Barn Lost in Flood

Hi, my name is Maria Yraceburu. Some of you know me as the spiritual director of Yraceburu EarthWisdom, a nonprofit spiritual organization, kind of like a church… an alternative Earth church. Others of you know me as shima… Aunty.

[Important note: on 1/12/2023 we upped our amount goal from $5500 to $6000 because of drainage underneath the barn - we are allowing the additional to go into a more sophisticated system. Thank you for your understanding.]

For years Linda and I have worked together in community, to bring you closer to the Earth and to Nature, doing everything from classes, to nature education, to healing sessions, and of course our spiritual ceremonies. Today, I’m coming to you about the situation with our barn for our Helping Hooves Herd that work with women suffering from ptsd.

Those of you that have been around, know that we built this barn as a temporary shelter because we lease the ranch, and the landlord didn’t want a permanent building because of property taxes. Because of this we put in what’s called a skid foundation. This made the barn easy to tear down if we ever had to leave. The space provided for the shelter is at the low point in the pasture. When we have excessive water, the barn floods. In the five years we’ve been here we’ve done a lot to stop this including french drains, DG flooring, and many attempts to reroute the water.

On January 1st our defenses failed, our barn flooded with the first storm of the season. High winds tore at the roof, and the sheer amount of water (nearly 3 inches) that fell within the short amount of time (four hours), moved the mountain of mud into the open air barn.

Every year we’ve worked hard to keep these babies out of the mud, and every year we’ve gotten older. I am 68 and Linda is 62, so the amount of heavy labor we can do, has decreased significantly. But we’re lucky, we’ve got a crew here in San Diego now, of committed folks that can help us with the heavy lifting.

Since New Mexico, which we left to come to San Diego in 2017, our horses have been a central part of the family work through the church. They are historic heroes in many of our community women’s lives.

Dr. Katherine Reith, heard the news and instantly sent a donation. She had to help build a new barn at her beloved ranch-church-home. Her $1,000 gift is the first donation made to rebuild.

This is been a true community effort, I cannot pretend to be able to raise enough money to cover all of the expenses that will be incurred with the upcoming tear down and rebuild, but I hope to raise enough to get us started and to help get these regal animals a situation that will sustain them for years to come. Will you join me?

– MARIA