I wanted to take a moment to update you on our project about Ohioan Emma "Grandma" Gatewood who was the first woman to solo thru-hike the Appalachian Trail when she was 67 years old in 1955!

As you may have heard, our Grandma Gatewood storytelling program premiered to a sold-out house on November 1 and we already have a booking for another performance in July. Now we are moving ahead to raise money to create a documentary about Emma to tell her story in more complete detail. There is a special campaign on Kickstarter to help with this. We have until January 19 to raise $3500 in seed money for the project which will help as we approach foundations and corporations to assist us in creating the complete story. The good news is that we have already collected almost 20% of our goal in less than a week!

Please take a moment to read about this project and consider donating to the cause – any donation is gratefully accepted and you can pledge as little as $1.00! No money will be collected unless we successfully meet our goal of $3,500 by January 19, 2012. Even if you can't contribute at this time, please pass this message along to your friends with a request for their support.

Donations can also be made directly to Eden Valley (regardless of whether or not we meet the Kickstarter goal) by visiting our project page and downloading the form to mail a check or use the "donate button" to make a payment through PayPal. As a not-for-profit corporation under section 501(c)(3) of the IRS code, all donations to Eden Valley are tax deductible.

Thank you in advance for all your support and for helping to spreading the word about this project.

Always,
Bette Lou Higgins
Artistic Director

P.S.: As a special "Thank You" to anyone donating before December 14, I'll send you a PDF E-Book of our story of the Christmas Tree Ship,the Rouse Simmons!