In recent months there's been an sharp uptick in inquires from reporters, wondering if interest in community living is on the rise as a response to the current economic hard times. The quick answer is a resounding "Yes!"

FIC has experienced a 25% increase in web traffic over a year ago—now up to almost 2000 per day. Fully 75% of those visits are to our online Directory, which is the #1 source worldwide for finding out who's doing what and where, in the world of intentional communities. This is our bread and butter, and a lot of people are stopping by our Directory snack shop for a bite of sustenance.

A deeper question is how close are we as a society to major economic upheaval? Who knows. I first started thinking seriosuly about the possibility of major economic collapse as a college junior in 1970, when campuses were on strike in response to Nixon's Cambodian misadventure, as part of our failed strategy in Vietnam (styled euphemistically as an "incursion"). Remember Kent State? I do, and I wondered that spring if colleges would be open for business again the following fall.

College classes did indeed resume that fall, and every fall since then. I've been listening to periodic predictions of catastrophic economic upheaval ever since: the OPEC oil emarbgo in 1973; the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991; the Battle in Seattle and WTO protest in 1999; The World Trade Center bombings in 2001, Now it's the sub-prime mortgage scandal, Peak Oil, and Transition Towns. I've been listening to forecasts of impending doom for nearly 40 years. Will it really happen this time? I don't know.

If we had played by the rules, they likely would never have been permitted to come.

But because i was characteristically sloppy, Voice of America came to do a features piece at Twin Oaks. A recruiting manager who was on top of their game would have posted the emails that VOA sent requesting they come and cover the commune weeks before their arrival. And quite likely had i done that the members of the community who had concerns would have rallied enuf upset to chase off the propaganda arm of the US government. But i surprised people with them and they were already on campus before a few people expressed their upset at their presence.

They made no bones about who they were. Calling themselves US propagandists. Offering their own observations of VOA's manipulative behavior, like closing offices in countries they are less interested in. There was a precious moment when they were trying to convince I-P (formerly Piankhy) to let them film him (he was lusciously telegenic with his Asian musical instrument and his rich dark north African skin) by saying that they just reported the facts. I-P was having none of it.

When I conduct a two-year facilitation training, I devote one of the eight weekends to focusing on Challenging Personalities. I have developed a handout about this that I call the Meeting Menagerie: Personalities from A to Z. Under "B" I describe the Bully.

This is a fairly common type. Bullies tend to be loud and aggressive, hoping to achieve through bluster and volume what they may not succeed with through strength of ideas. They tend to thrive in environments with weak process agreements and unskilled facilitation.

Today I want to focus on a particular subset of this common type: the Productive Bully. This is a highly interesting case, where the loud and pushy person is also highly productive. When the bully is all Sturm und Drang and little action, dealing with them tends to be more straight forward (though not necessarily more pleasant). With the Productive Bully, there may be a real question about whether the group can function well without the Bully's considerable contributions and it muddies the waters about how best to proceed. I am particularly senstive to this type because for some, I am the Productive Bully.

(The irony here is that this personal liability translates into a professional asset. One of the ways in which I'm particularly prized as a process consultant is working with groups who have Productive Bullies among their membership. Based on my own group experience, I find it relatively easy to understand the dynamic and can simultaneously help the Bully find a way to examine their behavior with dignity, and help the group understand their options for engaging on the objectionable bahviors without vilifying the person.)

The Communities Conference is a networking and learning opportunity for anyone interested or involved in co-operative or communal lifestyles.

Join us for a weekend of sharing and celebration!

Friday August 14 through
Sunday August 16, 2009
$85 (sliding scale) includes
meals and camping.

Twin Oaks Communities Conference
138 Twin Oaks Road, Louisa, VA 23093
540-894-5126
http://communitiesconference.org/

Twin Oaks Communities Conference
138 Twin Oaks Road, Louisa, VA 23093
540-894-5126

conference@twinoaks.org

The Schedule: The conference begins late afternoon/suppertime on Friday. Activiites are scheduled throughout the weekend, and will either be posted elsewhere on this page, or email us for details.

Click Here to Register!

We just installed new forum software for the FEC website. Come take part in the discussion at the following link: http://thefec.org/forum

Ask current FEC members questions about their communities. Network with other folks with similar ideas and values. Take part in discussions about forming egalitarian communities!

Please comment with feedback on how we can make this site more useful to you!

Howdy Memphis Democrat readers, this is Brandon, a “perennial” visitor to Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, sitting on the porch swing of the Common House enjoying the sunshine, watching the mud dry up a bit, and writing to report on the goings-on in the village from a slightly different angle. Typically a community member would write this column, but in an effort to pitch in during my visit, I offered to recount some of the activities in the village from the past week and share a glimpse of this place through the eyes of a person who has visited several times.
 
One thing that has certainly changed since that first visit to Dancing Rabbit in the spring of 2005 is the number of building projects going on here. I bet if I had a postage stamp for every board and timber cut on, every nail and screw driven, and every shovelful of dirt, gravel or mulch moved in the village this past week I could mail enough envelopes to wallpaper the inside of the Milkweed Mercantile. But what a shame that would be, having seen the amazing mosaic work Tamar has done there on the earthen plaster wall.
 
In the four years since my introduction here to life in an ecovillage, I’ve watched Dancing Rabbit’s population more than double resulting in the aforementioned buzz of activity and its expanding village periphery. And I don’t remember there being near as much distinction in describing various village locales during those early visits. Gone are the days when it was sufficient to respond with an “over yonder” when inquiry was made about the location of this or that.
 

Spring is an enchanting time of year: a time of beginnings & awakening, verdant shoots of green grass, sprightly wild flowers,  multi-colored flowering fruit trees, sap is rising, people falling in love, and so many beauteous things. For me, it is all of those – and also one of the most stressful times of the year. How so?

Spring: “sap is rising” is a common expression – my energy is up too: I wake up at 5:30, coffee, yogurt & toast, some quiet time, and then I’m ready to GO! Except that it’s cold & rainy out – not fair! Nature is geared up & my motor is revved up – with no place to go! I guess I could go fishing, repair farm equipment – but, in the rain?

THIS IS THE HARD PART – WAITING. Many think that the challenging part of farming & gardening is the work – well yes, it is a lot of work – but at least, when I am working, I feel good/productive. I can work long hours and my body aches – and it feels so good compared to “chomping at the bit” (a reference to bygone days when we worked with horses: they were ready to go and we held them back with the bit in the bridle…).

Rain – there is nothing as comforting as the sound & smell of rain when we really need it – I wake up in the night and hear the pitter-patter on the rood and ah! all is right with the world. BUT -  it is equally discouraging when we have too much. Folklore around here says you should always welcome rain – if you don’t, you’ll be looking for it soon. I know I should be thankful for the rain but by the 4th week of it – I’m ready to scream & do an anti-rain dance.

Failure. Ouch! We don’t like to use that word to describe our endeavors or any facet of our lives. In New Age lingo we prefer things like: missed possibilities, unfortunate circumstances, unplanned learning opportunities, new challenges, etc.

What failure?  Sandhill’s tempeh business. In our 35 years on the land here, we have experimented with various crops and products to earn income: (beginning with highest total income) sorghum syrup, honey, mustard, horseradish, condiments (salsa, relish, etc), seeds, and occasionally, fresh vegetables & fruit. For the last five years, tempeh was in the #2 spot. What happened?

First: what is tempeh? It is a cultured soybean product – originally from Indonesia. Some call it a meat substitute due to it’s high protein levels – so it is popular with vegetarians. We make it by from soybeans that we grow on the farm: the beans are cracked in half, soaked, and then boiled until soft (but not mushy), cooled and inoculated with rhizopus oligosporus (a spore, which we buy). The inoculated beans are put in one-half pound ziplock bags, flattened (like a hamburger patty), and placed in racks inside of a homemade box that maintains it at 90 – 100 degrees F for about 24 hours. During this time, the spores develop and grow throughout the soybeans making them more digestible for humans (like yogurt is to milk). We then freeze it and sell it  frozen. There are many ways to prepare it: marinate it in soy sauce, herbs & spices, or simply fry, bake, broil, etc. Tempeh ruben sandwiches are popular in restaurants.

My friend Donald, a pagan witch, oft refers to “the mysterious ones”; in my paradigm, the reference is to the spirits or gods/goddesses that are in nature and daily life. Although I can’t see them, I sense their presences around me. I like the “mysterious” part because that is how I experience various non physical forces/energies.

So what does this have to do with agriculture? When I plant a seed, I have a picture of what the plant will look like – BUT no idea if it will be sickly or vigorous,  whether the return/yield will be zero or a hundredfold. It  depends on weather, genetics, soil fertility, care, etc – and yet, to me, the sum of these factors does not account for the variation in the vigor of plants and their yield. I prefer to ascribe the difference to – the “mysterious ones”.

Example:  our  maple harvest. We have been tapping maple trees at Sandhill for 21 years now. During 2002 – 08, the number of trees we tapped/harvested remained constant and everything that we earthlings did was the same. The return/yield varied from 30 to 115 quarts of syrup. Why the difference? Supposedly, it all depends on the weather:  ideal weather is when the nights are below freezing and the days are above freezing. I have not attempted to correlate the ideal temperature factor with maple yields – but my impression is that there is NOT a direct correlation – leaving certain amount of variation as:  mysterious.

We had our first ever maple sugaring/syrup open house on March 7, 2009. The photo on the left with Renay sucking on the tube connected to a tap in the maple tree headlined our invite. You can see 2 blue tubes attached to taps in the maple tree – this was the first stop on our open house tour.

When we mailed out our invitations, we hoped for good weather; a few days before the scheduled open house, the forecast was for 80% chances for rain – bummer! Miraculously, the rain held off.

The photo is of our shitake logs which are close to sugar shack (where we boil the sap) and so on our tour folks see them and want to know all about them. The spots on the logs are where we drilled holes, packed in spawn (shitake spores mixed with sawdust) and then sealed with our own beeswax.

The photo on the left shows the maple sap cooking in the pan in the foreground – see the steam off to the left? The smiling faces are students from Truman University in Kirksville (about 35 miles from us) -who came for the open house. I am the 3rd person from left – trying to blend in with the younger crowd.

Hello from Ted at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage with this week's update from soggy Scotland County, Missouri.

Four inches or so of rain over the past couple days have left our roads and paths quite sodden and our cisterns full. Tony, who has among the longest timeline of anybody at DR, was saying this morning that it used to seem that our creek would jump its banks every few years, whereas for the past three years straight it has jumped its banks at least once each year, if not several times. It is always a sobering experience to look down into our creek valley in flood (from our relatively safe position up on the high ground of the village) and imagine how high it could rise. Whether this weather is part of an existing decades-long cycle of wetter and drier periods or related to human-induced global warming may take many years to discern. Meanwhile we note the changes we can observe in the time we've been here.

Rolling thunder, peals of lightning, heavy wind gusts, torrents of rain: Spring is upon us! There is still cold to come, but there's no question we're on the cusp of the transition. The elm buds are growing, sap is flowing, the redwing blackbirds are back, and I've heard peepers in the pond the past three or four nights. I've seen the grass starting to put out green tips, and the walking onions in the garden have started their clumpy Medusa-like growth of green finger leaves.

This is the time of year for farming conferences – I go to the organic ones. On Feb 21, I attend the annual Missouri Organic Association’s conference.  I have been the vice president for the past two years and in charge of the trade show(so I had to be there – but I always go anyway). The following weekend, several friends and I went to a 2 day Upper Midwest Organic Farming conference in LaCrosse WI.

The two are typical: there are similarities as well as differences. The primary difference is the size: we had about a hundred folks at the local MOA one while there were over 2600 registered at the LaCrosse one. The local one is cozy – most of us know each other and the feeling is like a gathering of the clan. The larger one feels more like being a part of a movement; most of the year, us organic folx feel like a minority – we are constantly talking about why organic is important, how to source and/or produce organic products, etc. Often we producers are alone or one of a handful of organic producers in our county. At the conference, I am one of 2600 (that’s more than half of the population of my entire county!). The feeling is different – we are significant, we are the movers/shakers in agriculture – rah!rah!rah!

The topics of the workshops are similar: basic soil biology & fertility, organic weed and pest control, livestock production and health, fruit and vegetable production, small grains,  row crops,  organic certification, various marketing strategies – local/niche, web-based, tell your personal story, etc., sustainable practices, biological diversity, funding opportunities in the new farm program, etc.