Lion's blog

East Wind community has been very shy about the press since the National Geographic article came out and although the article was accurate in many ways it was at one of our hardest times in community. Its kinda like a national report on your dirty laundry. Needless to say we just didn't want any press, So when Rob Evans of KOLR 10 came to us about doing a show on our nut butter factory our spines tingled with fear, after much debate parameters where set and he was allowed to come here and present an article for the Springfield area on our Nut butter business. I walked him around showing some of the buildings speaking on East Wind and even got interviewed along with a couple others when all was said and done this video appeared today and we are very happy.

Thank you Rob.
Enjoy
L~

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11-23 08

Last winter was a joy, and we were fortunate all winter to have fresh greens coming out of our garden. The weather was conducive to outside activities, which kept the farm a little less penned up.

Spring came on like gangbusters. When the rains hit we had flooding in our lower fields, actually maxing out the flood plain; complicating our use of those fields for hay, and completely flooding our fine swimming hole. Sarah and Zeke, the new ranch team, managed to fix the bailer. I think they’re like sewing machines, magical- not mechanical. We were still able to harvest hay out of a damp field, and as for the swimming hole, we moved it to a more accessible location.

Yohanan’s birthday party (his 157th, I believe) was held up the creek, via canoe, at some nice chert banks. May Day brought us some friends LEXing from Twin Oaks for our 34th anniversary! Our holiday festivals have been wonderfully light hearted; with hula hooping and Frisbee. We’ve a group of people who have been playing with the fire circus idea; with a fire hula hoop, juggling pins, fire rope batons, and of course, Poi. All adding to the fun and exciting environment that makes these events so special. As long as I am talking festivals, I should add in that this August music festival was a wonderful time, with members of The Shwag (a local Grateful Dead tribute band) coming down and giving us a fine reason to dance the perfect night away.

We have moved the deck from behind the sandals trailer, where it was not being used very often, to the south side of the music room. A beautiful new flight of stairs wraps all the way around, making this a very comfortable and useable space with a great view of the fields.

So after a little break and a short vacation I came back with renewed vigor on a project that was not getting the attention it deserved. The Nut house expansion was virtually left behind in a wake of other things that needed doing this happens when you don't have people employed to do one job sometimes. I was floundering a little on what I wanted to do when I got back from my break and I realized this is my chance. As I have written about before how I have helped others build many things at East Wind and elsewhere I have always been the go to guy for lifting heavy things but I have never had the guts to take on this kind of project. Ok, a couple of decks and stages where cool but this is a food industry with standards to think about electricity, plumbing, boilers, for the radiant floor heating A place for a vent fan, lights, giant things that well to be honest all intimidate me. So I spoke with a few people and they believed in me or at least my ability to get these things done, so I went to a meeting with Nut butter management and it so happened that same meeting they wanted put in play a final day for putting the jar bander online and 100% of all east wind jars will be banded for your safety! This was it! We barely have enough room for another machine on the lines we are going to have to get the expansion done, so I with honest and justifiable fear said Ill get it done. Ok hold on I just want to say I knew I couldn't do this but East winders can! We have such a plethora of talent on this farm, I know we can accomplish anything with nothing and I felt I could at least organize this, and we have at this time the walls which laid in state covered with leaves are now on the building the windows are in! the doors are going on!

Home.... Ive been on the road for a little over 2 weeks now and I wont see my home for another week. Now let me say up front I have been on an amazing adventure deserving of a blog of its own , but right now, today I miss this view. Sometimes when people say why do you live there, I smile my personal little smile and close my eyes and think of this view. I've walked most of what you see, I look silently at this view most every day I have seen the sunset and rise a thousand times here, I know over that ridge lies Arkansas I know the creek that in the morning after a cool night offers a fog that circles our valley like the end of a magic wand. It's my home I watch the leaves grow and turn I watch storms roll in over the ridge. This is the reason I go to work on days when nothing else makes sense, This is the reason I smile to myself while I sit at the bus station waiting for my next uncomfortable trip on the dog, this is my happy place this is my home.

Ok so for those of you who have been to East Wind well It will never be the same.

Yep We now have a deck on the Music room. It was the deck that was on the sandals trailer which was no longer being used... So Kara Jo suggested we move it, I put up a concerns note and people cheered almost universally In fact I don't think we had a single concern. So we built the deck! And it is beautiful We added stairs all the way around for seating every where we mimicked the steps at RB so muscle memory would help with the new environment. The view has changed the place has changed (It's still the music room) And it is awesome. So looking forward to some of you coming here for a visit and joining us on our new addition!
L~

It was the week before my 40th birthday and I had been planing on going with a crew from East WInd to Minnesota to Harvest fest, then starting looking at the dates and realized that the RNC was going on the same time and I (as those of you who know me) hatched a lion sized plan and it fell into place perfectly, in fact seeds of peace contacted East Wind asking for some donations (something we can do) so we set off at 8pm Monday and arrived about 8 am Tuesday driving pretty much rite up on the Seeds of peace crew we dropped off about 150# of peanut butter to help feed the protesters as well as the many hungry in St. Paul. we also kicked in with some help, it felt so good to be helping those people doing such noble work (as an aside I grew up with parents that owned a restaurant and no one no matter what kinda of money people had or didn't have they got fed, Thank you mom and dad for teaching me the fine line between consumers and feeding people because that's what you do.) After shaking off the road and putting in a little more work we headed to St. Paul proper it was only a couple miles so we set off walking we made it about 5 blocks and where crossing a bridge before the police decided the Ice tea I was carrying needed to be checked we already new we had entered the police state machine guns on boats in the river and police like free day at a doughnut shop. They smelled my tea, other police showed it was actually a lite encounter but yes it had not been 10 minutes and we where already dealing with police. After tossing the Tea we walked on to the Capitol building to see ripple affect a peaceful protest done in a festival style. the police where in riot gear every where in the city, you knew you where being watched by either the helicopter in the sky or the cameras or the police with cameras etc etc.. For those of you who have seen star wars think storm troopers thousands of them that was the scene as we walked up to the capitol.

Ok it's 3 am and I'm leaving for the communities conference in like 6 hours cant sleep I'm excited nervous. How silly am I ? It's Twin Oaks It's our sister community what could go wrong....?! Well lots' but most likely nothing. The best thing about the federation as some of you who are not yet a part of it is, theres choices! Each community is what it is and thats all that it is but each one like people are different.
Now I've visited land trusts co-ops and hell even hung out with some of the love Israel cult for a day (I would so make a bad cult member). Since 1993 Ive been an East Winder maybe off and on but for over 4 years of my life at one point or the other I have lived down this dirt road. I have lived on this farm and have been a part of this place in some way for 15 years and now more than ever with my grandchildren here, It's my home. Twin Oaks is based on the same idea as us, our by laws and policy mimic each other in a lot of ways,so why am I up at 3 in the morning thinking about this, well I reiterate we are different.

Yesterday I was part of my 2nd system clean (this means I have managed to be somewhere else for the others.)

Now a system clean is more in depth than the usual clean of the nut house. At East Wind we clean the place constantly, and every weekend we clean it more. Every other month we clean it allot more. Funny as it seems we are relatively good about keeping the place in order for a bunch O' hippies.

But two days to do a system clean is almost not enough, in fact I don't think it is enough but somehow we pulled it off this weekend, and thats one of the most amazing things about community. So much of who we are can be shown in those who stand up and take on these giant tasks and complete them.

After 48 hours of constant work we had grunted, yelled, and felt let down by those who didn't help. We got covered in various nuts and seeds and laughed and bonded. Together overcame a large task and it's at that very moment that if you squint your eyes just right you will be blinded with community.

Is it always Nut butters that this happens? Nope! It happens all over, little groups and big groups - getting it done.

There will be no promotions for these accomplishments no, raises no notoriety... (ok maybe at least half of community will appreciate it) but it's not the reason why you do it.

I also think there is a positive backside to this when you do climb the mountain with a bunch of folks. You become closer and when you get the day off and get to party together at one of East Winds legendary festivals - your already bonded through you accomplishments.

To those who helped on that system clean this weekend. thank you - thank you - thank you! You manifested more than just a clean nut house.

For those of you who knew Hooch, he has moved on to the old may field to rest by the ceder tree with Sadie. Hooch was a 20+ year old dog who carried a bullet in his hip from a pig farmer who didn't like the way Hooch played with his pigs (he had a thing for bacon until the end). He had lived through heart worm being hit by cars and being imprisoned in three county jails in MO. alone. He has made dog catchers cry and had escaped every fence he was ever put in with the super hero name of the great Hoochini he lives on in our memories as that dog everybody loved. He was Bennies dog that sunnyside adopted and yes he will always be a sunnysider. This dog has been a part of my life for 14 years now and has lived in my room with me since I returned to E-dub and well its a little quieter in my room now without the old dawg snoring unfortunately I miss the snoring and I don't know what to do with my scraps from my meals or his brush or bed and I am sad.

As some may have heard or read we here in southern Mo. are getting a pile of rain! It has backed our lovely little lick creek up into our hay fields and we now have a lake in our yard! some folks are commenting on how its nice having lake front property but mostly we feel a little invaded. We usually have a allot of privacy at East wind, our swimming hole is impossible most of the time to get to by boat or canoe even, but now we have folks in the middle of the night coming up stream in motor boats to explore the lake that has expanded into our leased fields. There is nothing we can do about it we lease this flood plane(doing what its supposed to this year) and we have little or no control over what happens on the water. They (who are they anyway) say it'll be two months before we see any subsiding of the flood we are already assuming our hay from the fields is wasted for the year and our swimming hole is going to be crowded well under water I guess.
Of course we have been in drought conditions for some time and this rain does help and the wildlife over our new lake is quite amazing with Eagles picking fish out of the shallows on the fly but the habitats for animals is very changed and there already is an enormous amount of snakes in the lower garden and we have even noticed deer running in deferent patterns because there old ones are flooded. so as we and the other animals figure out how to manage our lives around these new conditions and we polish up our social skills with the folks that meander up the creek we keep our clothes a little closer and we all hope for a little dry weather.

As some of you may know East wind is expanding! For those who have been to East Wind throughout the years we have watched this little nut butter business grow.

At this point we are expanding our building for a third line that will be a production line for our jars and 5# tubs. The reason we are expanding has to do with the equipment we use: lidder-capers, labelers, jar bander's. These pieces of equipment hate being moved - and we move them a lot! The third line will all but eliminate the need to move these heavy boehemouths that ain't supposed to move around.

hold on a sec let me step back in time for a minute. When I moved to E-dub in 93 Nut butters was not the most popular job but for some reason (maybe not as social as hammocks or to noisy or oh yea its a factory job) but I always liked it so I became a roaster helper and worked at least once a week making some butter

As some of you may know East wind is expanding! For those who have been to East Wind throughout the years we have watched this little nut butter business grow. At this point we are expanding our building for a third line that will be a production line for our jars and 5# tubs the reason we are expanding has to do with the equipment we use lidder capers, labelers, jar bander's these pieces of equipment hate being moved and we move them allot. The third line will all but eliminate the need to move these heavy boehemouths that ain't supposed to move around.