Bill and Betsy Bruneau personal

A Bit More About Bill and Betsy

Bill and Betsy Bruneau

We have been married for about 25 years, and have lived in Mendocino county for over 20 years. We have two grown children who both went to Stanford after graduating from Willits High. Our house is made of rammed earth. It is quite beautiful, wonderfully comfortable, and since we live near an active fault, engineered to take an earthquake of magnitude 8. Betsy runs Bountiful Gardens, and I run WB Publisher from 20 acres that is 5 miles outside of town - true home offices!

Perhaps the largest "other" thing in our life right now is our Episcopal mission. It is a relatively small, but wonderfully eclectic group of true believers, who are all quite involved personally in just about every social service in the county. We are one of the first congregations in the diocese of Northern California to pursue Shared Ministry (otherwise known as Total Ministry). This takes us back to how the church was just after Christ. We have called our own local priest, who happens to be Betsy. While she a full Episcopal priest, she is not paid. She works full time at Bountiful Gardens. Our solution is to take all the other duties of a priest that take up most of their time, and give them to members of our congregation to fulfill. This is in ways similar to the christian congregations the rest of the congregation is also training for the ministry, taking up many of the duties usually performed by a full- time, paid minister. This is simply fulfilling our baptismal vows while each of us takes on some of the many ministerial functions, based on whatever gifts we have to offer.

In addition to writing books, I have been writing poetry for over 40 years. Some of it will be displayed on this website eventually, along with my efforts to capture digital images of our life in this county.

Life in Willits is rich for such a small town - everything from a thriving solar industry to Roots of Motive Power to our Skunk Train, from our school's frequent medals at the State Academic Decathlon to our High School rodeo team, a small thriving live local theater to our seasonal Youth Shakespeare Company that performs on a Stratford-On-Avon stage made up of straw bales.

About our Strawbale Episcopal Church

Straw Bale Process Documentary

About Alternative Building

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