main theme of our conversation. Finding perfection in imperfection. Because we look at the world and it’s filled with imperfection. And we look at ourselves and we are far from perfect. And we hear from yoga wisdom texts like the Bhagavad Gita that every endeavor has some imperfection to it. And if we’re looking for or waiting for a perfect world or a perfect situation before we do something or feel as if it’s time for something or what have you then we’ll just be waiting forever for perfection. Paralysis.
YASODA: Isn’t there that saying don’t let perfection be the enemy of good. Something like that.
HARI-KIRTANA DAS: Yes, yes. Don’t let perfection be the enemy of the good. And learning how to be relatively equipoised amidst all of this imperfection is part of the art and science of yoga. One who is. It’s a symptom of a little bit of spiritual advancement that we are not overly elated when we have a cause for happiness. We are not overly despondent when we have a cause for unhappiness, like a flooded basement. So what I hear you saying is that the your practice of bhakti yoga over the years has helped you develop that kind of equanimity and acceptance of moving through an imperfect world while doing your best to simultaneously serve humanity and serve a transcendent truth.
YASODA: I mean, how other. How else other is there to move through the world? You know, just before we started, I was talking about I love these analogies. They’re great. I mean, they keep popping up, and they make so much sense. Like surfing. You know, I have great respect for the ocean. I would not attempt to try to go out on the ocean with a surfboard. That’s not my thing. I will watch surfers from the beach. But if I was on a surfboard, just the whole idea of like, trying to find the right wave and, you know, stay upright and you have this whole I don’t know what they call them, but this big wave coming. And then you go over the wave and, you know, that’s to me is what is like being in the world. You know, you sometimes you fall over and you get like, pushed under and you have to come up to the surface, grab onto your surfboard, get back on it again, get back upright and keep maneuvering. But all the time it’s just like, how do you balance? How do you keep how do you work with what the forces are around you to, to do what you want to do, to keep moving along? And hopefully there’s a reason why you’re doing it.
But, you know, this whole idea of working with the forces around you and seeing what’s coming and trying the best that you can to use your skills and abilities to stay upright, and in my case, skills and abilities is knowledge and the understanding that I am imperfect and that. I prayed a long time ago to be able to see the knowledge or the education, the lessons in each situation that I was exposed to, whether it was good or whether it was bad.
Because for me, like I said, suffering is a choice. And I used to kind of get so not despondent, but like, bogged down and like angry and, and anxiety about things as they would be unfolding around me if they were like, negative or whatever. Now it’s just like, okay, okay, this is not working out the way I thought it should work out. Clearly, I don’t know everything. So what is there for me to learn in this situation, and how can I use this the next time and, you know, be better or do better?
So navigating the world like that is so much more enjoyable because there’s so many… my, my spiritual mentor always used to say Bhakti Tirtha Maharaj always used to say you should always expect a miracle every day.
There should be miracles happening. And if they’re not happening, there’s something wrong. And I really when he first said that, I kind of said, yeah, yeah, that’s right, miracles should be happening. But now I actually see miracles every day, you know?
And sometimes we talk… we call them like coincidences or, you know, serendipity or whatever. But, you know, when when things fall together, when things fall into place and things happen in a way that you didn’t expect it, you were not prepared for it. It wasn’t anything that you had planned. In fact, it was something that was completely unplanned. And yet it works so well. Those for me are miracles.
And the more that I try to to embrace, you know this path, the more of those things that happen and it’s fun, you know, something comes to like something comes up and it’s like, oh, wow, that’s really that’s really wonderful. I didn’t expect that. And, you know, and you just, you know, say thank you, be appreciative, gratitude and just keep going.
I don’t know if I answered any of your questions. I feel like I’m kind of rambling a little bit, but yeah.
HARI-KIRTANA DAS: In, in your, in the course of your analogies and explanation that followed, you made a really wonderful point. We are surrounded by the miraculous at every moment. And the one of the symptoms of illusion is that we don’t see it. And the ability to see and appreciate the miraculous in every small thing at every moment is both an art and a science. And you mentioned your mentor, Bhakti Tirtha Swami. And when I was introducing you, I spoke about the your role in helping your mentor establish the Institute for Applied Spiritual Technology. So I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit first, what is the Institute for Applied Spiritual Technology? And tell us a little bit about your role in bringing it into being and what kind of work you were doing there?
YASODA: Well, I see on the call we have Vrajalila Devi Dasi who is also a member of IFast in one of the founding members, so I’m sure she actually could tell you more about this than me. But the Institute for Applied Spiritual Technology was an idea that Bhakti Tirtha Maharaj had about as the as the word, as the title itself states, you know, applying these technologies that we are reading in these yoga wisdom texts to our everyday life and it might, it might seem like, you know, yeah, it’s not what we do, but a lot of the times, sometimes things can stay very theoretical and not practical.
And so we read about all of these wonderful things like we were talking about, like staying equipoised in goodness and in, in happiness and distress and, you know, and understanding that we’re not the body and, you know, all of this stuff yet how do we practically put that into practice. And that’s what the institute was and is still functioning now. Kunti and Madvacharya run the institute, up in, in Maryland and the programs that we do and the, the, the things that we, when we first started were designed to kind of bring this knowledge to people in a way that they could actually see the practicality of using yoga and yourself as a yoga practitioner and a yoga teacher, as a ways to, you know, create a healthier body and a healthier, more, you know, calm mind using the mantra the mantra meditation, sound meditation as a way to reduce anxiety and also to reconnect us with our higher, our higher purpose.
Learning how to live in community, understanding that the people that we’re around are designed, are there in the greater design to help us pull the things out of ourselves that we need to get rid of in order to be able to move more succinctly on, on this path.
And so it was a really amazingly wonderful time to be in a situation where we could nurture spiritual seekers, nurture people that were asking the same questions that I had been asking, and introduce them to this path of bhakti and be facilitators in helping, people discover the beauty of Realization and of Krishna consciousness, of higher consciousness.
So I was the public relations director there for a while. So it was fun for me because my job mostly well, it was a lot of like administrative work and, you know, getting the books out, getting the tapes out, getting the newsletters out. But it was also creating programs that people could come to.
That could be a mixture, a mixture of, you know, spiritual information and education and entertainment. So it was an opportunity for me to indulge in my, propensity to host things. And then have people gather, which I actually quite like.
Even as an introvert, I love I love being able to do that and then like, scurry away, you know, into my little hole again and then pop back out and do something else and then scurry away again. So. Yeah, that was a lot of that was going on in the instant.
HARI-KIRTANA DAS: So was this channeling your propensity as an extroverted introvert or as an introvert extrovert?
YASODA: No. Thank you. Extroverted introvert. I knew there was a term for it. I knew there was a phrase for it. I just didn’t know what that was. There it is. There it is.
HARI-KIRTANA DAS: Okay. Thank you. in the second half of our conversation, I want to get to talking about your current project, Threeleaf Garden. But before we do that I want to open up for questions that others who are here in our conversation might have for you and also to follow up on the Institute for Applied Spiritual Technology, known as Ifast for short., if someone were was interested in finding out more about I fast. How would they do that?
YASODA: Good question. Like I said there is a center in Maryland that Madhavacharya and Kunti host, and we have actually regular Saturday morning discussions around the philosophy from the bhakti yoga texts. And so joining those morning programs would be really good., they, we have, like, picnics and things that happen. I think there’s picnic coming up in October that people could reach out if you want to either reach out to Vraja Lila or reach out to me.
I think we’ll have my contact information, and I can help put you in touch with IFast in Maryland. or from the we have, there’s a WhatsApp group also that shares information about things that are going on and encourages people to participate in that so we can get that information to you.
HARI-KIRTANA DAS: Okay, great. If so, any of you who are watching this you can also contact me, and I will give you the trail of breadcrumbs that will allow you to participate in what’s going on with the Institute for Applied Spiritual Technology. Thank you.
Any questions or comments from any of you who are with us? Live for our conversation today. You can just unmute yourself or raise your hand, or you can pop a question or comment in the chat if you like.
ELIZABETH: Hey. Elizabeth here. Haribol! Nice to see you Yasodamayi.
YASODA: Hi, Elizabeth.
ELIZABETH: I have a question. if you don’t mind. I would like to hear a little bit more about, when you decided to do this amazing endeavor. Threeleaf Farmden Trifolia. And how that ties into your whole life of bhakti. Could you talk a little bit more about that?
YASODA: Sure., okay. So I actually at one point I was living in DC and Maryland, and then when my husband and I decided that we wanted to start a family and my eldest daughter, Nadine, came along., we were still working with the institute and doing a lot of different things in there., working with Harinam Press which is a book publishing company.
And I, we looked at one day and we realized that we that Hladini was five years old and we had lived in five different houses, five different accommodations in the five years that we had had this girl. And it was like, oh my goodness, how are people? How is she going to have like sleepovers and things like that when we don’t stay in one place long enough for, you know, for her to like, get friends or, you know, put down roots.
So we decided we need to find some way to be and it wasn’t going to be the city because I didn’t really like the idea of raising kids in the city. I wanted community, and I wanted open spaces and greenery, and it’s a long story, but we eventually ended up here in community in Gita Nagari, which is in central Pennsylvania. It’s a spiritual community, and I live on a property that’s about five and a quarter acres. The trees and grass and bushes and lots of deer and groundhogs and rabbits and this is where the children grew up.
And fast forward quite a few years, and now the children have gone. And about maybe ten years ago, I was actually just sitting and looking at the beautiful greenery and all of this and thinking about how I got here and the role that Bhakti Tirtha Maharaj had had had done to get us here and to, you know, invited people to come to Gita Nagari.
And we took him up on that and found this, found this house for us and everything. I was thinking to myself, it really came to me strongly that this is actually not just for you. You know, you may be living here. Your children may have been raised here, but on the bigger scale of things, this is not yours. And this is not just for you. There’s something bigger that you should be doing with this. And now that you don’t have the not the distraction, but, you know, the responsibility of raising kids, you need to get on with what your purpose here should be.
And for the longest time, I was trying to think, well, what is that? What? What should I be doing here? What could I be doing here? And again, it’s kind of like when you’re on that path and you are surrendered to understanding that you’re part of a bigger picture of things and that you’re connected. You have a relationship with, with the Supreme, that you can actually sit back and wait for that information to come to you, because it will come to you. and it came to me one day that you need to open this up. You need to somehow or the other, find a way to reach out to people that are withering for want of connection to the earth, and make this a place where people can come and get reconnected to nature, get reconnected to themselves, and reconnected to a higher purpose.
And once that thought came, once that that vision came, everything started kind of like falling into place. There was another period where I wasn’t quite sure how to go about doing that and realizing that, you know, Trifolia had to be like a separate thing, but at the same time connected with Threeleaf, which is why the names are actually there’s a play with names there, because Trifolia actually means three leaf. Three leaf.
So so I was realizing that so the format that I have now, where we have this nonprofit where people can actually come and be here on the land and we have a lot of different programs, I’m sure we’ll get a chance to talk about that.
And then we have Trifolia, which takes the things that are grown on the land are transformed into things people can use and, and purchase through Trifolia, where the herbs and the tinctures and the teas and the cells and the foods and all of those things are sold through Trifolia, and they actually help each other a lot.
Most of the money that’s earned through Trifolia goes back into providing programs like the health fairs and the food distribution and the classes and all kinds of things, from how to make tofu to how to make kombucha, to how to prepare tinctures. And all of those things are all part of what Threeleaf does. So they work together very nicely.
And I am again able to use my extrovert desire to bring people together and my introvert desire to just like, you know, be behind a workbench, you know, fiddling with things and figuring out things come together and how to make different potencies and potions and and things like that.
So I don’t know if I’ve covered everything, but that’s really how it evolved. And I find myself trying to continue to fulfill the vision that Bhakti Tirtha Maharaj had of outreach and, and bringing this information in a way that’s practical to people so that they can see, you know, it’s not just about living, it’s not just about reading, about being spiritual.
You know, they would have this thing. You know, I’m not religious. I’m spiritual, you know. Well, how are you? Spiritual. How does what you’re engaged in reflect in the way you treat people, or you treat the earth or you you know, or you or your outlook on life or your perspective on life or practices of Maharaj would say, you know, like around self-esteem.
It’s not about thinking of yourself less, but thinking less of yourself. How are you thinking? How are you? How are your actions and your words helping to enrich the lives of those around you? So I’m hoping that that’s what TLF does.
And through the products of Trifolia that people can get a sense of, of, you know, connection with the Earth, because that’s really what that’s what we need. And with the and as we connect with the earth and heal ourselves, heal our spirits, heal our mental states, heal our emotions, we can free ourselves up to be able to really understand what our highest purpose is and reconnect on that level as well.
HARI-KIRTANA DAS: You know, one of the questions I get, one of the one of the most important questions that I get on a very regular basis is how does your beard look so good all the time. And here is the answer.
YASODA: Oh my goodness.
HARI-KIRTANA DAS: Trifolia. All natural beard balm, which keeps my beard totally spiritualized every day because it doesn’t get more practical than that.
YASODA: Yes. Spirituality and a practical, hands on, you know, expression.
HARI-KIRTANA DAS: And I have put the link to Trifolinatural products in the chat for everyone. And of course it will be in the comments along with this video. So yes, a very, very nice partnership and a wonderful play on words to have the source of the products and the products themselves have synonyms for names.
So now we know how the inspiration came about and have a general idea of the project. can you talk a little bit more about the specifics? What do you what do you do with Three Leaf Farm Den? And I’ll put the link to Three Leaf Farm in in the chat in just a moment., but what do you do?
And I know you also have opportunities for others to come for both events, short term and long term. You have an internship program. So tell us a little bit first about, what you do and what kind of events you host when you are in extrovert mode.
YASODA: Well you anything that’s of value, anything that’s of worth, anything that is that is good is actually never just one person. There’s always a team. And we have a team, we have a board, and we have people that offer different classes. For example Lila is also a member of the Three Leaf Farm team, and she’s a certified counselor, grief counselor, and also certified in non-violence, communication, and a whole bunch of other things. I can hardly keep up with all of the areas that specializes in.
She offers a lot of those programs through Farmden. Jackie Reardon/ Jadurani is also a member of the team. Acyuta is also a member of the team. Tanya is also a member of the team, and they all have their different areas of expertise. Acyuta is a nutrition counselor. I think I’m, I, I keep getting her title in incorrect. But all of these people help to provide a lot of the different program programming that goes on in ThreeLeaf. We have different events.
Okay, I’ll just kind of run through some of the things that we’ve done this year. We had a couple of health fairs at the beginning of the year, and these programs are open to the public. They’re usually free of charge. So that our vision, our modus operandi is that your bank balance shouldn’t determine the quality of your life. And so for a lot of the times, the programs that we offer are by self-guided donations or they’re free or they’re for minimal cost, and nobody’s ever turned away for not being able to be able to afford to come to a program. So that’s like a general understanding that we have.
So we have health fairs. We do a drum circle. This year was our eighth annual transformational drum circle, moved by the beat, where people can come and celebrate the spring equinox in community. We do a lot of things in community because community is important, and community is how we are meant to live.
And actually even on the spiritual path of bhakti community or sangha spiritual sangha of sadhu sangha is an important part of being able to deeply appreciate and realize the truth in these paths is when we’re doing it together and we, you know, bounce off each other and help each other on this way.
So community is an important thing on a on a practical level and on a spiritual level. We recently just had a kirtan fest, which is this the power of the chanting of mantra meditation and how transformative that is. That is something that we’re also trying to bring out into a greater, the greater public.
So we’ve been doing a kirtan fest every year for the past three years up in the State College area, which is the main campus of the Pennsylvania State University. So that attracts a lot of young people. And hoping to expand that next year to a kirtan and yoga fest. What else? We do a lot of workshops around health.
So we do kombucha workshops. We do workshops on how to do make tofu. We do cooking classes. We have a cooking class coming up in October, which somebody is doing as part of their birthday celebration. So so they’ll get a chance to learn how to make food as well as, again, bring people together.
So all of these different things are things that are really fun. We work with collaborate with a ministry in the Harrisburg area. It’s a in one of the areas where there’s a food desert. So there’s not a lot of fresh produce and, and quality food there.
So we work with Gita Nagari to take surpluses from another farmer from three league farms and to this to this ministry in an inner city area, so that they can also have access to fresh produce. Yeah.
We’re always willing and happy to work with anybody that has an idea. There’s a program in southwest Washington called the Arc, which does a lot of outreach programs, and we’ve been down there. We’ve been part of their CSA providing herbal teas and tinctures for their CSA membership. We’ve also done a health fair for them as well. And a lot of zoom workshops for them.
So we are open if anybody has any ideas or anybody has any connections, anybody would like to bring the TLF team into an area that they feel is needs this. we’re very happy to, you know, be open to working with other people as well.
HARI-KIRTANA DAS: That’s a wonderful invitation. The Three Leaf Farmden and website URL is in the chat for anyone who wants to check it out. And yes, I wholeheartedly encourage anyone who’s watching or listening who knows of an opportunity for Yasoda and her team to be of service. Please contact her through her website or you can contact me and I will connect you.
There’s also the opportunity to participate in internships. So can you tell us a little bit about who your interns are, where they come from, and what they do with you?
YASODA: Well, most of my interns come through a program called Workaway. I don’t know if anybody knows what. What WOOFING is? W-O-O-F: I think world organic farming, whatever. There’s also a there’s also a program called Workaway. And this is kind of like woofing, where people want to get away to a different part of the world or a different part of the country, and they will exchange work for an experience. And so I’m on my workaway site.
We talk about four different areas that people can come to experience when they come here. One of them is to be nurtured spiritually, to kind of get an opportunity to delve a little bit more into their spiritual nature and their spiritual understanding and work In getting a little bit more grounded in that to working with herbal medicines and herbal and medicinal plants. So what are they? Where are they? How do they grow? What are they used for that kind of thing?
Understanding what it’s like and what it means to live in community. A lot of people think being in community just means a group of people living together. It’s actually a lot more than that. And, and it can get pretty deep into what it really means to be a part of a community, especially an intentional community and or the positive and the negative of that, which is all one kind of package. But what that means and then also herbal medicine, community spirituality, sustainable agriculture.
Yeah. How do we grow the plants? How do we connect with the Earth? How do we how do we treat the Earth in a respectful way? What are the different techniques that can be used, like permaculture and all the different things that we hear about, like mulching and and rotational growing and composting and compost tea and ground covers. And how do how do we use all of these things to produce quality crops? And then what do how do you how do you harvest that? How do you preserve them? Because it’s one thing growing things. But if you grow stuff and then it rots. So what’s the point of that? So how do you how do you how do you preserve the harvest? How do you utilize what you’ve harvested?, And all of those things all come under restorative and sustainable agriculture. So people are also interested in that.
And so it’s a whole combination of things, you know. And it’s been so wonderful to see people coming from all over. The last few people that we’ve had here have come from Australia. We’ve had a couple from Australia that were here about a month ago… a young lady who’s actually a studying to become a doctor. She came from Japan.
We’ve had people from Brazil, people from Puerto Rico, from Trinidad and Tobago, people from Baltimore, from Maryland, from Philadelphia, from North Carolina, from Vermont. And it’s really amazing because I’m enriched, too, because I get a chance to, you know, to find out about the culture of all these people that are coming from around the country or from around the world.
I get to be a part of these people’s lives for a while, and they get to come and experience all of those things that we talked about. So it’s a really beautiful exchange., you know, we stay in touch and I never have to pay for a hotel in any of these places again, so another benefit.
HARI-KIRTANA DAS: Absolutely a side benefit. I have a follow up question about that., insofar as who comes to stay with you and have this kind of experience that this sounds to me like one of the advantages of youth that someone can do this sort of thing.
But before I follow up with that, I want to check back with everyone who is here and joining us for this conversation live, just to see if you have any questions for Yasoda about Three Leaf Farmden and what we’ve heard so far.
Gail. Go ahead.
GAIL: Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna. Yasoda, thank you for presenting this talk.
Yeah, I actually have a few questions. I don’t know where to start, but one of them was actually. I wish that you would have delved a little more deeply into this concept of community, because I’m one of those people who kind of think it’s like a group of people who do just live together, you know?
If you could speak more about the intention of that. And also I was also curious about the name Farnden. You know, you know why it’s not farm. What’s the den part about?
And one just one last thing is if you could, like, spell out the connection In between. You know, our getting our hands in the soil and self-realization. Like, why is it not enough for me to think that my spinach grows in whole foods? You know, what does that have to do with like self realization.
YASODA: Mhm. Yeah. Great questions. okay. The first one farmden. Farmden is actually is a word if garden and farm combined. So the farm is smaller than a farm but bigger than a garden. So we have farmden and I wish I had actually thought about that.
But at a pastor conference, which is a conference for us, sustainable agriculture that’s held here in Pennsylvania every year. It’s been going for 30 something years now, I was in a, in a workshop of, of no till, no till agriculture. That’s where you don’t dig into the ground, but you work with the ground. And he had a farm in Vermont, and I asked him, hey, that’s a beautiful name. Can I steal that from you? And he said, yes. So that’s where Farmden comes from. Smaller than a farm. Bigger than a garden, community.
One of the things one of the somebody once told me here in this community, that community means being available to help others when they need it. And that is a real reality. The essence of living in community is that you are not just there for yourself, you’re actually there to help other people in that community.
That means being present and being available when other people need help, even if it’s at the inconvenience of yourself. That’s really what binds a community together. So I know that if I needed help, which I didn’t. But if I had needed help emptying out my basement with a foot and a half of water, I would have been able to call somebody up for them to, you know, come and help me with that.
Or if somebody calls me up and says, you know, my car just broke down, can you drop everything and come and give me a jump? That’s what I need to do. Somebody says that they are clearing out their basement or clearing out their garage and need help moving stuff to the thrift store, I make my van available for that.
So community means we are there for each other, not just in the good things. Not just like in the celebrations and the birthdays and the baby showers and the anniversaries and all of that. But for the bad things, somebody has lost someone that we show up for them. Somebody is in the hospital, we show up for them. Somebody has just had a baby and needs, needs people to come and bring them food. We show up for them. So community means showing up.
The people that you are around and in, in a, in a highly hyper capitalistic world where all of these things are being sold off as means of making money, elder care, childcare grocery delivery, all of this is now means of making money. In order for us to get back to a sense of who we are and what the community is, we need to be able to be gifting those things through love and not selling those things as a profit.
So that’s basically what community is. And as for realizing that your spinach doesn’t grow in whole foods, it may sound funny, but when I was a substitute teacher, one of the programs that Penn State Extension did was to actually bring fresh fruits and vegetables into the classrooms in the inner-city areas to show kids what things like raspberries looked like or kiwi fruit or, you know, all of these different things.
And a lot of the kids thought broccoli actually did come from the grocery store, that it just, you know, appeared there. And so when so when you’re actually working with the Earth and you have your hands in the earth and you’re sweating and moving things and watering plants, you can see the seed that you put in the earth grow into a seedling. And then you take that seedling and you put it outside and you water it and it grows into a plant, and then that plant produces peppers, or it produces cauliflowers or it produces, you know, sweet potatoes or it produces herbs that you then cut and you cut, chop up and put into a dish that you’re making and offering.
That’s where you can really see that you are part of a bigger picture, that everything around you is part of a bigger picture, that you’re not. You’re not distinct from it. You’re not over it. You’re not in dominance of it. You’re actually just a part of a big web of things that are going on. And then you, you ask yourself the question, how do I make this better? Or how am I? How am I a part of this? Or how did I lose that understanding that I was a part of this in the first place? And, you know, try to regain that? So I hope that answers some of the questions.
Yeah. And I guess, you know, you will eventually come to the point where all those things come from. God. Yeah. And and that’s, that would be the connection. Yeah.
And you and you cannot but come to that point because you cannot control the sun, you can’t control the rain and you need those two things to grow that plant. You can’t control. You can try to control whether things are going to eat that plant or not, you know, or how you can keep all the things that you know, want to eat that plant from eating that plant. You know you’re working with you can’t kill every living entity that has its eyes on your plant. So you have to work with those entities as well. You know, so yeah, very much.
And, you know, this is just one thing from a microbiological, microbiological point of view, you know, that there are soil organisms that actually trigger the dopamine, the smell of these organisms, the bacteria in the soil triggers the dopamine in your brain to bring you pleasure, which is why putting your hands in the soil and working with the soil is so uplifting and grounding. You know, there’s a pun there, but it’s so uplifting because it’s designed that way. The sound of running water, you know, initiates this sense of of of well-being. The smell, you know, honeybees vibrate their wings in the key of C, which relieves anxiety.
So nature is not our enemy. And yet we, we, we are living in these little houses that and air conditioned and and you know, and heat p ps. And when do we get out into nature. When do we go and roll? Literally roll in the grass. At least walk on the earth in our bare feet, feel the sun on ourselves. All this is so important to our well-being, eating whole foods and knowing where your food comes from. All of this is so important. And yet we’ve we’re moving further and further and further away from it.
And I’m wondering why we’re so depressed. We’re so anxious. We have the highest rate of cancer, the highest rate of heart disease, the highest rate of this and that as we move farther and farther away from our healing mother, you know, so it’s so important that we connect back with her. And anyone that wants to do that, to connect back, you know Harry has put the information in the chat, get in contact with me, you know, come and feel what it’s like to be here in 3D farmed and to take a weekend or a week or a month in connecting in, in this, in this lifestyle.
HARI-KIRTANA DAS: Something I wholeheartedly encourage everyone here and everyone watching or listening after the fact to do this has been a wonderful conversation. I especially enjoyed hearing you speak about your understanding of community, and how much deeper and more significant it is than just people who live together and celebrate together, but also who come together with the understanding of being available, no matter how inconvenient it may be for one another. I think that’s a really wonderful definition of community. And that’s going to be, I think, one of my big takeaways from this conversation. I hope everyone else also has an equally significant takeaway. There were so many things to choose from., Yashoda, thank you so very much for taking the time to.
YASODA: Thank you for the invitation.
HARI-KIRTANA DAS: Oh, yeah. Well, you know my pleasure. And we’ll do it again. There’s plenty more that we could be talking about, so hopefully we’ll do this again sometime. Great.
YASODA: Thank you all for being a part of this.
HARI-KIRTANA DAS: Thank you all very much for being here. I look forward to seeing you next time for our monthly community conversation. Have a wonderful rest of your day. Thanks.