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PAGE 10A PICKENS COUNTY PROGRESS THURSDAY. JULY 26. 2007
Shooting the Breez with Chiquita Berry
You and Twelve Stone Farm are inseparable,
How did you get where you are?
I’ve had the farm for 20 years. I started buying
it in 1987 about three years after my husband and
I had divorced. It was an old run-down farm, and
it had one old falling-down barn and one old
falling-down shed and one tree. It was overgrown
by the time I took over. I bought a tractor and had
someone teach me how to drive it, then started
clearing the land. And that was a real lesson in
faith and facing my fears. And it has just gone
from there. I was not making enough money to
pay for the farm when I bought it, but, on faith, I
did it. And when I did, it's like Heaven just
opened its doors and just poured blessings on it.
It’s a 20-year love story of all the wonderful
things I’ve been taught, and the way I have grown
and the spiritual path I have taken. I was a spiritu
al person before I bought the farm, but it has
taught me so much. And to have it to share with
people is my greatest joy. To me, if God gives you
something, it’s to share, not to hoard. That’s my
passion and my joy. Having people here and see
ing them enjoy it.
I’ll be 72 in about a week. I was a Depression
baby that was born in Grady Hospital as a charity
case, and to go from being very, very poor to hav
ing an awesome place like this that you can share
is a beautiful, wonderful expression of God’s
abundance. What you do is you dream, and then
you put feet under the dream and help it come
true. If you can visualize it, you can make it hap
pen. God and I and the farm are in a three-way
partnership, and it just works.
You talked about sharing the farm. How do
you share?
I do workshops and seminars, mostly spirit-
based, for people who are interested. When I say
spirit, the farm is not any one religion, because I
want everybody to feel it is an open place to come.
My background is Christian, but I have a lot of
Jewish friends, Buddhist friends, agnostic friends,
and I generally work with people that fall through
the cracks and they feel like God’s let them down
or they’ve let God down or they don’t even know
if there is a God. By just working with them and
letting them just relax and accepting them like
they are. Not asking them to change to like them,
but accepting them like they are. And then they
blossom.
That’s what I try to give to people that cross my
path. When you finally have that total acceptance,
it really liberates the inner person to venture out to
be who you’re supposed to be. The healings that
have happened for people here have been amaz
ing. Not only does it heal people - horses.
I take in abused and starved and neglected
horses. I have some that come here and they’ll bite
you and kick at you and they’ll be mean to the
other horses, and before long you find they’ll just
mellow out, get friendly, and they’ll nuzzle ya and
love on ya. It’s all the acceptance.
The first thing I do to connect with them is just
go stroke them with my hands, not a brush, but
rub them with my hands all over. I’ve had some
horses that have been so abused, they don’t want
you to catch ‘em. I just follow them around for an
hour. Just walking along behind it, never chase it,
just follow, until they figure the only way to get
rid of me is to let me touch them. Sometimes you
can take a treat, but I don’t treat my horses. My
horses love me. And the love is enough for them.
I can go out there and call the name of a horse and
that horse will come down to me. That’s love.
How do you share the horses?
I work with Foster children and I use horses as
a tool. They think they’re learning to ride horses,
and they do learn, but it’s not riding lessons per se.
It’s teaching them about self-esteem and setting
goals and setting boundaries and self-awareness,
and the horses are the tool because they will chal
lenge them to make a yes be yes and a no be no.
A few weeks ago I talked to Judge Worcester-
Holland about working with the high-risk youth in
Pickens County to do equine-assisted learning and
public service work to help them see different
options other than their self-destructive ways. I
came from a very abusive home as a kid, so I have
great compassion for kids who are having tough
times. The horses and my friends were a way out
of my destructive life at home, so I try to offer that
to kids who are in trouble.
I’ve got one little girl who was always in trou
ble, going to a psychiatrist, was on drugs, was
being sent to the principal every day or put in time
out, all this stuff, and since she’s been coming
here she’s been able to get off the drugs, get off
seeing the psychiatrist, the teacher sent us home
notes saying she had a perfect week, and she’s just
turned into this precious little girl. The mother
says the only difference is the horses.
So when you can do that for one life and then
you multiply that by all the lives you touch, it’s a
beautiful thing. And hopefully the world’s a better
place because I walked here a little while.
You also hold concerts here. What inspired
you?
I started the music program because I have two
sons-in-law that are in music. Both are in bands.
One provided all the sound equipment just to help
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Chiquita Berry takes in abused and aban
doned animals, such as this fawn. John
Deere 2, the second deer she has housed,
was brought to her by a neighbor when he
was found without his mother. At a week old,
he has found a new mother in Berry, like so
many other animals.
me promote this. The other, Kailin Yong, is in the
band [Boulder Acoustic Society, which came on
the 22nd for the Twelve Stone Farm Concert
Series], He had asked me a year ago if I’d like to
have a farm concert, and I said, “Well, yeah!
That’d be fine, but what do I do?’’ He said, “Just
do it like your birthday party.” So that’s what got
me started on doing the concerts.
We’ve had three so far, and so we’ve got four
to go. So it’s about every six weeks that I have a
concert here, but I don’t have quite enough of an
audience yet to do it any more often than that. And
Nate at Nate’s Music Room has said he was
impressed and that he would like to help me pro
mote it. I was talking to him recently about having
a festival where several bands come and have a
whole afternoon of music. Every band that’s been
here has loved it and said they would like to come
back.
I don’t want to be classified as country or blue-
grass; I want a mix of music that would appeal to
a wide audience that’s not just one type of music.
I want to include world music in it. This
September, I’ve got a Kalimba player, that’s a lit
tle African finger piano, and then a Peruvian musi
cian, and people like that.
What’s it like living alone here?
I don’t even feel like I’m living alone. I feel
very comfortable here; very protected. I take care
of this entire farm. There’s a hundred acres, and
right now there are 36 horses. I’m trying to get the
number of horses down because without the rain,
the pastures have been suffering and the creeks
are drying up. If this rain continues, the crisis will
be past, but there won’t be any hay this winter, so
I’ve asked some of my boarders to find other
places to keep their horses.
But life is magical [laughs]. It’s magical, and
I’m so thrilled to be part of the magic. I have to
mow the pastures, I fix the fences, do the building,
although I have volunteers come and help from
time to time. That’s beautiful, for people to give
their time and energy and money to come here to
help make the farm, because they believe in what
the farm is all about. I’ve spent 20 years building
an infrastructure here for people to be able to
come and find that peace and tranquility in them
selves that’s God-given. I can never die and I can
never get sick because I’ve spent all my end-times
money fixing the farm [laughs].
However unlikely, if you don’t live forever,
what will happen to the farm?
For me, spirits are eternal, but my body is
gonna wear out one of these days. What I am hop
ing is that my children will carry on. I am a 501C3
non-profit charity, and they’re on the board of
directors. I don’t ever want it to be developed into
a resort or something. I want it to be natural. Like
my house and the chapel; they are so basic. This
place is so simple. There’s no place to hide, you
don’t have to wear a mask. The chapel is made out
of clay and sand and straw. When you go in, it’s
like going into Mother Earth’s womb. Where can
you be safer than in your mother’s womb?
My goal right now is to develop an infrastruc
ture where somebody handles music, somebody
handles horseback riding, somebody handles sem
inars, stuff like that. To me, success would be if
the day that I die, this person’s working on horses,
this one’s working on music programs, this one’s
working on counseling, and one will turn to the
other and say, “Oh by the way, did you hear that
Chiquita died today?” So it can flow beyond me.
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