Olive season is coming. Hidden Villa has a 1/2 acre olive grove and many other olive trees lining our road and around the property.  The original trees were planted by missionaries in the 1880's and they were harvested and pressed for oil intermittently by the Duvenecks.  The grove had gone largely untended and overgrown until about ten years ago when we topped the trees in a long term project to reclaim the orchard's productivity.  Thanks to several recent years of diligent pruning the trees are once again producing substantial crops.

As we aproach autumn it is time for summer camp to come to an end. This will be my final blog post for the season and I thought it would be appropriate to focus on our eldest campers here at Hidden Villa, and their journey from camper to counselor in our A.C.T. program. A handfull of A.C.T. campers have completed their training and mentoring program over the course of first three sessions of this summer. During this final session, these A.C.T.s  have become intern counseling staff in the day camp, tipi camp, and rez camp programs. In this role A.C.T.s are full time staff members of the summer camp community.

Greetings from summer camp! I apologize for not updating the last few weeks, but I promise that things have been just as busy and joyful as ever here on the farm. This week I had the chance to jump in to Tipi Camp and lead a choice activity. During choice activities campers are presented with a variety activities, all at different energy levels and involving different aspects of Hidden Villa.

Hello, and welcome to the very first Hidden Villa Summer Camp blog posting! My name is Echo and I will be posting regular, weekly entries for the duration of the summer. I'll start with a little bit of my background before we jump in to what is going on here at camp.