vol. 274 / LOVELY DAYExploring and celebrating the place we all love to call home.
VOL. 274 / LOVELY DAY
Meet this week's guest editor, Dr. Jody Conway. Jody is the Lead Collaborator of FreeHorse Arts nature-based programming and owner of Dandelion Springs Apiary and Uptown Girls Honey Gift Shop. With a Doctor of Pharmacy degree, her career has spanned twenty years and evolved from teaching to working as a pharmacist in Richmond's Carytown district to managing a 30-acre regenerative farm and business in Chesterfield, Virginia. Her transition to beekeeping began when she noticed the absence of bees on flowering plants during her walks to work, leading her to combine her pharmaceutical compounding expertise with apiary management to create natural healing products from honey, beeswax, propolis, and pollen.
At Dandelion Springs Apiary, Dr. Conway manages over 20 teaching hives while operating a retail operation that includes product development, educational tours, workshops, and speaking engagements. Her farm houses 60+ animals including horses, goats, sheep, chickens, ducks, rabbits, cats, dogs, and bees, all maintained using pesticide-free, regenerative farming practices. Through her work with FreeHorse Arts, she focuses on cultivating present connections to the natural world, creating conscious community, and fostering understanding beyond self. Dr. Conway's approach emphasizes that every choice has environmental impact, and her mission extends from helping bees to building sustainable ecosystems and educational communities that demonstrate the interconnectedness of all living systems.
Take it away, Jody ...
Songs & Stories: A Tribute to Bill Withers
Celebrate the legacy of Bill Withers with an evening of music, movement, and memory. Singer-songwriter Kori Withers honors her father’s iconic life and work through personal storytelling and live performance, joined by the inclusive FreeHorse Arts herd and an all-star lineup from Richmond’s creative community—including City Dance, Weekend Plans, and the First African Baptist Church Choir. Songs & Stories is a soulful tribute and a powerful reminder of the ties that bind us through art, legacy, and love.
Community Garden Art & Nature – Pond Life @ Dandelion Springs Apiary
Cool off, get your hands in the dirt, and reconnect with the rhythms of nature at Pond Life—a hands-on art and ecology experience at Dandelion Springs Apiary, hosted by The Healthy Herd in collaboration with FreeHorse Arts. Together, you’ll explore pond ecosystems, build water gardens, and learn how to support native habitats through creative stewardship. A perfect summertime escape for nature lovers of all ages.
Tap into nature, presence, and powerful connection with Horse Sense—an immersive experience guided by The Healthy Herd at Dandelion Springs Apiary, in collaboration with FreeHorse Arts. Through a hands-on encounter with horses Lukka and Glaumur, participants will explore equine wisdom, communication, safety, holistic care, and even water play. This is more than horse time—it’s a re-wilding of the nervous system and a return to grounded insight. No horse experience needed.
What I have learned is that we cannot do everything ourselves. Managing a teaching apiary with over 20 hives, making products from the hive, managing the retail store, organizing tours, workshops, seminars, in-hive sessions and speaking engagements, tending to 60+ animals to include horses, goats, sheep, chickens, ducks, rabbits, cats, dogs, and bees and attempting to rebuild a healthy balance on traditionally farmed land, requires community. There are never enough hours in the day, and it often seems like two steps forward and three steps back in this process, but the things we have gained are priceless. The connections, the knowledge, the peace, the doors that continue to open, the simple and subtle signs that yes -- this process is working… are ALL priceless.
My initial goal was to help the bees, but sharing the FreeHorse Arts’ underlying values of cultivating a present connection to the natural world, creating conscious community, and understanding beyond self, has been an expansive and evolutionary process. Every single choice we make has an impact, positive or negative, and I have learned that any effort made, any person reached, any balance restored…it is ALL significant!
