Sandhill Farm

This past weekend I facilitated a series of meetings in Boston (at Jamaica Plain Cohousing), and I started my work —as I always do—by asking for permission to operate under a set of Ground Rules that I've developed over the years. Among them is the group accepting my being "agreement prejudiced."

As that may sound like an odd request—a) why is that noteworthy; and b) is it OK to be "prejudiced" about anything?—it occurred to me that it would make a worthy blog focus to explain why I go there.

Almost without exception, people who have been raised in the dominant culture have been conditioned to think first in terms of how they are distinct from others, rather than how they are the same. To a large extent, our identities are associated with differences more than with similarities, and you know yourself most surely by the ways in which you stand apart from those around you. Certainly that was true for me. (Note that from an anthropolocigal perspective that all cultures aren't like this. In Inuit society, for example, individuals develop a much stronger sense of "we" than "I.")

Mind you, I am not saying that we have been raised to be cantankerous, or iconoclastic (although some, of course, turn out that way). Rather, I'm saying that when someone says something with which we are in partial agreement (which happens "only" all the time) our overwhelming tendency is to focus our initial response on the ways in which we disagree, rather than on celebrating the ways in which we align—even though they are equally valid responses, and one isn't more true than the other.

 
Donald Walters—Swami Kriyananda—died peacefully last Sunday in Assisi, Italy. He was 86 and had lived a very full life. The image above was taken in a joyous moment last year.

Though I never met him, I have known of him for many years, first as the founder of Ananda Village in Nevada City CA, and then as the author of a slim volume he wrote in 1988: Intentional Communities: How to Start Them, and Why, which was notable because it advocated cooperative living without proselytizing for the spiritual path he loved.

It is extremely rare, in my experience, for a spiritual person to see that there are many paths that lead to good in the world and that it makes sense to support and ally oneself with others devoted to worthy principles even if they don't share the same spiritual guide, or even have one at all. Donald Walters was just such a man.

To be sure, he was a very spiritual man, and a devoted follower of Paramahansa Yogananda. Over the course of his life Walters established eight successful intentional communities (two in India, one in Italy, and five on the West Coast of the United States) and about 100 meditation and teaching centers around the world, all of which are based on devotion to the principles of Kriya yoga and the teachings of his guru.

I’ve been at Sandhill 33 years; our membership has averaged 5-8 members during that time. Several years ago, we noted that our average age was about 50 and rising – that did not appear sustainable. We made an effort to recruit younger members (which we had done in the past w/o much success); this time, it worked!

The current average age of our adult members is about 40; however, that is only part of the story. Equally important is how to transfer managerial responsibilities and a feeling of ownership from older to younger members? It is happening! Laird and I are the only ones over 40 here; Laird has been passing off/over most of his responsibilities over the last decade or so: he has been away from the farm for about half of the time (due to his role in the FIC and his work as a process consultant/teacher), and so others have taken on the work he used to do. He still does our tax filing, but Joe did it with Laird this year and is in training.

We're in the final stretch of the FIC's Indiegogo campaign to raise $45,000—which represents half the money needed to construct our new office in Missouri. With only five days remaining of our 45-day crowdfunding campaign, it's time to face the music: the campaign is 90% over and we've only generated 10% of the needed funds. Barring a miracle—which I'm all in favor of, by the way—we're not going to reach our target by midnight Thursday, when the curtain falls on the Indiegogo campaign.

However, it's important to note that Jan 25 only marks the end of the Indiegogo campaign. Our need continues Thursday and so will the FIC Green Office Campaign. All the money raised so far—from 115 supporters and counting—will still be just as valuable next week, and we're not about to ship our oars just because we're no longer sailing under the Indiegogo flag.

In the next few days I'll be redoubling my efforts to reach out to friends, people I've helped as FIC's administrator, and groups I've worked with over the past 25 years, asking them to help us reach our goal. For the past quarter century the Fellowship's intrepid crew has rolled up its sleeves and labored tirelessly as:
o  Collector of up-to-date and accurate information about intentional communities, both in book form and online.
o  Purveyor of books and videos focused on cooperative living, right livelihood, sustainability, and group dynamics.
offering books, videos, and a cornucopia of online resources
o  Publisher of Communities magazine.
o  Creator of Art of Community gatherings, where participants can simultaneously get information about community living and a taste of it.

Ma'ikwe and I are just coming off a facilitation training weekend at a Hare Krishna community that I'm going to bless with the pseudonymous moniker Dharma Village. While the hospitality and generosity we encountered at this well-established community were terrific, we found the group mired in deep mud. 

There are dozens of devotees living on the property. Despite being united in their acceptance of Swami Prabhupada as their spiritual teacher, they have been embroiled for years in disputes over the right way to follow his teachings. To some extent what's unfolded in the community mirrors struggles in the Hare Krishna movement worldwide. After Swami Prabhupada brought Krishna consciousness from India to the West in a prolific burst of proselytizing from 1963 to 1977, there has been considerable divergence about how best to continue the spirit of his work.

There are some who believe that Prabhupada was the last guru of the movement and the only teacher worthy of following; there are others who accept as gurus anyone recognized by ISKCON (the International Society of Krishna Consciousness), which was started by Prabhupada and blessed by him to carry on after his death in 1977, including the right to initiate other gurus; and there are those who accept Swami Tripurari as a guru in addition to Prabhupada, even though Tripurari is not recognized as a guru by ISKCON. The movement, just like the residents of Dharma Village, is in considerable disarray over who is a guru and who isn't.

The agricultural lifestyle includes down time: winter is the time for rest: physical activity to slow down, the mind to take leave of daily details, and the spirit to rejuvenate.
I appreciate this down time. During the agricultural year, I find it difficult to relax: my mind is always thinking about what else needs to be done – similar to how it is challenging to take time off at home/on the farm. When i try to take an afternoon or day off, I constantly see unfinished projects or areas that need attention. Sometimes I jot them down on a piece of paper – so that I can forget about them in the present moment and relax! Does it work? so-so. Where will I put this list so that it will not bother me now but that I can find it later?

Most mornings I'm the last one to get their first cup of Sandhill coffee. Sometimes I miss the first pot all together. Not because I sleep so much, but because I often work past midnight—long after more sensible communitarians have danced a round or two with the Sandman. When I awoke
yesterday, sure enough everyone else was already in the kitchen, huddled around the coffee thermos, nattering away about the day ahead.

Two days ago the weather had turned rainy—alternating between drizzling and showering since the afternoon—and I felt fortunate to have safely completed a trip to Quincy IL (60 miles away) to accomplish marathon photocopying at the cheapest place around (I did over 8,000 impressions for $200, taking more than four hours to orchestrate, tying up two machines). That evening I happily collated and stapled my output from the copiers, glad that I didn't need to venture out into the bad weather any more. By the time I turned out the lights it was 1 am, and the outdoor temperatures were sliding toward freezing.   

In the morning, I could tell that something special was happening from
the excited timbre in the voices that floated into my bedroom from the
kitchen. Though I couldn't make out the words, something was in the air. 

It turned out that something was snow! Our first storm of the season was roaring across northeast Missouri, pushed by plenty of arctic wind. We got perhaps four inches of wet snow, sculpted into drifts of more than a foot at strategic points along our half mile of gravel access road.

I was asked recently what can be done when a member of a consensus group reported dreading plenaries because there were frequently times when they "experience mind-numbing process that sucks the air out of the room." OK, that doesn't sound very good. As I contemplated what might contribute to that condition—and what the remedies might be—a number of things occurred to me. In fact, it got interesting enough that I thought I'd write about it…

o  Working Below Plenary Level
One of the big energy eaters for consensus groups is not being sufficiently disciplined about what's appropriate to handle at the whole group level. Lacking clarity about what's plenary worthy, I regularly encounter groups that inadvertently drift into discussing details that ought to have been handed over to managers or committees.

When groups are sloppy about this, and fail to delegate appropriately, members who are not interested in those details are trapped. If they attend the meetings at which this happens, they are forced to sit through conversations about what color to paint a wall, the menu for Thanksgiving dinner, or whether to buy Nantes or Danvers carrot seed for next year's garden. Shoot me now. If they don't attend the meetings (to avoid the mind-numbing conversations), then they're at risk of being accused of slacking and not sufficiently supporting the group. Some choice.

—The Remedy: It's important that the group has agreement about what kind of things should be discussed in plenary, so that agendas are drafted with that boundary in mind and facilitators know when to call people on coloring outside the lines. Further, there need to be clear mandates (and minutes) for handing off work to managers and committees, so that they'll know what they can decide on their own and when they'll need to return to the plenary for consultation.

o  Welcoming Passion

Ma'ikwe and I just completed a two-year facilitation training in the Midwest, and I want to share what a pair of the graduating students—Tony Sirna & Alyssa Martin from Dancing Rabbit— did during their last opportunity to do live facilitation under their teachers' umbrella.

The way the training program works, each weekend is hosted by an intentional community that provides free room and board for the class in exchange for outside facilitation on real issues explored in real meetings. (The pedagogical principle here is that students will learn faster facing live bullets, as it has a wonderful effect on focusing one's attention.)

Tony & Alyssa had been assigned to co-facilitate a two-and-a-half hour meeting on the topic of conflict, where they'd distilled the key questions (in consultation with an ad hoc committee from the host group established to shepherd this topic) to the following five questions:

Question #1) When is conflict affecting the group enough that it should be brought as a plenary agenda item?

Question #2) How should the facilitator handle conflict and emotion when it arises in the meeting?

Question #3) When does the group want to seek outside help on a conflict and how will that be handled?

Question #4) Can the group require a member to work on a conflict they're involved in?

Question #5) What happens if a conflict remains unresolved?

While that list was potent enough to keep us plenty busy in the meeting, the community subsequently added four more when they were presented the first five:

Question #6) What is the process and/or protocol for attempting to resolve conflict before it comes to plenary?

Question #7) How shall the community respond when a member goes through conflict resolution, appears to have worked though it, and then rubber bands into the same distress over the same issue?

This is the
continuation of a blog series started June 7 in which I'm addressing a
number of issues in consensus. Today's topic is Knowing When to Accelerate & When to Brake.

I.
When do you know enough to act? [posted June 7]
II. Closing the deal [posted June 10]
III. Wordsmithing in plenary [posted June 16]
IV. Redirecting competition [posted June 23]
V. Bridging disparate views [posted July 5]
VI. Harvesting partial product [posted July 20]
VII. When to be formal [posted July 29]
VIII. Harnessing brainstorms [posted Aug 10]
IX. Coping with blocking energy [posted Aug 19]
X. Defining respect [posted Sept 3]

Mystery? What’s mysterious about frost? Water freezes at 32 F, and when the air temperature reaches that point, we (& NOA) call it frost. Open & shut case, right?
Not for me. Let me share my experiences of the last 3 weeks.
On 9/23/12 we had a low of 39 F – but there was a layer of frost on the windshield of my car that morning. Then I noted frost on the grass along the highway. OK: so how do we have OBVIOUS frost at 39F?? I did several organic farm inspections that day and the farmers reported the same phenomenon. Further: the plants/crops that are usually the most frost sensitive in our area are sweet potatoes and basil. Neither of those crops showed any frost damage; however, I noted that the soybeans on one of the farms I inspected showed frost damage on the upper leaves… totally weird.

Last Saturday we woke up the first serious frost of the fall. While it's gorgeous looking at how the ice crystals refract the low-angled morning sunlight into a kaleidoscope of rainbows off the grass, frost is a major event on the farm. It kills the sweet potatoes, basil, and hot peppers outright, and threatens the sorghum. The frost last Saturday meant all hands on deck.

• • •
At Sandhill Farm we make up to a third of our income from the sale of organic food, and sorghum syrup—a traditional specialty crop in the Midwest and South—is a whopping three-quarters of that. While it varies from year to year when the sorghum is ready, it generally falls in the three weeks from fall equinox to mid-October. Often enough, the first frost of the season also falls in that date range and it's a dance letting the crop fully mature (maximizing the yield of sweet syrup) versus getting it all harvested before it's frost damaged.

Fortunately, sorghum can take a mild frost without damage, and it general takes temperatures of 28 degrees or lower to be a problem. The first frost is rarely lower than about 30 degrees, in part because of all the leaves—still green because there hasn't been a frost yet—that will give up heat as they freeze. With sweet sorghum the critical part of the plant is the stalk, because it's the juice inside that we'll boil down to make the syrup. If it gets cold enough to freeze the stalk, the cell walls will burst and the juice will rapidly sour once it's exposed to oxygen in the ensuing thaw. The warmer the weather after the frost, the quicker the juice will spoil. 

Thus, when our farm crew suspected stalk damage Saturday morning, it was a race to get as much of the crop processed as possible before the juice soured. What had heretofore been an orderly, isn't-it-a-lovely-fall-look-at-those-beautiful-colors harvest season suddenly turned urgent. 

So what’s the connection: politics & agric? In an election year in this country, I find it impossible to not have thoughts/make connections between the two.

I started this post months ago, got busy with other stuff, and forgot all about it; however, it seems just as relevant today. I find myself disinterested/disconnected from the issues discussed in the election/campaign politics.

Why? THEY ARE ALL MISSING THE POINT – including the democrats & obama. For me, the disjunct:

1. the farm bill. Overtly, this is the primary place where national politics and agric meet. For the last many decades, the farm bill has favored corporate/conventional agriculture – by paying producers subsidies for various practices: not planting crops, price supports for many crops – eg. corn, etc. This is a complicated issue, which I plan to explore in more detail in a later post; a good reference here are the writings by Michael Pollen as to how agric subsidies support corporate agric and the fast food industry.

2. For me, the issue I would love to be discussed in the election campaign is how we view our environment/nature. People in my community and folks in my every day life – we see nature as sacred. The way we live, grow food, and interact with our environment is an expression of who we are and how we relate to Gaiea/planet Earth; however, the prevailing paradigm in our society is that we humans have the right to plunder the resources on our planet.

Here is the crux of the disjunct: many people are yearning for more spirituality in their lives. “Science” has tried to explain the universe and life in mechanistic/reductionist terms and language; one of the effects is that folks deserted religion – because God/spirit was not part of the discussion. Now – we wake up and realize: surely life is not just about a job, making enough $ to survive, etc. That dulls the spirit and our relationship to spirit/nature/the divine.

This is the
continuation of a blog series started June 7 in which I'm addressing a
number of issues in consensus. Today's topic is Balancing Voices.

I. When do you know enough to act? [posted June 7]
II. Closing the deal [posted June 10]
III. Wordsmithing in plenary [posted June 16]
IV. Redirecting competition [posted June 23]
V. Bridging disparate views [posted July 5]
VI. Harvesting partial product [posted July 20]
VII. When to be formal [posted July 29]
VIII. Harnessing brainstorms [posted Aug 10]
IX. Coping with blocking energy [posted Aug 19]
X. Defining respect [posted Sept 3]
XI. Balancing voices
XII. Knowing when to accelerate and when to brake
XIII. Knowing when to labor and when to let go

In my last post about the honey bees more than a year ago, I was enthusiastic about our bees. I still am.

Our honey harvest in the fall of 2011 was once again disappointing: about 1.5 gallon of honey (1 gal=12 lb) per hive. Before the mites (early 1990s), we averaged 5 gal/hive. The last 3 years we averaged 1 – 1.5 gal/hive. So, in spite of my enthusiasm mid-summer of 2011, the bees did not make much honey. They made enough for themselves – which is, after all, their primary purpose. Because of all the attention we focus on them and giving them living accommodations, we feel we are due some honey as well. And yes, they did give us some – but not what we had become accustomed to. But hey! we were/are in a recession, eh? Income is down…..

Last winter, our bees fared well; we lost only 3 out of 22. An immediate explanation is that we had a mild winter; while that may have been a contributing factor, it does not feel primary to me. My intuition is that it was due to the the health of the bees going into the winter. OK, so why were they healthier? I don’t know – but i felt it. We had a mild and dry fall in 2011. Honey bees do better with dry than wet weather. Further, they gathered a lot of fall honey and pollen. Quite a bit of the pollen came from our own sweet sorghum crop (certified organic).

Another interesting fact: in the fall of 2011, we had 19 regular (Langstroth) hives and 3 top bar ones. Many folks think that the top bar hive is a more friendly way of beekeeping – and more healthy for the bees. However: out of the 3 hives we lost last winter, 2 were top bar and only 1 Langstroth. It is a small sample – but it is our reality. There was no obvious explanation; in fact, one of the top bar hives just dwindled and died during the fall – symptoms were similar to ones associated with colony collapse – the first that we have noted.

This is the
continuation of a blog series started June 7 in which I'm addressing a
number of issues in consensus. Today's topic is Coping with Blocking Energy.

I. When do you know enough to act? [posted June 7]
II. Closing the deal [posted June 10]
III. Wordsmithing in plenary [posted June 16]
IV. Redirecting competition [posted June 23]
V. Bridging disparate views [posted July 5]
VI. Harvesting partial product [posted July 20]
VII. When to be formal [posted July 29]
VIII. Harnessing brainstorms [posted Aug 10]
IX. Coping with blocking energy
X. Defining respect
XI. Balancing voices
XII. Knowing when to accelerate and when to brake
XIII. Knowing when to labor and when to let go
XIV. Accountability

This is the
continuation of a blog series started June 7 in which I'm addressing a
number of issues in consensus. Today's topic is When to Be Formal.

I. When do you know enough to act? [posted June 7]
II. Closing the deal [posted June 10]
III. Wordsmithing in plenary [posted June 16]
IV. Redirecting competition [posted June 23]
V. Bridging disparate views [posted July 5]
VI. Harvesting partial product [posted July 20]
VII. When to be formal
VIII. Harnessing brainstorms
IX. Coping with blocking energy
X. Defining respect
XI. Balancing voices
XII. Knowing when to accelerate and when to brake
XIII. Knowing when to labor and when to let go
XIV. Accountability

• • •
I'm not talking about tuxedos and evening gowns—I'm talking about how much to rely on structure and protocol. When to be firm, and when to be loose. How much formality should a group use in conducting business? It depends.

I'm in northern California this weekend, conducting a facilitation training, and the teaching theme is consensus. Two weeks ago students were asked what aspects of consensus were most challenging for them to understand or deal with well, and I got lots of replies. Today I'm launching a blog series in which I'll attempt to address a number of the issues that the students identified:

I. When do you know enough to act?
II. Closing the deal
III. Wordsmithing in plenary
IV. Redirecting competition
V. Bridging disparate views
VI. Harvesting partial product
VII. When to be formal
VIII. Harnessing brainstorms
IX. Coping with blocking energy
X. Defining respect
XI. Balancing voices
XII. Knowing when to accelerate and when to brake
XIII. Knowing when to labor and when to let go

• • •
While it's easy to agree on the goal of gathering as much relevant information on an issue as possible before making a decision, it turns out to be surprisingly nuanced knowing when you have enough information to act. That is, at what point does the perceived cost of delay (in order to gather additional data) outweigh the risk of making a mistake in acting without it?

I figure you never know everything, so the question becomes when do you know enough? This is about risk assessment (the consequences of making a mistake because you acted precipitously) and also about where the group stands on the spectrum of risk averse (the world is a dangerous place) versus risk tolerant (the world is full of opportunity). What looks like a prudent action to the latter can appear as recklessness to the former; what appears as prudence to the former comes across as overprotective to the latter. There is no right answer or single best approach. The group will simply have to discern the balance point case by case.

This is certainly a crazy spring – all over the midwest (& perhaps elsewhere) – mainly that the “normal” weather of March & April were reversed. I kept thinking that I wanted the weather in March to cool down and then in April, I wanted it warmer. So what’s the big deal? It will all even out in the end, right?

Maybe. Some of the ways it is affecting us:

* our fruit trees flowered about a month earlier than usual; at blossom time, we all worried that frost would get all/most of the fruit. It did and didn’t. Frost killed off some of the fruit – notably the saskatoon berries, and some of the pears, but it does not appear to have hurt the rest of our orchard: peaches, cherries, apples. My friend Dan Kelly who has a 5 acre apple orchard reported that the apples on the lower third of his orchard froze – but that’s ok, because otherwise he might have had too much fruit to deal with anyway (abundance can be a hardship). BUT we are still wondering – how will this turn out? will we be harvesting fruit a month earlier? or?

My posts have been scarce – writer’s blah? winter hibernation?

To summarize: we had a decent crop harvest last year – mostly because we had another unexpectedly warm fall. In fact, we had an average harvest of the sorghum, black & pinto beans (for our own consumption0, as well as buckwheat – for cover crop seed (& bee forage).

Today – Mar 15 – we are clearly in transition to spring – although it is early by the calendar. We have had several days over 70 and it’s supposed to stay that way for the next week. We had a very mild winter – results:

- less ice hockey and cross country skiing

- better for the bees; so far, we have lost only 2 hives (out of 21). This is not entirely due to mild winter, cold weather by itself does not kill honey bee colonies, but it does add stress.

- maple: because of the mild winter, some folks were speculating that the maple sap might not flow this year – but we had an average yield this season – even though it ended about 2 weeks earlier than usual.

Now the grass is GREEN again and the buds on the fruit trees are swelling. The first fruit tree blossoms (apricots) opened up today. We are pruning fruit trees, wrapping up forestry/firewood, and the gardeners have lots of seedlings planted in flats

AND the bees are bringing in bright yellow pollen – they are so excited! I love to share their enthusiasm. We went to visit the bees again today (3/15): some of them are very strong/exuberant, others are quite small and just getting going again after the winter. At this time of year, the bottom line is they are alive! & surviving! We made sure that all hives had laying queens and plenty of pollen and honey. Bees are definitely my favorite nonhuman friends….