29 Day Giving Challenge

 This month we are doing something that we have never done before.  We are putting out a challenge to our readers.  The Acreage editorial staff has accepted the 29-Day Giving Challenge and is in turn passing it on to our readers.  

29 Gifts is a global giving movement with several thousand members in 38 countries.  The mission is to "revive the giving spirit in the world".  The point of the challenge is to remind us that "Giving of any kind..taking an action....beings the process of change, and moves us to remember that we are part of a much greater universe."

The first thing we are asking you to do is visit, http://www.givingchallenge.ning.com and read more about the project for inspiration and how to do it.  

But the staff's challenge to Acreage readers is more specific.  We not only want you to give away 29 things in 29 days, we want you to make them acreage related.  Most of us living on an acreage do it as a choice of life style.  I believe without economic boundaries and social obligations more people would choose an acreage lifestyle.  So we are asking you to share your Acreage blessings and bounties with those unable to live the same dream.

Let me give you a few examples that spring to my mind.  Give some of those seeds you collected out of your flower garden to a young person who has just purchased their first home.  Give photos of your acreage attached to a note to cheer an old friend.  Give some deer jerky to a buddy you know didn't fill his tag this year.  Give a new home to a rescue animal or a stray from your local animal shelter or go to http://www.mustang-spirit.org or http://www.greyhoundfriends.com for more ideas.  Almost any kind of pet that you're interested in has a rescue site available.  Give an opportunity to enjoy some time in wide-open spaces to a child who otherwise couldn't.  Contact your local Big Brothers Big Sisters program http://www.bbbs.org or local youth program in your area and take a deserving kid out for a ride on a horse, ATV, snowmobile or tractor.  Give a hand and use that new rotor tiller in your neighbor's garden.  Give those beautiful vegetables from your garden to the local battered women's shelter or to that elderly widowed neighbor who had to move to town.  Give your acreage as a meeting place and host an old-fashioned potluck and/or barn dance.  Give your child's teacher a dozen apples off your tree.  Give your favorite baker a dozen fresh brown eggs. Give a child, with their parent's permission of course, one of those champion blood-line Labrador Retrievers you raise to have just as a pet.  Put every jar of that home made jelly in your car and give one to each person you see until the jars are gone.  Fix an old-fashioned country meal and then given an invitation, to someone you suspect is lonely, to have supper with you and your family.

I probably could go on for a while because I'm on a roll coming up with my own list of twenty-nine gifts to give, but I think you're getting the idea.  The very last thing we are asking of our readers is to report back to us with the results.  Go to http://www.acreagelife.com and let us know about the unique gifts you gave and how people reacted to your gifts and how you felt while giving your gifts or email me your giving story at katherinedc@agdeal.com.  We are excited to hear what happens.