For a long time before I had the words for it, I had the feeling.
It came in small moments. Standing in a grocery store aisle reading the ingredient list on a loaf of bread. Watching my children play in our yard and realizing they had not seen a neighbor's child all week. Driving past another subdivision being built on what used to be farmland. Sitting in a Sunday service that I loved, but feeling the distance between the words we sang and the lives we lived the rest of the week.
The feeling was a kind of homesickness. Not for any place I had been, but for somewhere I had not yet found. A place where the food on the table came from the land outside the window. Where neighbors knew each other's names and children. Where worship was not a Sunday event but a daily way of moving through the world. Where the ordinary rhythms of life were already the spiritual practice.
I started saying it out loud to my husband Justin a few years ago. He had the same feeling. We talked about it on long walks, and then on long drives, and then on a few flights to look at land. We read books. We visited intentional communities, agrihoods, monasteries, ranches. We took notes. We asked too many questions.
And eventually, after a lot of prayer and a lot of conversation, we knew what we were going to do.
The Land Found Us
We did not pick Shasta County. Shasta County picked us. We had been looking at properties up and down the West Coast for almost a year when we found the 507 acres outside Redding. Five contiguous parcels. Zoning that worked. Water that worked. A view of Mount Shasta on a clear morning. A creek running through it.
The moment we walked the land, both of us knew. We did not even need to talk about it on the drive home. It was the kind of knowing that does not require a conversation.
Since then, the project has only become more real. The vision has clarified. The team has begun to form. The first founding families have begun to find us. The decisions that used to feel theoretical now have weight.
What We Are Building
Still Waters is not a development. It is a village. A faith-forward, walkable, regenerative wellness village built around a working farm and a Worship House at the sacred center. Seventy-five founding families will live here in homes made of hempcrete and natural materials, gathered into a community that shares rhythms, meals, work, and worship.
Everything worth doing will be within a 30-minute walk or less. The roads will be cobblestone, not asphalt. The walls will be hempcrete, not drywall and toxic foam. The food will come from the farm fifty yards away, not from a truck that drove three days to deliver it. The children will grow up knowing their neighbors, the animals, and the seasons. The adults will have a place to slow down without leaving their daily life.
It will be beautiful. We are unembarrassed about this. Beauty matters. Beauty is a kind of medicine. The land deserves to be cared for in a way that lets its beauty grow rather than fade.
Why Faith Stays at the Center
Still Waters is a faith-forward community. The Worship House is the first building we will raise on the land. Not the largest or the most expensive, but the first. Every other zone of the village radiates outward from it. This is intentional.
We are not building a Christian compound. We are not asking people to share every belief Justin and I hold. Guests and visitors of all faith backgrounds will be welcomed here with the warmth they deserve. But the village itself is faith-forward, and we do not hide this. We say it gently and clearly so that everyone who comes knows what kind of place this is.
The reason is simple. Faith is the foundation of everything else we hope this place will be. The stewardship of the land. The care of one another. The slow rhythms. The shared meals. The way we raise our children. The way we welcome strangers. All of it grows from the same root. To pretend otherwise would be to build the village on a foundation we do not actually have.
What We Have Learned So Far
Building something like this is not glamorous. Most days look like spreadsheets, emails, and difficult conversations. We have made mistakes. We will make more. The work of putting together a project of this scale, while raising a family and trying to live the same values we are inviting other families into, is humbling in ways that no book prepares you for.
But I have learned a few things worth sharing.
The right families will find you. I have been amazed at how often, in the past year, someone has heard about Still Waters and reached out within days saying, "We have been looking for this for years." There is a real hunger for what we are building. We are not creating that hunger. We are just naming what is already there.
You cannot rush a community. A development can be rushed. A community cannot. We are taking our time choosing founding families, not just because we want the right people, but because the families themselves need time to discern. We are looking for people who arrive at this with their eyes open and their hearts settled.
The vision has to be specific. Vague visions do not get built. The Worship House at the sacred center. The 30-minute walk. The hempcrete. The 12 values. The Covenant. The Rule of Life. The specificity is what makes it real, and what lets other people see whether they belong inside it.
What Is Next
We are in Phase 0. The land is moving toward acquisition. The earliest founding families are beginning to commit. The first contractors and architects are being interviewed. The Worship House is being designed. The Glamping Village basecamp is being planned.
If you have read this far, I want to thank you. The fact that this story is finding readers means it is also finding the families and partners we have been hoping for. If something in here resonated, I would love to hear from you. Not because I am collecting names. Because I genuinely want to know who is being drawn toward this and why.
You can reach me directly at KassiBlanchard@gmail.com. Or you can subscribe to the Journal below and stay close to the land as Still Waters takes shape.
I am glad you are here.