Dirt and Dreams

Dirt & Dreams Winter 2009 Edition - The Federation of Egalitarian Communities

2009-01-24T12:48:00Z

Table of Contents

1. Welcome & Introduction

2. 2008 and the FEC

3. Update from Emma Goldman Finishing School in Seattle, WA

4. A Human Sized Answer to a Global Problem: Sharing & Climate Change

5. Skyhouse Update

6. How we make Maple Syrup at Sandhill Farm

7. Sandhill Update

8. Willow Catches a Fish

9. Acorn Update

10. How to Visit an Intentional Community

11. East Wind Community Update

12. Twin Oaks Community Update

Welcome to the Winter 2009 Issue of Dirt & Dreams
The E-Newsletter of the Federation of Egalitarian Communities

In this issue we bring you updates from our member communities, a review of our accomplishments in 2008, stories from our communities, and more!

The Federation of Egalitarian Communities is a network of communal groups spread across North America. We range in size and emphasis from small agricultural homesteads to village-like communities to urban group houses. We share a set of core principles including nonviolence, egalitarianism, and participatory decision-making.

Dirt and Dreams is our E-mail newsletter where we bring you news about our communities, articles about our values, and clips of our art and culture.

2008 and the FEC

2008 was a great year for the FEC! We have had a rise in participation and interest from our member communities and we have made significant progress as an organization.

In February we held the winter assembly at East Wind Community in Missouri. East Wind was gracious and welcoming and our meetings were productive. We also threw a "pirate party" at East Wind on our last night there, where 6 communities danced the night away in pirate garb!

We have active delegates from all our member communities, and our last two assemblies were fully attended. We have facilitated a lot of traffic between our communities, including the Sorghum Harvest Festival at Sandhill and the Communities Conference at Twin Oaks. We sent representatives to NASCO Institute in Ann Arbor and the Mother Earth Harvest Fair in Maryland.

Our website was updated, and now allows folks to blog about their own personal experiences with community. Log on and join our online community! Tell your stories and share your dreams and community experiences with us!

This upcoming year we plan to produce video programs to publish on youtube.com and to host a natural building workshop in Virginia.

These are exciting times to be a part of the FEC, as interest and participation in our organization is at an all-time high. Join us, and help us create a new way of living!

Update from Emma Goldman Finishing School in Seattle, WA

This past year has been full of changes. The biggest, being the birth of our first baby, Ruby, who is the daughter of Johanna and Sheldon. As a community, we've been learning how to support new parents, how to do baby sign language, and how to relate with this little one. It has been a challenging and rewarding learning opportunity for us. Now, Ruby is walking/tottering, which brings a whole new set of fun and challenging things.

Also, we have seen some dramatic membership flux. After taking on two new adult members and two children in the fall of 2007, in the summer of 2008 one of our adult couples, our new member, and her two children moved on. So there was that. But we also had the blessing of bringing on our newest member Wilson. That brings us to our current membership of seven adults (Sheldon, Johanna, Addy, Monica, Marc, Patience, Wilson) and one child (Ruby), which means we have 5 rooms available.

We decided to open up two of the rooms for non-membership-seeking subletters, and have Marc's partner Tamara live in one room, and host our past member Thea (also of Sandhill) in the other for the winter months. We're excited to have their upbeat energy and great skills around Emma's.

Each year, we are expanding our own food production, and this year we joined a collective farm on Vashon Island, which is just a ferry ride away. We have one out of eight shares, where we put in $400 upfront, do six hours of a labor a week, and get our share of the harvest. That in addition to what we grow in our own garden has enabled us to have a pretty decent produce supply in the summer months. We're planning on continuing this next year.

On the project front this past year, we've taken care of a few small-medium projects, including refinishing our dining room and main hallway floor by sanding it down and varnishing it. We took the opportunity to also put a fresh coat of paint on our dining room walls, which makes our main common space more inviting and easier on bare hands, knees, and feet. We've also been working on preparations for redoing our front deck, fixing old fans, and reorganizing our pantry space.

Overall, we are doing well. We've been enjoying the long, dry, beautiful Northwest fall, and are now settling in for a winter of hanging out, socializing, and building our community from the strong core we have.

A Human Sized Answer to a Global Problem: Sharing & Climate Change

The global community is facing a serious ecological problem. Unless we change our way of living, we may be passing on to our children a world with rising sea levels, extreme weather conditions and disrupted ecosystems. According to governmental studies done in the UK and the European Union, a global average temperature increase of over three degrees Celsius would cause irreversible changes to our environment, the effects of which may include a potential rise of the sea level of up to seven meters and widespread water and food shortages.

Nathan Rive of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo says that if we are to have any chance of preventing the average temperature from increasing over two degrees "we would have to cut global emissions by 80 percent by 2050."

How can we stop consuming resources and producing carbon at such high levels? Is it possible to do so and still maintain the level of comfort that we have in modern life? Are we willing to make the changes necessary, when the ultimate effects of our actions (or inaction) will not manifest until decades from now? We have the technology that can help, but investment in these technologies on a massive scale is needed now if we hope to put the changes we need in place in time to make a difference. Government programs like carbon taxes might help motivate our industries to pollute less. However, in places like the European Union and the UK where such laws have been enacted, carbon reduction is still falling short of their goals. In addition, the USA is the largest producer of carbon emissions per capita and there are currently no comprehensive carbon emission regulations in America.

Don't give up hope yet! There exists today a solution that could drastically reduce the energy consumption and carbon emissions of the modern citizen that does not require new technology or a drastic reduction in quality of life. It is not anything new or complex; in fact, it is something we all learned in kindergarten. It is called sharing.

Case in point: Twin Oaks Community

The bylaws of my home, Twin Oaks Community in Virginia, list ecological sustainability as just one of the many purposes of our community's existence. The primary intention of our community at its founding was to create a culture of cooperation, sharing, and equality. We certainly do care about ecological sustainability and hold many discussions on how we could improve in this area. However, we have put most of our energy into finding ways to live cooperatively, communally and comfortably.

We have only 10% of our residents living off the electrical grid, we have no buildings built with cob or straw-bale, and we live with most of the comforts of modern life. Despite our lack of green technologies and our lifestyle of modern conveniences, members of our community consume far less resources than those in our neighborhood, in some cases by over 80% less!

Below is a breakdown of our resource consumption and how it compares to other people in our climate.

Gasoline: The average Virginia resident uses about 530 gallons per year.
Twin Oaks consumed about 15,267 gallons of gas in 2007.
With an adult & child population on average of 96, that would put our consumption at 159 gallons per person.
That is 70% less gas consumed!

Electricity: The average Virginia resident uses 13,860 kWh of electricity per year.
Twin Oaks consumed 268,065 kWh in 2007.
With an adult & child population on average of 96, that would put our consumption at 2,792 kWh per person.
That is 80% less electricity consumed!

Natural Gas: The average household in Virginia uses 767 therms of natural gas.
Twin Oaks consumed 16,221 therms of natural gas in 2007.
With an adult population on average of 87 adults, that would put our consumption at 186 therms per person.
That is 76% less natural gas consumed!

Solid Waste: The average American produces 1460 pounds of trash a year.
Twin Oaks produced 18,780.00 pounds of solid waste in 2007.
With an adult & child population on average of 96, that would put our production at 196 pounds per person.
That is 87% less solid waste produced!

Twin Oaks Community has a fleet of 12 vehicles that we share between all our members. Each day one person runs into town to gather the day-to-day needs for us all. They also ferry people to their various destinations like doctor's appointments or the library. By sharing our vehicles and carpooling, we are able to drastically reduce the amount of gasoline we use.

We all live in nine communal houses, each with different norms and culture. We use carbon-neutral wood to heat our houses. By sharing common space and having dormitory style housing, we consume much less energy to light and heat our homes than we would if we were to live in individual houses.

We serve lunch and dinner each day in a single building for our whole community. We are able to use much less energy to cook our food when we are using one kitchen to feed 90 people than we would if we each cooked our own meals.

What food and general necessities we do not produce ourselves, we buy in bulk. Because of this we greatly reduce the amount of packaging that comes onto our property. We send much less solid waste to the local landfill then we would if we were to each purchase our goods in individually wrapped packages.

By sharing so much we are able to live comfortably, but also greatly reduce our resource consumption and carbon output. Government programs and new technologies will be important in reducing our culture's output of carbon into the atmosphere, but there are things that we as individuals can do today to significantly reduce our contribution to global climate change.

Here are a few examples:

1. Join a food co-op! Use your collective buying power to save money, while also reducing the packaging and energy used to deliver your food to your table. If there is not one in your area, start one! http://www.coopdirectory.org

2. Carpool & ride-share when traveling! http://www.craigslist.org or http://www.rideshare-directory.com

3. Join a housing coop! Share a house with other like minded souls, and share food costs and cook communal dinners together. You will save much more money and resources over living alone! http://directory.ic.org/records/coops.php

4. Join an intentional community! There are thousands of communities out there with varying degrees of resource sharing and cooperation. http://ic.org

5. Join an egalitarian community! Pool your income together with other folks to live a more sustainable and equitable life with your neighbors. Share resources to reduce your carbon footprint! http://theFEC.org

As times get harder, people look for more alternatives to our unsustainable economic model. We do need to look towards technology to help us and we do need our governments to regulate industry and lower emissions. These are issues of national and international politics and are beyond the reach of the average person.

However, by sharing more with members of our communities, we really can make significant and meaningful difference in our personal impact on the environment. We have the power to turn this crisis into an opportunity. By being examples for others to follow, perhaps we can make the necessary changes our world needs, one community at a time.

Do you already live communally? Do an energy audit and see how your community is doing compared to others that live in your climate. Publish this information and let people know how effective cooperation and sharing is as a tool to battle climate change. A lot of good information can be found at this link: http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/consumer/ Please send copies of your energy audits to bucket@twinoaks.org

Skyhouse Update

Juan here, reporting on Skyhouse's comings and goings and doings since the last FEC assembly in February at East Wind.

The biggest news in Skyhouse is that Skyhouse will be welcoming a new member in March, as Amy and I are pregnant. Preparations and modifications are being made to room layouts to accomodate the new one, and we had a significant amount of fun calling my family in Argentina to let them know the news.

Skyhouse has been having some practice with children, however, as Ma'ikwe Ludwig and her son Jibran are renting a room in Skyhouse; I, for one, am happy that we have ten years before our child is his age. Dan Steinicke, a former member of Dancing Rabbit, returned and is also renting a room for the winter.

We had our first strong contenders for Skyhouse adult membership since Cecil left when Lauren and Shannon, a couple from Philadelphia, expressed an interest in us. After Amy and I met them briefly in Philly, Skyhouse decided to forego our usual method of encouraging interested folks to visit Dancing Rabbit, and instead hosted them directly. Their visit was pleasant, and it seemed like they might be a good fit for Skyhouse. Unfortunately, they decided to take a different path, and have not returned.

We've done a lot of traveling, as well. Tony went to the Art of Community and the FIC conference in May. Much family-related traveling ensued, with visiting of parents and friends all over the country.

On the business side of things, Tony has continued his hard work on the FIC's website, and Amy and I built the online store for the Milkweed Mercantile (http://www.milkweedmercantile.com). A dream of Alline Anderson and Kurt Kessner of Dancing Rabbit, the Mercantile's physical building isn't finished yet. But when it is, it will be host to a bed and breakfast, a cafe, and a general store. Skyhouse is now extremely close to seeing the last of the debt it incurred building our house go away, and I for one, can't wait.

Another exciting change is that as the Mercantile gets closer to opening, Amy is transitioning into her new career as Innkeeper. She is choosing reservation software, writing up guest policies, and setting room rates in preparation for the big opening in the spring. Alline is sending her to an Aspiring Innkeeper training in Colorado this January so she can get some hands-on skills as well.

Speaking of hosting, Puck from Twin Oaks also paid us a visit in October and helped us out for a while. He helped us with firewood and sorting our canned goods for the winter along with a few other Rabbit's projects as well. Thanks, Puck, it was great to have you around and we hope to see you again soon.

This month, Skyhouse co-hosted the most recent FEC assembly, and we tried to make Paul and Ethan as welcome as we could. Unfortunately, it was a cloudy week, so we were in conservation mode. Still, we learned a fun new game called Fluxx and hosted a big "End of Bush" party in our home. We hope everyone had a great time!

Finally, Skyhouse is looking for a garden work exchanger for 2009. We need someone with gardening experience who is interested and able to manage the whole garden. This person would have help from folks in our co-op, but would need to be able to work fairly independently. In exchange, we would cover all the basic expenses while they are here. This would include a room in Skyhouse, food from our co-op, co-op fees, reasonable vehicle use and more. However, we wouldn't be able to offer LEX for the duration since it's many months of living with us. Ideally it would be someone who is considering moving to our community. Know someone? Drop us a line at skyhouse@ic.org.

How we make Maple Syrup at Sandhill Farm

Tapping. Note: we tap soft (silver) maple trees, since that is what we have on our land; most of the commercial maple syrup on the market comes from hard maple trees in Canada and northern US. We have planted hard maple trees, but they are very slow growing: our 20-year-old trees will probably take another 10 years before we can tap them.

How do you find maple trees? One way is to look up at the canopy--the maple trees have swollen reddish buds. After awhile, the eye picks them out readily (by now, I know where all the trees on our land are). Then you inspect the trunk of the tree to find the scars from previous years' tapping. New taps should be about 4" away from old ones. Also, we prefer to tap the south sides of trees because when the sun shines, it warms that side of the tree and makes the sap flow more. We have been tapping some of our trees for 20 years, so they are pockmarked by grown-over old holes and it is a challenge to find the right spot. When we do, we drill a 5/16" hole 2-3" deep with an electric cordless drill (we used to use a brace & bit, but the cordless is faster and easier). Another person hammers in a plastic tap (we buy them from maple sugaring supply places). Then we attach a plastic tube to the tap and the other end into a bucket on the ground.

How many taps? The rule of thumb is that a tree needs to be at least 12" in diameter at chest height to be tapped. A tree that is more than 20" can have two taps and over 28", three taps. We run the tubes from one tree into the same bucket, usually a 5-gallon bucket. We do not put more than three taps in a tree.

Renay sucking maple sap from a tree

What makes the sap flow? As with many life processes, it is still somewhat mysterious and magical to me. The sap flows when the daytime temperature is above freezing and nights are below freezing. Why? It is kind of like a pump: the sap in the sapwood of the tree (not the cambium) expands with higher temperatures, thus creating pressure, which causes the sap to flow into our buckets to relieve the pressure (if there are any wounds in the tree, it flows from there too). Low temperatures at night make the sap contract thereby creating a vacuum, causing the sap to be sucked up into the sapwood from the roots, where it was stored in the winter. Then the rising temperatures make the sap expand again, etc. But wait! We have freezing/thawing temperatures in December and January as well. Does the sap flow then too? No. The sap rises in the spring (though I've been told that you can also collect sap in the fall; we have never tried it). Apparently, the inner energy in the trees begins to stir according to some inner clock (when the geese start flying north?). When it's spring, the sap rises.

How fast does it flow? It depends on the weather/temperatures. Occasionally, a tree will fill a 5-gallon bucket in a day, but it more often takes a week or more. In the same time, one tree may yield five gallons of sap while a neighboring tree will give only one. Why? I have no idea! We generally put out about 100 taps in about 50 trees every year these days. Our total annual yield has been between 16 and 76 quarts of syrup in the last decade, which translates to between 10 and 60 gallons of sap per tree. In our operation, it takes about two hours of work for every quart of maple syrup.

How do we cook? History: we first cooked maple in 1988: Ann & Ceilee decided to tap a big old maple near our pond as a home schooling project. They cooked it down on our kitchen stove. It took forever, but it worked! We had just purchased another property, which had a grove of large maple trees, and we realized we could use our sorghum cooking pan to increase the speed and efficiency of cooking. The next year we tapped approximately 20 trees and cooked it in the sorghum pan (a stainless steel pan 3'x16' over an open wood fire)--it was so much faster! We had been cooking it there until two years ago when we converted our sorghum cooking operation to a wood-fired steam boiler system. The boiler uses water to make steam which passes through copper tubes inside the juice to boil it. However, we can't use this process because during the time we process maple, we have freezing temperatures and so we would have to drain the boiler and all the tubes every time it was going to freeze- -way too much work! Solution? We took the old sorghum pan and cut it down to 3'x9' and moved it to a separate space in the same building (not quite that simple since we had to build a firebox with firebrick in a new location for the pan). Maple was the one to be moved since it is a small part of what we process in Sugar Shack. Sorghum is our main income producing business: we make about 700-800 gallons, and 100-200 gallons of honey compared to 5-20 gallons of maple.

Back to how we cook. With sorghum, we cook the raw juice into the finished syrup in a continuous process--all in the same day (or even hours). I assume some do the same with maple, but we don't (I have never watched anyone else cook maple). We do not sell any of our maple--it is only for our own use--and our pan is not designed to finish cooking small batches. When we have enough sap, we cook it down and then leave some in the bottom of the pan so it will not burn. When we have more sap we add it to the pan and cook it again - so the same sap can get boiled 4 or more times before we have enough that we can take it off and finish it in pots on our wood stove in the kitchen, where we can control the heat and concentrate the syrup w/o burning it. The last step is to ladle it into quart jars for storage for the rest of the year. We do not filter it and so we have �sediment/maple sand" in the bottom of our jars--it tastes the same as the rest of the syrup, but if we were to sell i t, we would probably have to filter it.

We cook together, too. When Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage became our neighbors 10 years ago, some folks there were interested in making maple syrup. They tapped some trees on their land as well as on neighbors' land. They bring the sap to our place since we have the facility to cook it efficiently. We divide the syrup by the number of hours we contribute and/or the sap we bring in. When Alyson moved to DR, she became the point person for the maple energy since she had family experience making it in New England. Now she lives at Red Earth Farms and coordinates the maple energy at Red Earth and Dancing Rabbit.

Sandhill Update

Stan's SEASON'S GREETINGS AND BEST WISHES FOR A GREAT 2009!

SANDHILL NEWS - 2008

Stan's version. 12/27/08

For more info, see our website: www.sandhillfarm.org
Current members: Renay, Apple, Gigi, Michael, Laird, Kathe, Stan
Community abbreviations: dr - dancing rabbit; ref - red earth farms; to - twin oaks; ew - east wind

January

our senior cat, Dragon, dies - at about 20 years old??

Otto (from ew) & Oliver cut lots of firewood (and in Feb as well)

Jen from dr visits for a week & redoes the Sandhill time line project; Gigi & Jen paint karma living room

Renay is part of the Quiz Bowl team at school (she's a great Sandhill ambassador at school

We have a large skating party on our pond before potluck dinner

February

maple syrup season begins (we have another great year)

Toby, Michelle, and baby Adam from dr spend the month with us - we all get to coo at and play with Adam

Stan goes to ew for the FEC assembly meetings

Gigi & Kathe do phone interviews with internship applicants

March

spring flowers & spring peepers

Apple returns for the season

Annual retreat - year end review and plans for the next one

This is the time of year when all our big windows in karma are filled with garden flats to start garden plants; the seedlings are moved to our new green house

Prune fruit trees

April

Kevin, Ann, Thea & Jacob return

Ceilee & Tosca have a baby girl - Taivyn Mae (the first second generation Sandhillian)

Innoculate more shitake logs

We turn the south garden into raised beds

Garden crew meetings start: the garden crew meets once a week to review current priorities and who will do what

Highway cleanup: it feels good to help beautify a small part of the planet May

We celebrate Sandhill's 34th birthday - including a maypole, music, and a barn dance; the night before we have a memorial service for Geoph Kozeny

rain, rain, rain, rain - what a great time for raised beds!

We transplant the first round of the sorghum starts

Planting & transplanting in the garden - does it ever end?

June

Renay goes to girl scout camp

lots of strawberries & cherries

visitors: Lindsey, Arielle, Doug, & Emily - who stays

Kathe and Michael are grandparents again

July

Mark from Holland interns for the month

Laird & Kathe go to ew for Peach discussions

Jo throws her 21st birthday here and makes 720 sushi

Wheat harvest

Stan does lots of organic inspections

August

Bud graft fruit trees

Amazingly cool weather

September

6" of rain in 36 hours

pick apples at Dan Kelly's

super heroes help us kick off sorghum harvest

Lots of visitors: ex-members, Chris, Bekka; also Arjen & Twin Oaks labor exchangers

Sorghum festival/open house including demonstrating squeezing apple cider & sorghum, sorghum cooking & sampling, hay ride to the fields & contra dance

October

East Wind labor exchangers

Pullets begin laying eggs

Scotland County Concerned Citizens established - to slow down the number of CAFOs coming here (mostly hog operations). Gigi becomes a key person in the group - trying to keep the leaderless group together)

November

we host FEC assembly and New Roots retreat

Jacob & Stan hunt deer; Jacob gets one and we butcher it

Kathe & Michael go for an extended retreat to their homestead in southwest MO.

Stan makes his annual pilgramage to visit family in Canada; this time i take some honey bees with me - the arthritis in my mother's knees got so bad she agreed to the apitherapy - i get the bees to sting her knees: it helps, but no miracle - shucks!

December

Tosca & baby Taivyn visit (it's the first time i see taivyn). We all have a great time with both of them

Cross country skiing and skating

Jacob says goodbye: he will be traveling for several months and then moving back to ref

Laird & Ma'ikwe head off for a 10 day Vipassana retreat

General

We continue to have weekly potluck dinners with folx from dancing rabbit and red earth farms - amazing to have 3 communities in our immediate area; now there is another community - the Sanctuary (also called the Possibility Alliance) about 45 miles away.

Gigi updated our website: sandhillfarm.org

Laird and Stan are blogging - they can be accessed on our website.

Tempeh: bad news. We have production problems all year (actually began in '07) - the tempeh does not develop evenly - there are spots where the innoculant does not grow. We try various measures: clean the processing kitchen & incubator, try different soybeans & innoculant, varying temperatures, etc. Occasionally, we have better batches (maybe 60% salable vs 10%). We get a tip - test the soybeans for bacillus subtillus; we do and sure enough, they test positive. Awright! We're hopeful of a quick fix. We find some local soybeans that test negative - but the tempeh patterns are the same! What? Bummer. At this point, i don't know if we still have a tempeh "business". Our regular customers continue to wait for our product - but for how long? We've sold virtually none in 10 months.... (except what we call �house" tempeh - which is intended for our own consumption - and we sell it at a discount to dr & ref folks).

Membership. For most of our history, we've wanted more members, and we are in that place now. In the last few years, we've been actively recruiting younger folks. Ann & Kevin were here the entire growing season this year and we hoped(& still do!) that they would become members. Their dream was to buy their own land and homestead. They looked for the perfect spot in this area for some time - no luck. We then offered to sell them a chunk of our land - they liked it better than any they'd seen but they are still undecided (one factor is that Ann's forearms became sore and she was unable to do many manual things - certainly a deterrent to a homesteading lifestyle). The membership took on a new urgency in November, when Kathe & Michael announced that they will be leaving in October 2009 to move back to their homestead in SW Missouri. They are an integral part of Sandhill currently and will be sorely missed; in the meantime, we have another year together.

parting thot: in these days of economic upheavel, think outside the circle - kiva.org

Willow Catches a Fish

i have a cool kid. Kids are an amazing crapshoot: you don't know what kind you will get and you don't necessarily have that much control over how they come out (parents love to think that they do, but the other factors often overwhelm their efforts). i got lucky.

Willow has some wonderful primaries (people who regularly spend a couple hours a week with him, getting labor credits for this work in my community's elaborate work system). Yesterday, Trout took Willow to the pond with a fishing rod and some of our vegetarian sausage. They were going fishin'.

Our pond is tiny. Since it is principally for swimming, it was designed with upstream filters and catchment pools so it would not have fish in it. But life only being secondarily concerned with the will of man (sic), other things happened.

As Willow tells it, they put a small piece of soysage onto the hook, Trout did the casting, and Willow pulled it in slowly. The did this a dozen times with no effect. Willow convinced Trout to pull the hook and affix a larger piece of soysage to the hook, and within moments a fairly good sized fish, probably a trout (no relations), was snagged. Willow pulled it in with great joy and mild trepidation.

When i arrived at dinner last night, they had already cooked and cleaned it and my son was in storytelling heaven. He ran to me in the dining hall and demanded that i gues what had happened. Several people had already told me and my lack of surprise did not slow him down for a moment. He was up in my arms, animated and in full tale. His joy was infectious.

i ate a small piece of his first catch so i could be part of the history. Tasty.

i was fearful becoming a parent. Though Hawina and i choose it very intentionally and added Sky as a co-parent after careful deliberation, i was unsure if it would work well in my manic life. In retrospect, it is perhaps the smartest thing i have ever done.

i don't advocate parenting for Babylonians, but here on the commune, it has been an amazing experience. i am learning about intimacy by working with these small hands and listening to the gentle snoring of this cool kid. My kid, Willow.

Acorn Update

Well, 2008 has been a wild year for Acorn. We've seen some significant changes in our membership and our businesses.

Seed businesses across the USA have been seeing phenomenal growth rates this last year and our own Southern Exposure Seed Exchange has been no stranger to the trend. Overall, sales have increased by something like 50% for the year with some of our historically slower months seeing their sales double or more over last year. It could be rising fuel and food prices, a maturing organics and green movement, all the promotion that we've been doing this last year, or just a good old fear of the apocalypse. Or some combination thereof. Speaking of promotion, this year, on the first Saturday in September, we held our second annual Heritage Harvest Festival with Monticello, Whole Foods, and the Master Gardeners. We fretted and worried when the tropical storm decided to roll through our area precisely on Saturday morning but were stunned when an estimated 1000+ people came out and braved the rain with us. This year also saw us purchasing Garden Medicinals and Culinaries, a seed company specializing in herbs, off the same fellow we purchased SESE off of some 10 years ago.

On the membership front, we bid adieu to the Weaver family this August. They had been members here for three and a half years, after uprooting themselves from Madison, WI, to repopulate Acorn after the population crash of 2004. They had two children while here at Acorn and have moved on to central PA to start a new life. Just before they left, long time veteran of Twin Oaks, River, and returning Acorner, Marielle, joined us. They have brought a lot of experience and energy with them and are bringing change here every day. We have also recently added ex-Twin Oakers Thomas and Emily to our ranks. We did, however, lose new member Joan who found love and is following her long held dream of homesteading in a mud hut. She and her partner Courtney are looking into joining Red Earth Farms in the spring.

Although generally a quiet place we've pulled off a couple fabulous parties this year. We celebrated our 15th anniversary this year on April 1st and had so many people over celebrating with us that we literally filled every square foot of our dining/common room with dining friends and communards. Not so long ago, Joan organized a surprise 60th birthday party for founding member Ira, and a bunch of old friends of hers showed up and reminisced and told stories for hours and hours.

At any rate, it's an exciting time to live at Acorn. Our membership is cohesive and growing. Our business is booming. The infrastructure is rising out of the sea of entropy. Space is getting competitive. Some of our friends have taken all this data and begun to refer to an Acorn Renaissance. Whatever it is, it works for us.

How to Visit an Intentional Community

by Kat Kinkade

Kat Kinkade of Twin Oaks gives a communitarian's perspective on visitors. She discusses visiting etiquette, gives practical advice on how to get the most out of one's visit, and offers valuable insights about how prospective members may be viewed by existing community members.

The mechanics of visiting a community aren't very difficult. One writes a letter, waits for a response, follows directions, and that's that. But assuring oneself of a fruitful and satisfying visit is another matter. Most communities spend considerable time and energy talking about and worrying about optimizing visitors' experiences. Yet there are still shortcomings and miscommunication from time to time. Visitors can help by doing some thinking ahead of time to set themselves up for a good visit. This article is full of advice to the prospective visitor. Read it with your own plans in mind. Maybe it will give you some ideas.

It is useful to consider the question: Why is this particular community open to visitors at all? What do they want or need from them? I think it's safe to say that most communities that advertise in a directory are keeping an eye out for people who might join them. They may be openly seeking members, or they may be only selectively open, watching for someone with a high degree of compatibility.

There are other reasons for having visitors, and they will vary from group to group. Some may simply need help with their work. Others may welcome stimulation from outsiders. A number of groups make their living from welcoming visitors at various conferences and seminars. Some organizations are interested in spreading their philosophy or religion. What you can be sure of, however, is that a group opens itself to receive strangers for its own reasons and its own needs. It isn't just exercising neighborly hospitality.

On your side, you have your reasons for wanting to visit. So, it makes sense to seek visits with groups that not only have something to offer you, but also have something to gain from your stay.

No matter what a visitor's personal agenda may be, helping the community with daily work is quite likely to make the visit worthwhile on both sides. Work is appreciated, and good work is appreciated a lot! This is true on the smallest commune or the biggest cooperative. Shared work opens doors to friendship and mutual confidence that no amount of conversation can open. Most people know this intuitively.

Over the years my home communities have hosted thousands of visitors, a large percentage have pitched in willingly with our work -- everything from collating newsletters to bucking hay -- and they don't begrudge the time. They have helped us build what we have today, and I am personally grateful. It's one of the reasons we will probably continue to be open to thousands more. The visitor who feels touchy about being exploited during the few days or weeks of a visit just doesn't understand the trade-offs from the community point of view, and is unlikely to get much satisfaction from the visit.

Sometimes a visitor is perfectly willing to work, and repeatedly volunteers, but the community members don't seem to take the time or make the effort to find an appropriate job. If this happens and you aren't the sort who can just intuitively find ways to help out, just make sure your offer is clear. Then, enjoy yourself doing something else. Some groups are not organized well enough to use visitor resources, and there's no point in bugging them about it.

A mistake to be avoided is treating communities like a sort of Disney World, put there for the interest of the public. For the most part, intentional communities are not showcases, are not kept up to impress outsiders, and are not particularly interested in being looked at by casual tourists. Resident communitarians may put up with a certain amount of tourism for income, or for outreach; but residents live their personal lives in community, and generally they don't enjoy uninvolved spectators.

Occasionally a visitor is not content with a guided tour, and causes exasperation by insisting on "talking to the residents to get a real feel for the place." The resident members in any community are generally friendly enough, but they may see too many strangers. The only way to get a feel for the place is to stay awhile; and the best way to do that is to invest yourself in a visit that is useful to both yourself and the host community.

Let us assume, then, that you are prepared to establish your welcome in a community by one means or another, and get on to other issues. One of the other main issues is expectations.

It's a good idea to read the printed material that a community provides. While no substitute for a visit, it at least gives you an idea of the self image of the community. Of course this material will contribute to your expectations, as it should.

This can be upsetting when your actual on-site experiences don't seem to have much to do with the lofty sentiments expressed on paper. Just the same, there are connections between stated group beliefs and their behavior norms. It is a mistake to ignore these connections, especially if you think of joining.

Years ago I knew a couple who read the philosophical material of a certain community and were appalled by it. They didn't agree with the published community tenets and didn't like the tone of the material either. However, they happened to meet someone from the group who was highly personable. So, they visited and found the entire group to be friendly, charming, and warm. My friends figured actions speak louder than words. They decided to ignore the declared goals of the community, believing instead the day-to-day behavior of the people they were getting to know and enjoy. They joined up. But as the months of their membership progressed, my friends found themselves more and more at odds with the founding members of the community. Everybody was warm and courteous, but their goals weren't compatible. Serious internal dissension grew, which saw my friends in conflict with the original leaders over issues of community direction. Eventually the new couple left, and so did some othe r members, who were disillusioned by the bad feelings generated by the philosophical struggle.

This left the group weak, angry, and exhausted. It was a community tragedy, and not an uncommon one. I say, before joining an intentional community, read and believe the community documents. The chances are good that the published goals and values of every community are deeply respected by many community members, even though the behavior of some members may give consistent impressions to the contrary. Of course a visitor will have expectations of some sort, but it's useful to keep them to a modest level. I can think of several common expectations that frequently meet with disappointment.

There's the wealthy commune vision. At Twin Oaks we sometimes hear, "But I expected a rural group to have horses." Some people don't understand why the community isn't bursting with artistic work, or doesn't have its own school, or isn't generating its own power, or creating more original architecture. Such visitors haven't considered the wealth that must be allocated to realize such visions. Alternatively, visitors who look more closely can always find visions beyond financial survival that are attracting the energy of community members.

For instance, at my community we maintain a wide assortment of musical instruments and drums, and provide work credits for dramatic productions and a wide range of apprentice training. We have indexed an extensive library of books and tapes. The community maintains an intimate retreat cottage, mud pit, sweat lodge, swimming hole, gardens, pastures, and woodlands. We provide attractive transportation opportunities for political and cultural events, and a wide variety of conferences. The visions realized will vary in each community, according to the interests and skills of the members as they come and go.

Another more common expectation is the vision of a sense of community. Those with this vision expect to be included and loved fairly soon after arrival, because of an idea that all the people in a true community love one another. It is a serious disappointment when they realize that this kind of love grows only after time and mutual commitment, and cannot be grasped quickly.

Many people expect all communities to be wholehearted in their dedication to food self-sufficiency or healthful eating habits. I have seen some visitors to my community seriously shocked by our casual laissez-faire attitude toward diet. Some of us eat meat and frequently serve desserts, as well as indulge in a small amount of junk food. To many of us this seems moderate and reasonable, considering our abundance of whole grains, soy foods, and vegetables. To some visitors it seems like heresy and backsliding.

A viable community adapts to the needs and desires of its own members much more than it conforms to abstract ideals. The probability is high that it will not, if successful, be very fanatical in its ideals. There will be some determined core idealism, but otherwise compromises will prevail. Doubtless some communities don't compromise. Some don't last either. I suspect a connection.

Many visitors set themselves up for disappointment by expecting their visit to be blessed with a love affair or relationship. Now, who am I to say this won't happen? In fact, it has happened to hundreds of people in hundreds of communities, and maybe you will be blessed also. But don't count on it. If you join, that's another matter. The chances of a long-term community member finding, at one time or another, a loving relationship within or through the community are quite high if not absolutely guaranteed.

But the visitor? My advice is to set that hope firmly aside and seek enjoyment elsewhere. Trying too hard will just make it even less likely. As to the notion of finding readily available casual sex in the commune, forget it.

The most interesting community visitor is a person who wants to join the community. Let's say you have read the community visitor materials, and you're ready for a change in your life. You've come with modest expectations, and the community looks pretty good to you. Even at this point, there are still considerations that may enhance the chances of a good connection to your chosen group.

Take this question: Shall I be on my best behavior while I visit, or shall I let them know what I am really like? By all means put your best foot forward! The experienced community makes allowances. We know that in a year or two you're not going to be jumping up and volunteering to wash the dishes, the way you did when you were visiting. But the eagerness to make a good impression makes a good impression. We'll like you wanting to please. It says something good about your social skills. We know that the real you is somewhat more of a mixed bag. So is the real us for that matter. That's not the same thing as hiding vital information. If you have a serious medical problem or a sticky child custody situation or a history of drug abuse, you cannot expect a community to become involved in such major personal problems without prior knowledge and agreement.

Then there's the question: Shall I let them know my real opinions, or shall I just go along with their assumptions? The answer depends on the nature of the group. Are you joining a group with a religion that all members must accept? If so, it seems questionable ethically to join such a group without embracing that religion. On the other hand, a group that is essentially secular should not concern itself with your private opinions. It is your behavior that matters.

Nothing is more obnoxious than the visitor who defies the important traditions of a community. Imagine, for example, a visitor passing out candy bars to children in a commune that accepts only healthy foods, using the argument that children should be free to choose their own diets. Joining any community entails giving up certain personal freedoms, even as you gain new ones (different ones in different communities). It is unmannerly in the extreme, to say nothing of ineffective, to insist on taking for yourself freedoms that the community members have voluntarily given up. A certain amount of "When in Rome do as the Romans do," is certainly appropriate.

On the other hand, if you are thinking of joining, and your happiness depends on something that you don't think the community has, don't give up too easily. Make it a point to ask, without being judgmental. It might be that the community is more flexible than it looks. There are many things that can be done, within my own community agreements, that aren't done very often for various reasons. If a prospective member who looks good to us wonders aloud if certain personal hobbies or practices would be supported at my community, we are happy to discuss possibilities. Certainly it's worth bringing up the subject and checking it out.

The community you see during any one visit is not the whole community. It is almost impossible for visitors to understand this, but it is profoundly true. A little slice of time cannot give a deep understanding of the nature of an intentional community. Your visit is influenced by many factors that are trivial in relation to the entire membership experience. The seasons have a great impact on community activity, as does filling a big order for community products, participating in an emergency, or being there during a birth or a death. An influential member may be absent when you visit. Or, there may be other visitors at the same time who by their presence skew your impressions.

The particular issue being discussed avidly when you visit is probably only one of many. Your visit will not give you an accurate impression of either the long-term importance of the issue or the outcome. If you visit when somebody is angrily leaving the group, you will pick up on a different feeling from the one you'd get if you visit when things are going well and membership is solid.

Your impressions of the community will also be influenced by the group you hang out with. I strongly advise all visitors to be cautious of information from a member who is angry with the community and wants to air grievances. Negatively loaded information can give a sense of getting the lowdown on the community, but the value of such insights is questionable.

At a minimum, a visitor who hears about significant community grievances should make a point of bringing up the same issues with a member who is happy with the place. A disillusioned member on the way out is certainly not an objective informant. No place is perfect, but it's probably not as bad as it can be made to sound.

Regarding community controversy, there's not much point in a visitor getting involved. At Twin Oaks, public discussions are carried on in writing, on a bulletin board. The comments of visitors on controversies are not usually welcome. Other communities argue in meetings, and the same thing is true of visitor comments there. It may seem to the visitor that there is something quite relevant that hasn't been said, and somebody needs to say it. But this is virtually never true. No outsider can really understand these issues after a brief stay.

Even after joining, new members will still blunder. Only after time spent living with longer-term members can new people gain an effective understanding of controversial community issues. All this doesn't mean "Visitors should be seen and not heard," but there is value in listening a lot and reserving your opinions for later.

It can be valuable for the visitor to listen to the controversial discussion and then later ask questions of individuals, outside of meeting time. Be aware of framing your questions in a neutral form, "Why is it so important that quot; or "What would happen if this approach were taken?" This personal approach will give you a chance to participate without being resented, and to learn more about community issues at the personal level. Be prepared to hear answers to your questions, and don't be hurt if your input isn't taken very seriously.

Every once in a while a visitor really does have knowledge that is immediately useful, and help offered in such cases is appreciated. Generally, this is technical help. For example, the community is having legal difficulties with a child custody case, and you are a retired lawyer from a firm that did a lot of custody work. Or the community is building a house, and you are an experienced builder. Or as a doctor, you notice that certain community norms are likely to lead to a particular disease. Note that the useful knowledge is not philosophical, but practical, the direct result of specialized training and experience.

In between solid technical expertise and personal opinion lie many visitor skill areas that may or may not be useful to share with a host community. The one I notice most often is massage. A lot of people are trained masseurs these days. Good. Offering to give massages is a courteous and friendly thing to do. You may or may not get any takers. The same is true for various schools of conflict resolution, facilitation, and therapy, and for artistic accomplishments that you can teach. If you have such a skill, your best tactic is to offer but not push it. If your guitar playing draws a happy crowd, good; you've added something to the group's happiness. On the other hand, if nobody wants to listen, oh well, try something else.

Any community's favorite visitor is the cheerful, helpful one who is genuinely impressed with the community and not very critical of shortcomings. Even if they don't join, leaving the community with a positive feeling is a nice thing to do. Of course it's always possible that some group at a particular time doesn't really need congratulations; it needs a kick in the pants. Even so, be very careful before you elect yourself to the job. A word about doing the community circuit. People often set out to visit many different communities, but few ever finish their trek. They find out what they need to know after being at two or three places. This being the case, it makes sense to look at the list of groups that sound interesting, and visit the most likely looking communities first. Directories get outdated, so write letters to more communities than you plan to visit. Some of your letters may not be answered.

When my fellow communitarians learned I was writing this article about how to visit a community, they asked me to pass along several messages. "Tell them this is our home." "Tell them not to drop in without being invited." "Tell them they sometimes have to take no for an answer." While I'm at it, I should explain that 19 out of every 20 visitors are a help and a pleasure to us. The growls and groans all come because of the exceptional twentieth.

Virtually all of those who publish the names and whereabouts of their groups do want and need a certain number and kind of visitors. So don't be discouraged. If you really want to live in an intentional community, you'll find one.

About the Author

Kat Kinkade is a founding member of Twin Oaks (1967), East Wind (1974), and Acorn (1993). She has written, and Twin Oaks has published, two books about that community, A Walden Two Experiment and Is It Utopia Yet? At Twin Oaks Kat passed away in 2008 at her home, Twin Oaks Community.

East Wind Update

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. This all added 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 usable space with a great view of the fields.

Our kitchen has been working harder and harder to get more of our food from within a 100 mile radius, providing us with fresh milk, which is being used for some learning experiences with soft cheeses. And, fresh eggs to supplement our chicken's production, as well as some free range meat chickens from a Mennonite farm about 40 miles from us. There's even been gossip of building a dairy barn again and going back into production!

Our personal food production has been wonderful this year with the ranch team harvesting and processing our own animals instead of sending them out for butcher. We've also had an amazing year in the garden, featuring peppers, cabbage, lettuce, kale, ginger, an amazing (and historically huge!) strawberry harvest, and tomatoes, coming in right up until the frost. This is only a small taste of the good work Faery Link and Peter have put into our garden. Many help, but the brunt always comes down to a few dedicated gardeners and they have done a fabulous job feeding us fresh food this year. We also have had more folks doing food processing, with beans, tomatoes, jalapenos, pickles and salsas all being put away this year.

We have had a rising interest in sustainability, which has produced some nice morning gatherings where members and visitors talk about what sustainability means to us and what we can do.

Our businesses have been doing well, and we communards saw profit sharing this year! We also put away cash for a building fund in a separate account and voted to increase that fund this year.

The Nut House expansion saw a slow point in construction, but has recently picked up again. Hopefully, we will get walls on it before the snow flies! (Update: walls are on!) One of the reasons for the new jar line is the addition of a tamper evident seal. There are roaster trainings going on and a new team taking on Nut Butter production. Feels like a lot of energy going into our business again!

Twin Oaks Update

As I write this, a child is being born here at Twin Oaks. In the upstairs living room of Kaweah, Summer and Purl are being assisted by friends, family and a midwife in giving birth to our newest member.

In June of this year we celebrated Twin Oaks' 41st Anniversary. Around 200 members and ex-members gathered together to watch slide-shows, have dinner and dance together to mark the occasion. Unfortunately, while we were waiting for dinner word got to us that one of the buildings next to our warehouse, named Oz, was burning. The destruction was total, but luckily the fire did not spread to any of the other buildings. The folks at Louisa Fire Department contained the fire and put it out for us. Work is already underway to replace Oz with a new steel building by this spring.

This year's Halloween party was a blast. Many members dressed up and partied down. Costumes included: Sarah Palin's pregnant teenage daughter (costume worn by a 40-year-old man), Peak Oil (person adorned with garbage bags and car-oil cans, with a trickle of fake oil dripping out of co's head) and Johnny Cash (complete with 3-piece live band, he led the whole room in singing a round of "Ring of Fire")

As of this moment, Twin Oaks is at maximum capacity. In early November we took on our 93rd adult member, which according to our current policy is our Population Capacity (or Pop Cap for short). Already since then we have collected a waiting list of a dozen people ready to move here once the opportunity arises. Is this the beginning of a new trend or just an anomaly? Only time will tell.

Many of our newer members have expressed a strong interest in moving our community into a more ecologically sustainable direction. We have converted most of our light bulbs to compact fluorescent and are working on plans to add a composting toilet. We are also doing renovation on the solar hot water heater in Harmony. We have done some calculations and learned that in our domestic areas we consume 70% less gasoline, 80% less electricity and 76% less natural gas the the average Virginia resident. We also produce 87% less solid waste then the average American. We are also exploring the idea of hosting a natural building workshop with a focus on communal structures in the fall of 2009. Email bucket@twinoaks.org if you are interested in hearing more about our community focused natural building workshop.

We hosted the 2008 Communities Conference and Women's Gathering this year, both of which were marvelous successes. Members here also attended the Climate Convergence, hosted at a nearby convention center.

And finally, one of Twin Oaks' primary founding members, Kat Kinkade, died on July 3rd, peacefully at home at Twin Oaks. Kat was a visionary and a mover-shaker, and her life's work touched thousands of people. Her family and friends were here with her when she passed. Kat Kinkade was a founding member of three communities in the Federation of Egalitarian Communities: Twin Oaks, East Wind and Acorn. Each of these communities are still thriving to this day. Kat died due to complications related to bone cancer, an illness she has been living with for quite a while. Kat was buried in Twin Oaks Community's cemetery, with friends, family, and communards in attendance.

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Dirt & Dreams Summer 2007 - FEC Newsletter

2007-08-07T12:50:41Z

Welcome to the third edition of Dirt & Dreams, the FEC E-Newsletter!

In this edition we talk about summer events here in our communities. Twin Oaks is hosting the Communities Conference this year in August, Acorn is organizing the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello in August, Sandhill is having another sorghum festival in September. We also have an update from Skyhouse, which includes an announcement of the creation of a new vegan cooking blog, EcoVegan.

Twin Oaks just celebrated its 40th Year of existence. In celebration of this event several members have written about their experiences living at Twin Oaks, both past and present. We have also resurrected some old articles from our archives.

The Federation of Egalitarian Communities is a network of communal groups spread across North America. We range in size and emphasis from small agricultural homesteads to village-like communities to urban group houses. We share a set of core principles including nonviolence, egalitarianism, and participatory decision-making.

Dirt and Dreams is our E-mail newsletter where we will bring to you news about our communities, articles about our values, and clips of our art and culture.

You can view this edition on the web at the following address:
http://twinoakstofu.com/FEC/2007.2/

You can subscribe or un-subscribe at the bottom of this website: http://thefec.org/

Sandhill News
by Stan Sandhill

Saturn returns: My twenty-eight year cycle?
by Jake Kawatski ('79-'06)

Skyhouse Update
by Juan

A Day in the Life of a Twin Oaks Break-up
by Matt Galllup

This Ones for the Birds!
by Ezra

The Next Generation Moves In
by Sky

Eulogy for a Feline Friend
by Meredith

All Tied Up: Reflections of a Hammock Shop Manager
by Kathryn

Home-schooling With Dragons
by Bucket

Twin Oaks As A Social Experiment
By Pam

Come to the 2007 Communities Conference!

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 17 -
Sunday August 19, 2007
(Not Labor Day Weekend)
$85 (sliding scale) includes
meals and camping

With workshops and events focused on: Intentional relationships, Group process, Collective child raising, Creating culture, Forming communities, Sustainability, Appropriate technology, Community economics, Music, Dancing, Slide shows, Campfires, Swimming, Magic & More!

Contact us at: http://CommunitiesConference.org
Twin Oaks Communities Conference
138 Twin Oaks Road, Louisa, Virginia 23093
540-894-5126
Email us at: conference@twinoaks.org

Sandhill news - 7/19/07

by Stan Sandhill

The heat & humidity are always a challenge in the middle of mizzourah summers; and so it is this year. Another constant topic is rainfall - we have been very dry again - but recently had welcome showers.

As always, our gardens are very productive and are well taken care of: in fact, I can't remember our gardens and general landscaping looking this good this time of year (read: we are keeping up with weeds!). The bummer is that poison ivy seems to be spreading around here - this year, Michael had a bad case of it that lasted for weeks.

We are having a fantastic intern year: 3 of 4 are from other FEC communities: Apple from Twin Oaks, Emmet from East Wind, and Thea from Emma Goldman's (she ended membership there when she came here). Having FEC folks as interns is such a joy: they integrate easily into our lifestyle, daily routine, do meetings, check-ins, take on responsibility, etc.

Greg, Stefanie, & Greg's 14 yr old son, Dakota, visited earlier this spring. Greg and Stefanie have been back here for a month and just became provisional members. HURRAY! We are very excited. Dakota is coming in a few weeks.

We are building a greenhouse! After 33 years on the land we are actually doing it! Gigi is the designer/honcho and it is being a great community effort. The foundation is made of gravel bags, and then earth bags for a couple feet up - we are in the process of plastering them now. It's great to have folks at DR and red earth to consult with on these earth building techniques.

Our bees have not experienced the new colony collapse syndrome (we have plenty of the old colony collapse - we lost half our hives to mites again last winter). They were slow in getting started this spring and are making up for it now.

Laird got married to Ma'ikwe (formerly of East Wind) last april in Albuquerque - where Ma'ikwe continues to reside with her son, Jibran. It was a 4 day affair and several of us from the tri-community area here (Sandhill, Dancing Rabbit, Red Earth) took the train out and had a great time sharing the festivities and experience with many community folx.

We are looking forward to another great sorghum harvest again this year - beginning mid-Sept. Y'ALL COME NOW, Y'HEAR?

Life in an Organic Vegan Food Co-op

Read about Life in an Organic Vegan Food Co-op!

We at Skyhouse eat in a food co-op that focuses on locally-grown and organic vegan dishes.

Hosted by Skyhouse, an income sharing pod of Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in rural Missouri.

Click Here to visit EcoVegan.

Saturn returns: My twenty-eight year cycle?

by Jake Kawatski ('79-'06)

I first came to Twin Oaks as a young adult of 28 and am leaving again shortly after I turn 56. I am making plans to join George Wilson, my partner of six years, in his adventures in Savannah, Georgia, for the next phase of our lives together. We'll be renovating a big old house near the city center with enough space for (at least) three other adults (potentially kids too) so I am leaving Twin Oaks but plan to continue my "alternative lifestyle" on a smaller scale. Prior to Twin Oaks, both George and I had been involved with communal households (he in Atlanta, I in Oregon and Florida), so between the two of us we will bring a lot of experience to this new urban enterprise.

Just prior to Twin Oaks (late 1970s), I was a technical director and scene designer in a community theatre (Sarasota, Florida) and all through my years here continued to be involved in many of the theatrical events; I was holiday manager for a number of years as well. I have a degree in art, and shortly after we moved into our new kitchen-dining complex (Zhankoye) in 1985, spent many happy hours of my free time, filling the empty wall space with color. A half dozen of my paintings and fabric art still hang there.

My life here has mostly been defined by the work I've done: I was deeply involved in the childcare program as metta (childcare worker) for six years in the 80s, a child board member and teacher. I still enjoy being around children, and hope to make them part of my future life. Food service has been another focus: I managed food processing (canning and preserving the harvest), cooked lunch or dinner at least once a week for most of my life here, spent six years as milker (in both old and new barns), played cheez wiz (cheese making manager for two years), and most seriously, was garden manager for nine years in that same decade. I was fortunate to have grown up in a large family on a small farm in rural Wisconsin, and so, from my earliest years, I've been comfortable with children, home grown food, gardens, soil and manure. Cleaning up after children ain't so very different from cleaning up after the cows!

I haven't been here continuously since 1979, but have left twice to gain perspective and appreciation of the rural village that is Twin Oaks. In 1982-1984, I left with a small group of life-minded folks with plans to start a life together in rural Oregon. Our plans went awry, but I stayed in wet coastal mountains of Oregon at Alpha Farm, gardening mostly for nine months, before returning (via Sandhill sorghum harvest) to take on the mantle of planner and gardening management. My most recent break (1994-1997) started with a three month stint as head cook for a boy scout camp (I was glad when that was over!) followed by two wonderful winters in Poland teaching English. (I returned to Twin Oaks in the summer breaks and worked in the garden.)

After a serious heel injury (1992) turned arthritic, I was forced to look for more sedentary work. I moved into indexing work and filled the vacancy in management for the last 8 years. I have always enjoyed the mix of mental and physical work possible here. (Still wishing there were more options in the "mental" category than there are currently, as most of us are overeducated for the tedious "blue-collar" hammocks and tofu work.)

Over my twenty some years at Twin Oaks, I have also enjoyed the larger "Yanceyville" community, (the remnants of an old village that borders Twin Oaks), and sang with their church choir on and off for most of twenty years, especially in the period when George Payne (their choir director) came to Twin Oaks weekly to direct our choir here (c. 1985-1995). I will miss that connection when I leave Virginia. It was challenging 4-part choral singing that only rarely happened in Twin Oaks "rock and roll music culture". We performed original music by George and Kat Kinkade, and traveled with various musical programs, performing at churches and events in Virginia.

In 2000, came major changes in my life at the Oaks: my favorite brother Jay (aka Woody) came to live here just months after I had met George and enticed him to live here. George is 14 years my senior, but still has the energy and ambition of a much younger person. I am mildly surprised that our years together have passed so quickly. His family has been wonderful (there are two other gay couples in his immediate family) and I look forward to being closer to all of them in whatever time remains of our "sunset" years together.

If I have any regrets, I wish I had allowed more time for art! But I imagine when I move to the city, there will be more inspiration in that area, as Savannah is home to a major art school.

Intern at Sandhill Farm

An Internship at Sandhill Farm is an opportunity to be a part of a group of adults and children growing organic food, building intentional community, and endeavoring to live a sustainable lifestyle. Interns participate, as non-members, in all aspects of the community for the length of their stay. This includes our meetings and consensus decision making process, cooking for the community, spending time with children and creative problem solving for projects. We expect interns to be open to dialoguing about what they say or do as a part of the group. Our community norms align with feminism, egalitarianism and nonviolence. Interns often become part of our extended family of friends.

We enjoy hosting interns! They bring new energy to our community and we deeply appreciate the help they offer. It is important to us to share our lifestyle and what we are learning of sustainable living. We also look forward to the social aspect of having more people and diversity on the farm.

Click Here to Apply!

Skyhouse Update

By Juan

A lot has happened at Skyhouse this year.

Maybe the biggest thing that happened was Cecil's decision to leave Skyhouse. In searching for a change, Cecil found New York City. He now lives in the city and has taken his Dancing Rabbit ecological awareness into his new environment; he found a job as the Director of Sustainability at NYU. We wish him well and continue to be open to his return.

The 2007 edition of the Communities Directory has been sent to the printer. Like last edition, this project took up a great deal of time and energy from Amy and Tony for several months. But now it's in, and another edition is on the shelves. The two of them have expressed that this may be the last time Skyhouse takes on The Directory for a while.

On the food front, we accepted some new folks into our food co-op Bobolink. This influx of new energy has seen our garden take off - it's positively huge. Further energy entered the garden in the form of work-exchangers. Since the Milkweed Mercantile is under construction, the Milkweeds have been attracting numbers of people here for a short stint (one or two months) to work on their construction. Several of them have also ended up working in our garden. This is without a doubt the most person-hours I've seen our garden get since I moved here. We're going to have a busy fall processing all this food for the winter.

We are also expanding our food presence out onto the web. Bobolink, Skyhouse's food co-op has started a food blog (a web journal) about the food we grow, prepare and eat here, at http://ecovegan.blogspot.com. Every night at dinner someone "plates" the food, it gets photographed and by bedtime it is posted on the blog. We're hoping that it will show people that eating a sustainable diet can be delicious and satisfying -- and maybe even attract some new members.

Amy is also spending a little over a month at a Catholic Worker House in Toronto. There, she's teaching them how to can and dry food for the winter as well as helping strengthen community bonds through things like community-wide meals and other activities. In exchange, she gets to spend some time soaking up all the culture a big city like Toronto has to offer.

On the business side of things, with Cecil's departure and Amy's absence, Skyhouse Consulting has decided not to take on new customers. This is not to say we aren't busy; our existing customers have lots for us to do, including new websites.

Finally, our construction scene this year has been less dramatic than in past years, but no less impressive. We've acquired our own washing machine, and we've hired Papa Bear (formerly Tony B) from Ironweed to make our staircase child-safe. Tony (the Skyhouser) is also working on building a greenhouse on the south side of the house with the help of two LEXers from Twin Oaks. When completed, this will allow us to start our gardening earlier, and have fresh produce for more of the year. I'm looking forward to it.

Acorn Community hosts the Heritiage Harvest Festival at Monticello

HERITAGE HARVEST FESTIVAL
at Monticello's Tufton Farm
Saturday September 8, 2007
10am - 4pm

Acorn Community is happy to sponsor the Heritage Harvest Festival. Come explore the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants at at Monticello's Tufton Farm, learn from national experts and local natural/organic growers, and take home seeds, plants, garlic, apples and other produce from local growers and the extensive collection of the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION

A day in the life of a Twin Oaks break-up

by Matt Galllup

I thought I'd share a little of my life at Twin Oaks in honor of the 40th anniversary. I came to T.O. with my girlfriend at the time. We soon broke up and thus ensued the most painful nine months of my life.

In retrospect, it was the most intense period of spiritual development I'd had up until that point. What follows is a brief description of my day. For the record, everything turned out fine.

8am;     Wake up in my room at Tupelo. Hear birds singing. Smell the forest. Notice diffuse and lovely light of the sun warming my young body.

8:05am;     Remember that I am alone in bed. Feel uncomfortable burn in heart region. Fully remember painful breakup in strange new place. Flash of about a dozen painful memories and what I SHOULD have done to change things. Heart burning now very uncomfortable.

8:15am;     Go back to sleep.

9:00am;     Drag pathetic ass out of bed. Avoid fellow Tupeloids, half of which are having emotional breakdowns of their own. Ask God again why I came all the way from Colorado to live in hell. Remember hammock-weaving date with Brian.

9:30am;     Collapse in martyred agony on logging road between Tupelo and ZK, "As long as she's happy, sniff, I'll be okay." Back path affords only safety of not seeing HER.

9:35am;     See HER at ZK, Dam! Put on happy face. Despite break up we still are very warm with each other. Burning in heart on medium high now. Choke down delicious breakfast of fresh bread, homemade butter, organic apples, and yes, organic oats. Community in salad days. Pier One still ordering hammocks. Organic grains for all.

10am;     Meet Brian in courtyard for weaving date. Brian greets me with a warm "Duuuuuuuude!" He is as old as my father, divorced and could be an angel in disguise. Brian hands down sage advice, humor, and heart-felt sympathy. After an hour of weaving we hug, part and I feel a bit better. Suddenly remember weaving date with Rita.

11:10am;     Meet Rita on other side of courtyard where she's been for the whole time, wondering if I'd remember. In retrospect, my forgetfulness only increases over the years at T.O. Cause? I'm not sure. Will have to ask Pele. She notices things.

11:45am;     Am sobbing on hammock with Rita. She is as old as my mother and is definitely an angel in disguise. Again, she has led me to the place in my mind that is telling me bad things about the breakup and helped me to see that they are not true. How did she do that? We hug. I'm feeling a lot better. I go to pond to skinny dip before lunch. It's like 100 degrees out. Hallelujah I'm a neekid hippy in Virginia. Jake is weeding the flowerbeds around pond, neekid. A mother is playing with her baby, neekid. As I look at the other neekid hippies like me I think, "Maybe it's not so bad being single."

12:15am:     Arrive at ZK for perfect garden grown organic lunch. See HER at table with new friends, new... boy friends? No, couldn't be, we made an Agreement. The last Mediation went so well... shit! The time period is up by about 3 weeks now! Oh my GOD, she could be dating any one of those guys. Those evil bad men, NO! They're not bad, they're my new friends. We grew so close in the sweat lodge last week. Must get away, too confusing, too confusing.

1pm;     Manage to pull off entire rope making shift on machine called The State. Operating the antiquated machine is totally involving and, at times, perilous. I focus my mind on River, the master of The State. No one runs this thing like river. He is the glue that holds this place together, I'm sure of it. Suddenly remember I have a Mediation scheduled with Hawina at five. My heart sinks to the sound of the bobbins spinning madly. I see my life twisting like the polypro fibers that fly through the machine I operate. The question is; will I become strong and supportive like the rope that I am creating? Or will I fray and snap. Clogging the machine. Possibly breaking a spindle arm of the state. Calling down the wrath of Jack, Phillip, and Alder, the Elder Gods of this commune who will have to fix whatever mess I make of my work and my life. No, I will be strong.

5pm;     Mediation with Hawina and HER. First breakthrough, I agree to call Her, her with a lower case. Second break through, I agree to give her space as I've been sort of following her around and sticking too close to her at social functions. Third break through, wow, Hawina is amazing, I ask her to stay out of ZK for the first 15 minutes of lunch and dinner so I can just get my food and get out of there before I have to see or hear her and the stabbing searing pain of my heart makes it impossible to eat. Score! I negotiate a whole week of no ex-girlfriend in the food line. Fourth break through, we unload weeks of breakup feelings to each other and come to a new place of understanding and intimacy.

5:45pm;     I feel great. I have been heard and my feelings validated. She and I walk up hill from Morningstar to ZK hand in hand. A shining example of how two people can survive a breakup at, hands down, the worst place in the world to break up.

6:45pm;     Playing Hacky sack after perfect dinner of amazing organic like-no-where-else-in-America food. Sky pulls of tricky jester hack move. Kate dropkicks it onto the roof of ZK. Dexter the dog herds the group and grabs hack repeatedly, John accidentally kicks Jonah in the head. Jonah is fine. John needs group support to stop crying and continue playing, I invent a new move called 'The Matrix'. The hack circle swells to fifteen people. Rapture! I've never been so happy.

7:30pm:     Catch Coyote before he goes to bed. After much good conversation and wisdom slinging, Coyote agrees to be my illegitimate father which is not so far fetched. After hanging out with Coyote I always feel a whole hell of a lot better.

8:30pm;     I go to a "Cuddle Puddle" in Mary's room. She vehemently denies that this is a light sex party. I am wearing nothing but a tiny silk skirt and a g-string. The heat has dropped to only 98 degrees with 90 percent humidity. The party starts slowly with wine in a box and cheese on crackers. Someone pulls out a chocolate bar. The party picks up. Soon we are a mass of sweaty smelly bodies all over Mary's room. Someone is touching my ass .Frodo? Whatever, I like him anyway. After all, I'm learning to shed my notions of what is appropriate behavior for a hetero man that were pounded into my head by mainstream society. I'm a Twin Oaker now. I shamelessly give long hugs to my male friends. I'm not shy at the pond. And hey, if, after a long night of Yuen-Ling and box wine I end up making out with some magical German dude who is feeding me mangos, then I'm okay with that.

9:45pm     I drag my sweaty mango stuffed self back toward Tupelo. The cuddle puddle was getting a little too intense and I sensed some real boundary-pushing coming on. I'm starting to get the feeling that everyone has already been with everyone else here. In fact, I'm beginning to suspect that there are people here who are romantically involved with more then one person here. I'll have to ask Pax about this.

10:30pm;     Neekid in the pond with several nameless visitor girls and my Life Dance Guru, Piankey. All these people are new to me yet I find that I really love them all. Is this what it is to be a flower child? The scene is too beautiful to describe. We are up to our necks in cool water. The frogs and crickets are blasting us with a wall of natural psychedelic sound, the stars are all out in hyper real brightness. Piankey is singing one of his own songs in a high quavering voice. The moonlight makes our skin glow. I think one of the visitor girls, Rachel, no, Sarah, I can't remember, is flirting with me. There are like twelve women in this visitor group. It's always this way. I hear that Valerie controls the male to female ratio of visitors. The community has found that things work better with more women and less men. Valerie is very wise and I trust her judgment.

12pm;     I walk through the dark back to Tupelo. All is quiet. I hear the sounds of lovers coming from somewhere in Tupelo. I feel so good I don't mind. There's no real privacy here anyway. You just have to get used to it. I rummage through the refrigerator and eat some yogurt and left over popcorn. As I walk to my room I nearly run into her I mean HER. We say "hi" and awkwardly keep walking. Wait a minute... what's she doing here? Is she sleeping over with someone in Tupelo!!!! NOOOOOOO!!!!!

12:30pm     I am brutally reminded that I am still living in Hell. All the emotional progress of the day is flushed down the toilet and on it's way to the STP. The pain in my heart returns full force and I wonder how long I will last until I snap and become a little frayed and burnt wad of poly pro that Shal will find on the hammock shop floor and carefully put into the rope-recycling bin. Why, God, why does her new boyfriend live in MY building? I'm going to need another mediation. I gotta get off this farm. But I have no money and no vacation time saved up. Damn!

1am;     as I drift off to sleep I struggle with the conflict of both loving and hating this place. I resolve to stay and become stronger. I know that with the help of my friends and lots of wine in a box that I will make it. And when my six-month review comes up, there will not be one piece of negative feedback.

This Ones for the Birds!

by Ezra

Every so often, I am asked "what are your favorite things about Twin Oaks?" Sometimes it's during a dinner conversation with a guest, on a garden shift with a visitor, or in a survey put out by a member or visiting academic. On such occasions, I know what the "correct" answer might be: our organic food, our communal lifestyle, what a safe and supportive place Twin Oaks is to raise a small child. But the truth is that -with the possible exception of my son- nothing at Twin Oaks gives me more pleasure than the birdfeeder hanging outside of my window. I love the woodpeckers - downy, hairy and redbellied and the nuthatches - white-breasted and red-breasted. I love my birdfeeder in the winter, when clouds of purple finches battle for the feeding perches, and flocks of dark-eyed juncos gather on the ground below waiting for the seeds they spill. I love it in the spring, when the Goldfinches exchange their dull winter plumage for the bright yellow of the breeding season, and the Rose-breasted Grosbeaks drop in during their spring migration. I love it in the summer when the Indigo Buntings arrive, and I can sit on the outside deck and watch the birds flitting up for a late-afternoon snack, oblivious to the noisy joyful humans just a few feet away. And I love it in the fall when... well, you get the picture.

I began fantasizing about a birdfeeder soon after I moved to Twin Oaks. The day I moved into my room in Beechside, I realized that I had found the perfect location. A feeder hung there would be close to the forest, and high in the air, but would be directly outside of my window. The small deck just outside of the second story door was a perfect place to attach one end of a pulley, allowing me to pull the feeder back and forth and re-fill it with ease. My original plan involved attaching the other end of the pulley to the building itself, so that the feeder, a cheap plastic tube-type affair, hung just inches outside of the window. It seemed like an ideal arrangement, but it didn't take long for the squirrels to figure out that there was a free lunch within easy reach. Soon, they were scampering all up and down the side of the building and across the outside of my windowsill. Their loud scritch-scritch-scritching, at all hours of day and night began to drive me insane. Naively, I tried anchoring the other end of the pulley on a long rod that held the feeder a foot or so away from the window. This didn't faze the squirrels at all. They would leap from the ledge onto the feeder and casually, mockingly even-- munch on my expensive birdfeed (this was during austerity, mind you!) This was too much to take, so I climbed onto a high ladder and moved the other end of the pulley to a nearby tree. The feeder would hang further from the window, but would hopefully be squirrel proof. It wasn't. The nasty little creatures simply ran along the string and hung upside down, gorging themselves on the finest black-oil sunflower seeds that $60 a month could buy. I tried hanging round plastic disks beneath the line to shield the feeder. I tried sheathing the line itself with slippery spinny plastic so that the squirrels couldn't run along the line. I tried pruning back branches from the nearby trees. I hung so much armor on my feeder that it looked like a hanging junkyard! Each new technique would confuse them for a week or so, but they would soon regain the upper hand. They gnawed holes in my birdfeeder for easier access. They even began to eat the plastic bucket that I kept the birdseed in. I would open the lid to find a pile of empty seed shells and squirrel poop. Oh how I raged! I would run outside in a frenzy and shake the rope to dislodge the vermin, hoping to send them plunging to their deaths. When, in my frustration, I shook the rope so hard that I pulled the feeder clear off of the tree, I realized that I needed a better plan.

Today, I am at peace with the squirrels. With my superior human technology (a 'squirrel-proof' feeder with a spring-mounted steel cage, and a galvanized bucket for the feed), I have bested their gnawing teeth and scurrying claws. They don't even try anymore. I can sit in my bed with my Sibley Field (sic) Guide to Eastern Birds and my binoculars, and watch the charming antics of my feathered friends. Almost every week this year, I have experienced the sublime thrill of identifying a new species just outside my window - 20 different types so far (I saw an Eastern Bluebird there for the first time last week!), and I'm sure there are far more that I've seen but not identified. I delight in re-filling the feeder nearly every day, satisfying some deep nurturing instinct. This spring, I have been sharing my obsession with my son Zadek, and it has been quite delightful to see him standing on the bed, pointing and saying "bird..big bird... yellow bird," and knowing that he is just as excited about them as I am.

The Next Generation Moves In

by Sky

When I moved to Twin Oaks in 1999, I was one of 5 members in their twenties. In my membership interview I was asked, "what's your biggest concern about moving to Twin Oaks?" My answer was, "I'll have no peer group." My interviewers replied by saying, "if you move here, more young people will move here." It seems they were right. The twenty-somethings have been our biggest age group for about 3 years running, while the older population, much to the surprise of our members, has been declining.

It was in the early nineties that the community recognized that the population was aging; the average age had increased ever year since the founding of the community - the first year it decreased was 200X. Folks realized that that this might pose some problems, particularly in our labor scene and its repercussions on our income-generating abilities. Additionally, the community recognized it wasn't fully equipped to deal with the debilitating conditions that often accompany advanced age.

The Aging and Fire Fund was started in 199X (the principle of the fund broke $1 million in early 2007). Nashoba, designed for members with limited-mobility, was built in 199X. In 199X the Aging in Utopia report was produced, which covered myriad issues related to an aging population and made suggestions for how to address them. Then, just months before my visitor period in '99, the community instituted an age-cap of 54 years for new members. Around that time the Recruiting team was given a mandate to recruit more young people. In 2001 the weather changed and a deluge of young people hit the community.

Having done lots of outreach and promotion work in my time here, I've come to realize the futility of trying to find out how people find out about the community and the best avenues for reaching the masses. In this case, certainly there was a feedback loop created: as more young people joined it became more attractive for other young people to join. Also, it seems like friends of young members tend to come visit more often. But why so many young people started coming seems less important than the impact it has had on the community.

When I joined, not only where there few young people, but the community was at a population low point of 65 members. Despite the higher turnover rate brought by a younger population, the influx was so large that the population kept growing. In 2003 we started approaching pop cap (population capacity) for the first time since the mid-nineties. While this meant more hands-on-deck to get things done, it meant more time spent training and a lower overall level of skill in various areas. It also meant a large disparity between the skill levels of different members and the ability of different members to find or create satisfying work scenes for themselves. Additionally, many of our young, new members were not accustom to working so much. Several new members in '02 and '03 had their provisional membership extended because they didn't have a positive labor balance, or just barely managed to have a positive balance by their full member poll.

In many ways, what we were facing was a problem of how to better integrate new members. But because the age range of new members tended to be low it also became something of a generation conflict. This was exacerbated by the effect so many new, younger members had on the Twin Oaks social scene.

Starting in 2003, with their peer group dwindling and feeling alienated by the new dominate social group, a number of fifty-something members started putting out a call to repeal the age cap.

In the last couple years we've hit a new phase in our evolving age demographic, with accompanying effects. Most of the young new members of recent years have moved on, but a number have stayed, learned skills, taken positions of responsibility, and become solid, respected, and influential. And as they have aged and matured, both personally and as members, the social gap has begun to decrease.

Eulogy for a Feline Friend

by Meredith

It is impossible to write about being a dairy manager without writing about the creatures that I care for and learn from. Here is the story of one of them.

He was the cat of many names. Emily called him Gris-gris. I called him Smokey. Most people just referred to "the grey cat that hangs around the barn". This phenomenon was an apt description of who he was, because he was a half-wild animal and never knew himself by any name. This cat belonged to no one, associated with no one, and yet at the same time, he was part of Twin Oaks every bit as much as you or I.

He appeared at the north end of the property a couple years ago, near the hay barn where the chickens were kept. He lived among the hens, in apparent harmony; he didn't try to eat them and the ladies seemed to accept his presence. His two yellow eyes would look out from beneath the old wood storage area by the compost while chickens ruffled their feathers, settling down in the dust just a few feet away.

The first I started paying attention to him was as a little gray tail darting out the dairy barn door. He had discovered that there was free food if only you were willing to risk being seen by bovines and their rubber-booted human caretakers. I didn't like the idea of feeding this cat. We already had Tang, our sweet orange barn cat. Besides, I said, farm cats should eat mice and spare milk.

But my heart softened with time, and eventually I even stopped taking the cat food away from him. I thought he was an absolutely beautiful cat; he had a deep blue-gray coat with those bright, fearful eyes that always watched me, whenever I was within sight. They would watch even while he drank milk, tongue lapping up the white creamy liquid with eyes peering upwards to keep tabs on me. And if anyone came a bit too close, away he would dart behind the old milk cooler and out the far door.

And so he became a sort of permanent guest. He lived at the chickens' area and came in to the dairy barn occasionally when he couldn't find enough mice to eat. Perhaps once a year, he'd disappear for a couple weeks, then return. We never did find out where he went or what he did.

So when he got sick a few weeks ago and it was apparent that something needed to be done, both for his sake and for the sake of those around him, I volunteered to take him to the vet.

We stood out a bit, in the waiting room. All the other clients had their pets in fancy cat carriers and nice leashes. The humans were well-groomed or at least wore clean clothes. I walked in wearing mismatched work gloves and cow jeans, carrying a wire cage with chicken feathers and fragrant manure embedded in it. The cat had scratched up his face while trying to escape. In addition to these bloody scratches, mucus and discharge ran down his face from his illness.

Nevertheless, the veterinarian and staff treated us like any other owner and pet. It felt strange to hear the cat referred to as "Smokey" rather than "that gray cat." For the first time in his life, he was treated as much more than a stray.

The news was the worst. His runny nose and wheezing were due just to a respiratory illness. However, he also had Feline Immunodeficiency Virus, or "Cat HIV". Contagious, incurable, and ultimately fatal.

The vet euthanized him while I waited in the parking lot. Standing in the wind, I shed tears for him, this cat who would leave the world as quietly and cautiously as he entered. When I drove home, his body in a cardboard box next to me, I experienced a sorrow so pure, like rain on the grass.

I buried him alone the next day, a shallow grave in the yellow flowers behind the chicken coop. It was how it should be; no procession, no words or songs, not even a coffin. This cat would want to end his life like the semi-feral cat he always was. I did, however, plant at the grave a wooden marker shaped like a hen to watch over and keep company with him forever, just as the hens were companions in this life.

I hope that I may live a life so wild and beautiful as this cat's. And, if I cannot, it is enough that I have witnessed his.

All Tied Up: Reflections of a Hammock Shop Manager

by Kathryn

When I joined Twin Oaks, I could not have predicted that I would spend the first few years of my membership as the primary go-to person for problems great and small in the rope products business. I pictured myself building straw bale structures, learning to install solar panels, and growing and eating nothing but home-grown produce, dairy and eggs. But I also wanted to be useful to the community, and, as it turned out, Twin Oaks needed money, perhaps just as much as it needed idealistic people looking to make a better life.

So I jumped in, learning everything I could about the rambling behemoth called Twin Oaks Hammocks. There were almost twenty different managers for the production and overhead areas, not to mention assorted project leaders, honchos, and unofficial advisors. Thousands of useful and not-so-useful files stored in over a dozen filing cabinets, forty or fifty cubbies, a few different buildings, several email accounts, and hundreds of network file folders. A communications system based largely on word-of-mouth and assorted scraps of paper tucked, taped, or pinned here and there. A warehouse filled to bursting with supplies and finished products. And (hooray!) a Rolodex full of happy customers. At first, I wanted to clean up, organize, and streamline everything - how else could I make sense of all the chaos? I'm sure I made some hearty attempts, and maybe even organized a thing or two in my first months on the job. But entropy is a strong force in community. Rather than bringing the business into line, I let it bring me into line.

I feel enormous appreciation to the people over the years who kept our rope products business running and thriving under Pier One. It must have been an enormous job. In preparing to write this article, I visited the archives to skim some issues of the Leaves from the mid nineties for a glimpse of what Twin Oaks Hammocks was like ten years ago. What struck me most was how busy the rope products business was, and how central to life at Twin Oaks. Nearly every issue contains tales of a major push event, unexpected Pier One orders (or lack thereof), production incentives, new equipment, new products, labor crunches, joint business talks with East Wind, or recruiting other communities to make hammocks. In one push, Oakers got allowance bonuses if we made our production goals, and managers had a $12/day budget to buy treats for workers. Amazing. These days, if we're falling a little behind in hammock production, the problem can usually be remedied by a couple of notes on the 3 x 5 board and a handful of people rearranging their schedule a little bit. If someone wants to serve goodies in the hammock shop, the answer is either "No, we don't need it," or "Only if it doesn't cost money."

The rope products business of yesteryear was certainly more exciting, not to mention richer, than today's Twin Oaks Hammocks. The flip side of excitement, however, is stress. Behind all those push events and incentives were hours of meetings, pages of proposals, millions of brain cells, and probably at least a few repetitive strain injuries. I can just imagine the seemingly interminable meetings in which the planners and rope products managers hashed out compromises enabling us to meet the needs of both Pier One and ourselves. I can imagine the person in charge of providing goodies to the hammock shop overhearing someone grumble about the selection; the motivated weaver breaking a sweat at one jig, resenting the person at the next jig, who stops after every row to get a drink; the person on the phone with one of our suppliers, finding out that our raw materials won't arrive on time; the manager who withdraws because of the strain of dealing with folks's resentment about the decisions she helps make.

All in all, I think the rope products business under Pier One was more fun for the general population of Twin Oaks. High production goals, a busy hammock shop, and lots of cultural activities centering around the courtyard fostered comraderie and community. And the managers must have gotten a lot of satisfaction out of keeping the business going, at a cost of exhaustion, burn out, and stress. For me, that trade-off would not be worth it. I am glad that I happened to walk in to Twin Oaks Hammocks just when it began to shrink. I get the satisfaction of doing a necessary job, of fulfilling my responsibility to the community, without the level of pressure that previous managers endured. And I get to witness and help shape the changing of our economic picture and our culture as we spend less time in the hammock shop.

Home-schooling With Dragons

by bucket

Last winter I agreed to help home school a young boy here on the farm 1 day a week.

I've been home-schooling this 6 yr. old for about 6 months now. The first few months were really hard.

Before his mother asked me to home school him, he had been in our preschool program, known to us here on the farm as "Pirate Shifts." he had outgrown these play sessions and it was time for his learning to take a more focused format.

He sorely missed his time with the other children, and rebelled quite a bit towards the new home-schooling format. He would negotiate and argue for most of our time together. When we had finally settled into lessons, we usually had only 30 to 45 minutes left in our 2 hour sessions together.

I went on a little vacation and hatched a plan. I had stumbled across a set of Dungeons and Dragons rule books. He loves the Lord of the Rings and books on knights and dragons. I decided to see if I could create a home-schooling curriculum using Dungeons and Dragons as the medium and reward mechanism.

It has worked out great. He will focus really hard on the math problems knowing that there might a new magic wand or treasure behind each puzzle he solves. He's using his creative energy to it's fullest potential and he's creating his own way of solving math problems.

We've shot through addition and subtraction in the 1000's, he has had no problems figuring out simple cyphers and finishing number patterns. We've done a lot of pre-algebra and are working on memorizing our multiplication tables.

The charts and graphs built into the game draw his interest. He is being constantly drilled in simple addition (he does not have a lot of addition memorized, he mostly uses his fingers for addition) by adding modifiers to constant dice rolls.

Furthermore, I am having a blast. it has turned something I've dreaded into something I enjoy. His younger friend has joined him and they sometimes compete to see who can solve the math puzzles first, or cooperate and explain to each other their methods and shortcuts for solving problems.

Anyhow.. I'm having fun and it's time to continue our quest to get the Lunar Chain Mail in the ancient temple to Ishtar currently infested by Gnolls (who seek to revive the ancient wyrm Tiamat!)

-bucket

Twin Oaks As A Social Experiment.

By Pam
21 May 2007

The C'ville Weekly claimed we are the country's oldest commune. I doubt it's true, but after 40 years here, Twin Oaks is obviously successful at surviving. How well have we done as a social experiment?

We are a group of nearly a hundred members, jointly owning this community and our various "means of production, distribution and exchange". (That's my dictionary's definition of socialism). We do it pretty well. We own and run businesses together, we grow a lot of our own food, and we share a fleet of vehicles. We can each choose from an amazing array of types of work, and each assemble our own portfolio of jobs, with flexible hours to suit our internal clocks. We care for our sick and elderly, and support our children.

A lot of the success of our work-sharing is due to our labor credit system. Local currency systems are nothing new to us. We've been valuing an hour of work with one labor credit for a long time. Another part of the success is to base everything on a trust system - expect the best of each other and we nearly always get it. No police, no heavy beaurocracy. A third factor is setting up our decision-making so that people can choose to participate or not, but can't hold up the process if they don't participate.

So, that's the outline of what I think works. It does rankle though, to have my lifestyle still called an "experiment". I've been living communally for 34 years, 15 of them at TO. For me, it's my lifestyle, it's not an experiment. By now, I know it works. Why do we hang on to the "social experiment" label? I'm an unabashed socialist. Does the word "socialism" make people uncomfortable? Calling my life an experiment is like telling me it's "just a phase" I'm going through!

Actually, one of the things we're not good at here is conducting experiments. I can't think of one piece of policy that we've successfully experimented with. We tried with the nudity policy one summer, experimenting with a looser policy. We failed to follow through in evaluating the experiment and making a conscious decision on what to do next. We drifted for much longer than originally stated, then got a decision from the planners that got an over-ride. While "experimenting" some people got attached to the temporary state and wanted to abandon the agreement.

What else hasn't worked, or has changed for the worse? I think we've slid into a wider disparity of wealth than used to be common here. Quite a few people now have a weekly house-cleaning job, or other VE (Vacation Earnings) opportunity. The rules for spending VE are not always followed, so some people live higher on the hog than others. I regret that.

Our efforts to address our imbalanced age demographics several years ago led to publicity that deterred over-50's, and outreach that very successfully recruited 20-somethings. We have more of a revolving door now higher turnover. (I know turnover was very high in the formative years, but later it stabilized somewhat). We offer PALs (Personal Affairs Leave) - the right to leave and return within a year without going through membership application process again. It's hard to see friends leave. It's hard training people and then having to train more people. I hope we move more towards encouraging long term membership.

We're not great at confronting people who abuse our trust and openness. We mostly shy away from confronting and dealing with those problems. We could use more courage, and less hoping someone else will deal. We're all struggling humans, we'll never be perfect, but we do give it a good try!

We're not great at writing articles for deadlines, we tend to hope someone else will do it!

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Dirt and Dreams . FEC Newsletter . Winter 2007

2007-02-27T16:47:14Z

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1: FEC Assembly Recap
by our new FEC Secretary, Amy Skyhouse

2: The Way We Eat
Juan Skyhouse talks about Food at Dancing Rabbit.

3: Working Together
Twin Oaks members speak out about the pros and cons of their community's labor system.

4: Skyhouse Update
An update of happenings from Skyhouse in Missouri.

5: Medowdance Update
News from Medowdance community in Vermont.

6: Sandhill News
Stan Sandhill reports from Sandhill Community in Missouri.

7: You know you've lived on a commune when...
by Valerie

8: Emma's Update
News from Emma Goldman's Finishing School, an urban community in Washington.

9: News of the Oaks
News from Twin Oaks Community in Virginia.

10: Acorn Update
News from Acorn Community in Virginia.

Welcome to the second edition of Dirt & Dreams, the FEC E-Newsletter! The Federation of Egalitarian Communities is a network of communal groups spread across North America. We range in size and emphasis from small agricultural homesteads to village-like communities to urban group houses. We share a set of core principles including nonviolence, egalitarianism, and participatory decision-making.

Dirt and Dreams is our E-mail newsletter where we will bring to you news about our communities, articles about our values, and clips of our art and culture.

You can un-subscribe at the bottom of this page: http://thefec.org/

FEC Assembly Recap

by Amy Skyhouse

In early January, Emma Goldman's Finishing School in Seattle hosted the FEC Winter Assembly. Delegates in attendance were myself (Amy from Skyhouse), Stan (from Sandhill), Radish (Acorn), Aubee (Twin Oaks), and Thea (Emma Goldman's Finishing School). Daniel (also from Twin Oaks) came along for the trip and sat in for all of our meetings. We managed to squeeze the agenda down to two and a half days, but still had plenty of time for socializing with each other and the nice folks at Emma's.

One of the first orders of business was to find a new Secretary. I hesitantly volunteered to fill in the gap that was left by Parke -- at least until the next Assembly. It seems like awfully big shoes to fill! Also taking on new responsibilities was Radish, who is going to be coordinating the print version of the FEC newsletter. We set our budget for 2007 and talked about the possibility of finding someone to fill the role of FEC Treasurer. If you live in an FEC community and are interested, please drop us a line!

We also spent half a day working around Emma's as a way of saying thank you for hosting us. The big job was taking down a big evergreen tree that grew up too close to the house and power lines. So while a few delegates braved the ladder to saw off branches, others mulched over the icy path next to their house and hung door sweeps. It was very satisfying to help Emma's.

It wasn't all work and no play, however. On Thursday, we had community check-ins where we shared stories of what our communities have been up to in the past six months. On Saturday morning, I brought in vegan donuts from the legendary Mighty-O bakery. Then, Saturday night, we went out for Ethiopian food for dinner and had a fun gathering at Emma's where we met neighbors and friends of the community. It was nice to meet Shawn from the now-defunct Jolly Ranchers community and see Brad who frequently comes to Sandhill for sorghum season.

The folks at Emma's were generous hosts who I enjoyed getting to know. Everyone was very nice and had an interesting story to tell. It's wonderful how individual each FEC community is and yet how we all hold similar values. It's easy to see how each community brings a valuable viewpoint to our organization. I look forward to the next FEC Assembly in August when it will be hosted by Acorn.

The Way We Eat

By Juan Skyhouse

By living at Dancing Rabbit, I feel we've made a commitment to trying to live as environmentally sustainably as we can. This includes obvious things, such as recycling our waste and conserving resources directly. It also includes less obvious things, like making certain lifestyle choices.

One of the areas of life that I find easily overlooked when one is considering the environmental impact of our actions is food. Large amounts of energy are used every day in the production, care, and transport of food.

Bobolink, one of our food co-ops, puts a great deal of thought and energy into this one aspect of our lives. It's taken years, but the members have struck a balance between being environmentally friendly, socially conscious, nutritionally healthy, and happy with our food. These issues are hardly unique to Bobolink, and every food co- op at DR has had to wrestle with these same problems, and come up with different solutions.

First, we chose to make eating bioregionally a priority. This involves growing some of our food, and buying the rest from growers as close to us as we can get. For example, we buy produce from neighbors rather than at a supermarket. The logic behind this choice is simple: the less distance our food has to travel, the less energy and fossil fuels it takes to get it to us.

Eating bioregionally isn't particularly easy, however. We live in a temperate climate, which means that foods that are tropical generally stay off the menu. As such, we refrain from buying most citrus fruits, avocados, and other delicious treats, since they would have to be shipped from farther away than we'd like.

One large difficulty in trying to eat local foods is with grains and beans. Local farmers grow very few grains, so we find ourselves ordering the rest from a national bulk food company. Regrettably, we have no way of knowing from where the food we're ordering comes. We do the best we can, buying foods that could be grown nearby, and avoiding those that could not.

A part of bioregional eating that took a lot of getting used-to for me was the idea of food seasons. Most food crops aren't grown year-round, and some foods are only in season for a few weeks out of the year. As such, we do a lot of food preservation at Bobolink. We dry and can seasonal foods all throughout the warmer months so we can enjoy them in the winter.

Bobolink has made another big choice when it comes to food; we're a vegan food co-op. As a group, we buy no meat, no dairy, no eggs, no animal products at all (unless you consider honey an animal product, in which case that's our one exception). Of course, individual members are free to do as they wish when not cooking for the rest of the group, but meals cooked for everyone must be entirely vegan.

The environmental impact of a vegan diet is straightforward: on average, raising meat requires significantly more resources than growing plants. For example, according to the USDA, farm animals eat 70% of the grain we grow as a country. Fresh water is another area where animal agriculture is a big resource drain, with farm animals drinking fully half of the US water supply.

We also try to eat organically-grown food as much as possible. Chemical pesticides are frequently petroleum-based, and contaminate the ground and strip nutrients from it. To compensate, traditional agriculture uses vast amounts of chemical fertilizer. Both those pesticides and the fertilizer are shipped to the farms from manufacturing plants - consuming energy in the form of transportation fuel. Organically-grown crops don't use these chemicals, and as such are less likely to need all that energy for transportation.

Each one of these choices helps a little. However, it's the combination of all of them that makes a big difference. Of course, our system isn't perfect, as we have to balance these environmental concerns with nutritional, financial, and quality-of-life issues. Other co-ops at DR have reached different solutions to the same problems, and I consider their choices to be as valid as ours. This is just what we do, and why we do it.

Bon appetit.

Working Together:

Oakers reflect on our labor system

Labor. If there's one thing that ties Oakers together, its the work that we do to contribute to the continuation and upkeep of our community. This includes everything that we deem "labor creditable:" cooking, cleaning, group child care, tofu production, hammock production, gardening, dairy work, and the hundreds of other jobs that we do are valued equally. Moving to Twin Oaks, we each commit to working 44 hours/week (this number fluctuates).

We each have a great deal of autonomy over constructing a labor scene that fits our individual needs and desires.

It's a trust-based system: we track how much of which kinds of work we've done each week. Hours done over or under quota get added to, or deducted from a running vacation balance. Our labor system is a central to the community's functioning, and lately it has been discussed in the community. What follows is a small slice of the wider, ongoing community discussion: six communards give their personal take on our labor system. Share and Enjoy!

Pele- Our labor system is a mix of positive and negative, like virtually everything. I genuinely appreciate our system's dependency upon honesty, cooperation, and equality. One hour of work is worth one labor credit regardless of the type of job.

These same qualities can hurt our labor system, when communards behave disrespectfully and irresponsibly.

This is disheartening to me. I live here for the trust based way that we share our work in order to share the benefits. The labor system's effect on the community is also both positive and negative. We tend to be very work-focused, which can interfere with cultural pursuits.

However, we are highly productive. Our tofu business and garden are the first two examples that come to mind of hard work paying off. Even as a work-focused community, our system offers much more flexibility than the "outside". Each of us is an owner of several businesses, not an employee.

This gives each of us more power and autonomy over our jobs than someone with a boss. Personally, I greatly enjoy the freedom that our system offers. It provides me with the opportunity to hike in the woods for long periods of time. Although getting out of the labor hole (labor debt to the community -ed.) is challenging for me due to my physically demanding work scene, I still wouldn't change our labor system. I live with the consequences of my choices.

Gordon- During my first visit to Twin Oaks, in 1974, there was a well-attended hammock shop meeting on what to do about a member who was 200 hours in the labor hole. As I recall, the member was contrite, yet a slight bit defiant. He wanted to do better, but he didn't think The System was really fair. He could imagine working harder in the abstract, but he clearly had trouble staying motivated in the face of endless hammocks and other day-in, day-out jobs. Some people made supportive suggestions, others felt ripped off and helpless. Some people felt frustrated that the community couldn't prevent this problem from happening again and again.

Twin Oaks has made progress since then. The Labor Hole Policy is pretty good at catching people early who are falling behind. However, the tension continues between our trust-based labor system, built on members picking their own work and pace, versus the tendency of many people to slack off. We very seldom get to the point where we need a public meeting about an individual's work performance; unmotivated people often move themselves on before it gets too bad. So we don't have much practice with confrontational enforcement. Old policies are dragged out. Managers try to remember the way it happened last time. It is slow, and awkward, and the tensions keep building.

But it is important that we do ultimately confront members who are not doing their share. It is just too easy for people to lose energy, lose focus, maybe get depressed, and fall behind. Also, Twin Oaks' fairly open acceptance policy means some new members don't yet have much self-motivation. Usually when people fall behind, the small things (3x5s from the Labor Hole Mother, friends' support, gossip) get us back on track.

If those don't work, the community must face the unpleasantness of O&I papers, feedback meetings, and so on. Otherwise everyone's confidence in the community's institutions and culture is threatened.

Pam- I consider myself as (among other things), a pragmatic socialist. Our labor system offers a simple way of getting necessary tasks done without a lot of daily negotiation - that appeals to my pragmatism. I also appreciate that our system values all kinds of work equally, and shows this by 'paying the same rate' of one labor credit per hour.

I despise the huge range of pay scales in the corporate world. Here we run worker-owned and worker-controlled businesses. How wonderful! No need to compromise our egalitarian values to earn a living. We put domestic, agricultural and organizational work on the same level as money-earning.

Because of sharing income and expenses, we are able to reduce our cost of living to a low level while experiencing a comfortable lifestyle. It frees us from the need to each focus on earning money for 40 hours a week. It enables us to focus on the things we, as a group, have decided are important to us.

And yet sometimes we grumble....

What is there to dislike about such a fair and pleasant way of living? When we forget that we are the engineers of our systems and the participants in our decision-making, and instead cultivate resentments and cynicism about our community, we are choosing to live less fully than we can. Cynicism is a warped choice that allows a person to go along with something they can profess to disagree with strongly, and not do anything to change what they say they don't like. It allows the person to reap all the benefits without making the effort to work for continuous improvement. The price, of course, is a curdled soul - unhappiness that is blamed on what other people do, although it is caused by the mismatch between our ideals and what we ourselves are prepared to actually do.

Some of the foundations of happiness, as I see it, include having a set of ethics you really believe in and live by, and also a plan for your time that is realistic. Our labor system can fit such an approach. It doesn't have to be perfect.

Paxus- PSCs (personal service credits) are our own internal labor currency. If I have a vacation balance from working over quota on average, I can offer some credits to another member of the community in exchange for them doing some work for me. If my friend is good with tools, I can offer them PSCs to build me a piece of furniture. The long standing policy is that PSCs, like the rest of our labor, are granted on a one PSC for one hour of work basis.

However, like many things at Twin Oaks, there has been "norm drift." Can I give you 3 PSCs for a picture it took you an hour to draw, because you had to practice drawing other pictures to get this fast? Can we have auctions where PSCs are used as the currency, completely distinct from the time it actually took to create the object being bid on? Should PSCs be de-linked from the one-to-one policy, since the underlying work to the community has already been done?

Just as a member can choose to spend vacation anyway they want, perhaps they should be permitted to spend PSCs at what ever rate they would like. The debate rages on....

With the loss of Pier 1, our largest hammocks customer, the community has sought to increase other income areas to compensate. One of the fastest growing work areas in the community is Outside Work (OW). OW is labor that members do for someone other than one of our cottage industries. The wages go to Twin Oaks, and the member receives labor credits. The majority of Outside Work's growth has come from more members working off the farm in construction, agriculture, house cleaning and landscaping.

Despite the benefits, there is some internal controversy over OW. It puts a strain on our vehicle fleet, and it often takes people off the farm, degrading the quality of our collective life.

Despite the drawbacks, I still think that OW will continue to be an important part of our collective income.

Shal- A labor credit is earned per hour of work, no matter how much or little is accomplished in that hour. On the positive side, it is a very important part of an egalitarian system to recognize that some people are able to work faster than others, and slower people should not be punished for what they cannot help. This is especially important to me since I am a slow person, and love that I am not punished for that here. It is one of several major reasons why I live here. However, although a faster person's range is different than a slower person's, both have the ability to work quicker or slower. The upper part of that range requires pushing ourselves hard, and most of us would not want to be required to do that since we want to enjoy our work, and we own the place. But much of the range can be done without undo hardship, at least in repetitive jobs (like most of our work), by looking for ways to work more efficiently.

As I see it, it is a major weakness that our system has no built-in incentives for working more efficiently. I think this has the effect of making our community significantly more inefficient than it could be, thus costing us as a community quite a bit of time. I think we could chip away at this problem in a couple of ways. On a formal level, for our repetitive jobs we could teach efficient methods to new members, and hopefully even retrain established members in more efficient methods. And on a more informal level, we could try to create more of a culture of trying to work efficiently for the good of the community, while still working at a humanely comfortable pace. This would serve the community better in that we would get more done per hour. Then we could do more and/or work less.

Apple- Sometimes I hate our labor system. Sometimes I notice that I am comprehending life only through labor credits, deciding what to do with my time based NOT on what I would enjoy doing, or what I think NEEDS doing, but on what I could do that I could write on my labor sheet. Sometimes I find myself looking at what OTHER people are doing for labor credits, and judging myself against them. At times like these, I start to think that the labor system is a gigantic and ugly institution that's slowly crushing me into the ground.

And sometimes I LOVE our labor system. I see freedom within it to chose work that feels good to me, and that differs everyday. I see it as a representation of all the members deciding what is important to us, and agreeing to work on it together, equally, fairly. I see it as the basis of our egalitarian system. I see it as agreements that we individuals have made with each other, out of respect and shared interest.

I struggle with trying to uphold this second view of the system. I want to feel positive about it, and about us. What's important to me is that we get the work done, and we regard each other with respect. I don't think there is any SYSTEM that can make both of these things happen. It is the choices of individuals that make our society work. And on a good day, I DO think our society "works."

SKYHOUSE REPORT

by Juan Skyhouse

Skyhouse has been busy since the last FEC Assembly!

Something that was big on our calendar in September was the wedding of two Skyhousers - Amy and myself. Preparations took a long time, and included finishing the downstairs dining room floor and walls. We spent a month taking circuitous routes to our kitchen and eating outside, but the final result is fabulous.

Amy and I are now happily married. The ceremony was officiated by Cecil and the reception's MC was Tony; Skyhousers put a lot of effort into making our day a special one, and Amy and I are very grateful.

Skyhouse also participated in Dancing Rabbit's Land Day, celebrating 9 years since the land on which we live was purchased. Next year's 10th Land Day promises to be big, with old Rabbits and Skyhousers being invited for a reunion.

Amy and I then left on an almost-two-month international trip. Stop one was Argentina to visit my family. From there, we went to St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands for the wedding of Amy's brother Stuart. Finally, we topped it off with a trip to the east coast for Thanksgiving. We were gone for so long, Tony became a quite skillful hula-hooper in our absence.

Speaking of travel, Cecil took a trip to California while Amy and I were away. There he visited former-Skyhouser Jeffrey among other friends. Later, he held down the fort while Tony, Amy, and I all went to visit family for the December holidays. Yet despite this diaspora, we were all together again in time to ring in the New Year.

So what's ahead for us? The 2007 edition of the Communities Directory is large on Tony and Amy's radar; they've already put in many hours of work on it, and they're just getting warmed up. Skyhouse Consulting has also taken on more jobs for webpage design. There's even talk of updating our own business site to something a little cleaner. 2007 is going to be another great year.

find out more about Skyhouse at:
http://www.skyhousecommunity.org/

Meadowdance Update

2006 has been an unbelievable year for us! It was one year ago that half our community went their separate ways. We are proud of the fact that we have survived as Meadowdance this past year. We are now 8 people (3 adults, 5 little boys). We were able to use the space in our home to spread out and have some private space for each family, which has been very nice.

Ken and Amanda and big brother Drew added a new baby boy (Gideon) to their family this fall. He's a sweetie!

Our business is going very well, and we sometimes have more work than we are capable of doing! We have many happy repeat customers and many clients that come to us because of a recommendation from a co-worker, and so we've not had to do any advertising in the last year (other than keeping our google presence active).

We had extensive electrical work done outside our home, to update the system, and had the electricity taken out of our big old barn. The old system just wasn't safe anymore.

We had our garden here at the house for the first year since we moved here 3 years ago. The first summer came and went with us still working on making the house livable, the second summer we had a garden plot at the community garden in a nearby town. This spring Amanda grew lots of starters in the house, and a friend tilled up a small garden patch for us and delivered a truck load of organic compost. We had a very successful season and had lots of yummy produce to eat. The season was short, with a very rainy spring and early frosts. We are already looking forward to spring and our next garden.

We got help from a friend who came and completed the roof over our entryway so that we don't get wet or step into deep snow when we enter and exit our house. Thanks Karl!

Ken and Amanda's old Subaru finally bit the dust, and we purchased a new Subaru for their use, so now we know they'll be safe and won't be likely to get stranded on their travels!

Jenn has been sick for the last several months and unable to work, while the medical bills are mounting. This has been a serious hardship for our community. She was recently diagnosed with late stage, chronic lyme disease. The treatment has been difficult for her so far, but we are hopeful that she will recover fully over the course of the 2 - 3 year treatment. She is coping as well as she can, and keeping her spirits up thanks to the love and support she gets from the community. Her 3 children are looking forward to her recovery as well.

And we ended 2006 with our boiler blowing, and so we have been without heat and hot water for the last 5 days. We are currently looking into the cost of replacing our heating system.

So that's the news from here. We continue to be committed to sustaining and growing Meadowdance, and loving life in our little commune up here in the Green Mountains.

Ken, Amanda, Drew, Gideon, Jenn, Aidan, William, and Terran The Meadowdance Crew

Find out more about Meadowdance at:
http://www.meadowdance.org/

SANDHILL NEWS

Jan 1, 2007 - by stan

Membership has been steady: we still have the 5 adult members & Renay (now 10) who have been here "forever". This spring we accepted a new provisional member, Jesse, and her 1 year old daughter - but it did not work out and she left in the summer.

Betsy became a provisional member on Oct 1 after extended visits this summer. Her partner, Sue, has been spending much of her time here as well.

Both Betsy and Sue are massage therapists and Betsy now has a program offering massages to folx on the farm. Lucky us!

One of the big changes is that Renay began public school this fall - after having been homeschooled until now. She catches the bus outside our front door at 7:20 am and is gone all day - it's a big change for all of us and especially for her mom, Gigi. Renay wanted more social interaction with other kids and is LOVING IT and doing well in school.

A big project this summer was changing our sorghum operation. The last time we had a major change was in 1993. This time we upgraded our building to get rid of the steam by natural convection (rather than noisy fans), installing a wood fired steam boiler and an all new cooking pan setup with copper coils inside the pans. We now boil the juice with steam in the copper coils rather than an open fire under a pan. We are happy with the new system as it delivers more consistent hi quality syrup and stoking the fire is much safer now. A major player in the conversion to steam was Kris from EW who has spent months here doing the conversion. To honcho the construction upgrade we hired Ceilee - who was born & raised here. I noted the change in roles: all those years I told him what to do; now, I was asking: ok, so what do I do now?

We are anticipating Laird & Ma'ikwe's wedding in April in Albuquerque. We are still trying to figger out who is going to stay home to tend to the animals and the garden seedlings at home. Ma'ikwe and Jibran have visited here several times during the year.

Summer months we always have a lot more folx here; in fact, it is not unusual for nonmembers to outnumber members on the farm. This year was no exception: in addition to 8 interns, we had Jo here for the summer. Jo was born here and has spent much of her 19 years between here and Ganas. Jo had a good friend stay here for several months and help her prepare food and cater at Amy & Juan's wedding at Dancing Rabbit. Jo also put in a lot of time along with Ceilee at the sugar shack modification project.

Otto from EW has returned for his second annual winter lex trip here - keeping us supplied with firewood - even getting ahead on wood!

We had the vulgar bulgars from TO here for a week or so helping with sorghum and playing at A & J' wedding. We also had labor exchange crews from TO & EW here to help with the sorghum harvest. True to form, there were a few romantic liaisons as well... We continued to have a fairly steady stream of visitors - including several student groups and ex members and ex interns.

Interns have become an important part of our social scene and labor pool during the last decade. With fewer full members here (and all of us traveling some), the internship program has had some strains. It seems that interns - like the rest of us - experience various kinds of personal/growth issues and in the effort to maintain a healthy and supportive environment for all, some of us get more emotionally taxed than is healthy. We are in the process of evaluating the program and wondering how we can tweak it to be sustainable for all.

We have farmed and gardened organically since the commune was founded. The fields have been certified organic since 1988. This year we requested certification for the garden as well - putting the garden folx thru more hoops - mainly more detailed records and planting more organic seeds.

Find out more about Sandhill at:
http://www.sandhill.org/

You know you've lived on a commune when...

by Valerie

You know you've lived on a commune when...

...you share a Netflix subscription with 4 or more people.

...you have no idea what Netflix is

...you or a member of your family has ever answered to the name Sage, Harmony or Rainbow

...you know the Briggs-Meyer, Enneagram or Aryuvedic dosha type of everyone you live with

...you've ever given or received feedback while naked, with someone other than your lover

...you share a checkbook with 5 to 75 other people

...dinner conversation turns to reminiscing about your favourite McDonalds food before you stopped eating there. The longest-term member thinks they ate there once in the 80's.

...you cringe at the phrase "high impact", because you want to get as far away from those people as possible, or because you *are* one of those people

...you've ever organized an orgy by consensus

...you've decided when to hold a retreat based on the most auspicious astrological reading

...your household income breaks down to either $75 a month, or $250,000 annually, depending on how you look at it

Eight of the above are true for Valerie LivingWater, who has lived at Twin Oaks for 15 years.

Emma's Update

The last six months at Emma's have been a time of transition for us. We said goodbye to Parke who moved on to a different kind of community -living with his partner and her three sweetly rambunctious kids. He still teaches cello lessons here every Tuesday, so we get to see him weekly.

Shortly after he moved out Jessi, Marc, Abie, Kibby, Adam, and Theo all moved in. We are learning how to live communally and egalitarianly with each other. Jessi and Abie moved here from Pittsburgh. Jessi is a star bike mechanic and chess player, and has quickly gotten plugged into being a riseup.net volunteer. Elijah is thrilled. Abie is a mathematician, fermentor extraordinaire, and has perhaps the wryest sense of humor on the planet.

Marc is a local yokel who moved here from Sherwood Co-op, the local student-housing cooperative. He makes beautiful crafty things, works with kids, and speaks fluent French. Nous t'aimons, Marc!

Kibby, Adam, and Theo all moved here from West Seattle co-housing. Kibby is a woman of theater, a so-good-it-makes-you-cry baker, and is studying the Waldorf style of education. Adam brings some much needed sophistication to the house with his gorgeous Scottish accent that makes everything sound much more exciting. He has a new job at Yes! magazine that is great but has an overly long commute. Kibby and Adam are the parents of the delightful and amazing Theo. Theo is three, his favorite color is blackish-grayish-green, and he loves to hide and play instruments.

Having a child in the house has been really fun for all of us, and it helps that Theo's parents are geniuses at meeting Theo's needs, so he is generally a very happy kid. He has been growing rapidly since living here, which all kids do, I guess, and has mastered the use of pronouns and how to ask probing questions. He calls our house the Deer House, due to the large deer in our living room.

For the rest of us, Monica and Addy are in school. Monica is studying education and Addy is doing pre-reqs for nursing school. They continue to be best friends and confidantes. Sheldon and Johanna have moved into the "sweet suite" - rooms across the hallway from each other. They have ski passes and try to go find the snow every Friday. Elijah has applied to graduate school and may leave, with Katie in tow, in the fall. Katie continues to write up a science fictional storm, and even has some story sales this past year. Thea has painted two rooms bright orange, and one can only assume her master plan is to paint the whole house electric orange. She kindly and bravely has stepped into our delegate role. You all are lucky to have her.

The house has had a really social, friendly, and homey feeling. We had a huge ten-year land day party in late summer. We had twenty-plus communards of yore here and had a marching band throughout the house. The whole house felt like a funky Muppet commune.

Sheldon, Marc, and Monica recently purchased and installed a gas stove on our first floor, which is so nice for our cold and dark winters. We have a new shoe rack made by Marc. We are full enough that we have people cooking dinners every night. Yay!

Along with other communities, we have formed a 'Collective of Collectives' linking other housing communities in town. The group is very fledgling, but talks about things like collectivizing food and ending rent. We are also helping restart a north end 'Community Pantry' which provides dumpstered and bulk foods to cooperatives. When that gets running we have plans to form one on the south side of Seattle, possibly in our house.

Find out more about Emma Goldman's Finishing School at:
http://www.egfs.org/

News of the Oaks

After many summers of labor scarcity in the tofu hut and many months of community process, we implemented a tofu reserve crew policy this spring. We now require a shifting rotation of communards to do one shift/week in the hut during the busy season. The new policy is notable as the second exception to our all volunteer labor system (dish duty is the other).

The Tofu biz continues to expand as we explore further upgrades, including getting advise from an Ottawa, ON soy equipment consultant; the upgrade team has begun preliminary discussions on potential building locations for the expansion.

This October, a contingent of teens from The Farm in Tenessee came up for a weekend of work and cross-commune cultural exchange. They helped out boxing tofu, doing food processing, and in the dairy and kitchen, as well as participating in various discussions with Oakers, including how Twin Oaks can better integrate our teens. They even got to experience a Twin Oaks dance party! A group of Oakers will be visiting the Farm this Spring to complete the exchange.

In other LEX news, a group of Oakers traveled out to East Wind this spring , and three people didn't return! We evened the score soon after when some East Winders came to LEX for the Communities Conference and one of them decided to stay on as a Twin Oaks member.

After lots of community process, a new family with a child joined us in the late spring, our fi rst in four years! Luuk (age 2) has charmed the pants off of everyone and quickly amassed his own bevy of adoring primaries. Elsa and Ben are both an important part of our (somewhat waning) Ultimate Frisbee scene.

As per our age cap policy, we removed the age cap this spring when the average age fell below 40. We are now open to members of all ages!

Rollie's son Chris(ex-child member)had an emergency appendectomy and recently spent some time recovering at Twin Oaks.

Various Oakers have been working on Brad Blanton's (local Independant candidate) campaign for Congress, as well as participating in discussion groups based on his book and personal philosophy, "Radical Honesty." Paxus did a stint as his fund-raiser and campaign manager, and Promethea faciliated several "World Cafe" discussion forums on the farm as well as in Richmond and Culpepper. Marione and Brenda have started a Radical Honesty discussion group on the farm. Several Shannon Farm-Twin Oaks "News" continued from page 1 romances sprung up from Shannon Farm's "alternative singles" dance this summer, resulting in increased traffic between the two communities.

Twin Oaks' homegrown klezmer band, The Vulgar Bulgars, finally took the plunge and took PALs to go on tour this Summer and Fall. They played their way up to Montreal, and made it as far Toronto before their van broke down. Overall, the tour was both a success and a blast, and they were well recieved everywhere they went; an imporant step in the Bulgar's mission to spread klezmer throughout the world!

Our social scene continues to blossom and fluctuate. We've had some community dialogues around racism, culture, and class, including sharing circles and O&I papers. Some folks have been playing bridge in ZK on Saturday nights, Alyssa organized a number of coffee houses during the spring and summer, and we performed "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged" to great acclaim over Anniverary weekend. Rehearsals for Tom Stoppard's play "Acadia" are already underway, in preparation for performances the first week in December.

Sky and Marielle organized Twin Oaks' second annual rave for the fall equinox, a lovely evening featuring bumpin' music, a bonfire, special treats including fruit, chocolate, and coffee, and lots of groovy late night vibes.

We just approved Scott's proposal to start a Twin Oaks Software collective; for the first time we seem to have amassed enough computer geeks to make this business feesable. If successful, it has the potential to earn $40/ hour, our highest dollar per hour yet!

A group of Oakers went to Sandhill this September to help out with their Sorghum harvest. As always, they fell in love with this homey community and returned singing its praises.

Gwen (Age 4) had a Fancy Nancy birthday party this October, with many off-the-farm kids and many princessthemed presents.

Find out more about Twin Oaks at:
http://www.twinoaks.org/

Acorn Community Update

Winter at Acorn, and we're back into the swing of the busy season for our seed business - it's always both exciting to watch our income quadruple, but a little scary to see the number of seed orders increasing all the time! We had a lot of help getting ready for the busy season from Heather Twin Oaks (who also became an Associate here early in 2006). We're excited about Southern Exposure Seed Exchange co-sponsoring the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello this fall (www.heritageharvestfestival.com), and some of us have been working on organizing for the event and its supporting propaganda.

In membership news, we are now 6 full members (Ira, Stacie, Erik, Abraham, Radish, and Ken) and one provisional member (Sean). We just made Ken Bezilla (ex-EW) a full member, and hope we can convince him to stay forever! We sadly said goodbye to Brittiney and Ajna (her two year old and our other toddler's only playmate) in October, though we've heard that they're considering a return. So with kids we're down to just True (2) and Kelsey (13) again, so keep on sending any families our way! On New Year's Day, we added new member Sean and his giant dog Beamish. Sean is a hard worker with a great sense of humor, True's new best friend, and a great musician. We office workers are all enjoying the sound of banjo and guitar coming down the hall since his arrival, and we're all so glad that Erik has finally found a kindred (maybe TOO kindred?) spirit in his buddy Sean. Sean's fiance Julie has made many visits to the community, and we're all hoping she'll think about being a resident of some sort in the future.

We've been blessed with multiple great interns this winter. Nicole, Edmund, David, and Jolene are all wonderful workers and great folks. Nicole and Edmund have added some additional amusement to our living room lately with their tendency to break into foot wrestling and/or stick fights. Yet, we remain committed to nonviolence.

Stacie and Erik (mom and dad to True and Kelsey) announced that they're expecting a new addition to the family in mid-August. Kelsey started private school this year, and is doing great, happy to finally be with some kids her own age and away from a house full of "grownups!"

In additional news, we started a big bathroom-remodeling project at the farmhouse in the fall, which was in dire need of a bathroom that wasn't rotting or full of millipedes. Thankfully, David (TO, ex-EW), our associate Joe, and several Twin Oakers gave generously of their time to rebuild the room. Unluckily, however, we lost Joe, who was going to finish the work, to travel in December - so the bathroom sits unfinished. Our former member Paul, however, is expected to ride in for a February visit and make our entire whirlpool bath and tile dreams come true. If only!

To find out more about Acorn Community, visit www.AcornCommunity.org.

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