The 2010 Fall Assembly took place at East Wind, and as the title of this post indicates, it was a rousing success! The FEC fall assembly is a time for delegates from FEC communities to get together to both review the activities since the last assembly and look at our goals and plans until the next time we meet. This year at assembly, there were delegates attending from member communities Acorn, East Wind, Emma Goldman Finishing School, Sandhill, and Twin Oaks, and from Community-in-dialogue Community Autonomy.

To read more about the 2010 fall assembly, including a review of our activities since the spring assembly, PEACH news, the status of Community Autonomy, and the exciting world of the FEC 2011 budget, click below.

This is a question I am asked often these days (& years…). For most of this summer, my answers were ambiguous: well, they seem to be alright, but they sure are not making much honey, they are swarming a lot; in general, they seem to be holding their own, but not really kicking butt, y’know what I mean?

Then a raised eyebrow and “any CCD?” (colony collapse disorder). No, no, I reassure them; fortunately, we have not had that scenario.

We currently have 20 hives (including 2 top bar hives). We harvested a little honey a few weeks ago: the second consecutive year of lowest ever honey harvest – average of 1.5 gallons of honey per hive (our average had been 5 gal/hive). Then I got worried: maybe we took too much honey and did not leave them enough for winter (that happened last year).

BUT – here it is Oct 2 and y’know what? Our bees are doing fantastic! Better than they have all year (maybe 2-3 years…): they have good brood & populations, energy in the hives is focused, and they are bringing in honey & pollen. It is being a beautiful fall: finally, some dry weather, comfortable temperatures, and lots of wildflowers (as well as our planted buckwheat). The change in the hives is remarkable.

My current theory: we have not done any of the “chemicals” for 10 years and now we are off all “treatments” – even organic ones. We are also not bringing in queens from the outside. I figger the bees are coming back to their equilibrium in this environment – which is a mixed one: there are conventional crops within their flying range – but not very many; however, some of the symptoms we saw this summer were eerily similar to effects of exposure to pesticides. Yikes! That’s scary.

AND – I am reading an AWESOME BOOK: I highly recommend it:

My community has non-violence as a core ideal.  This seems like an easy one to agree on.  But i remember finding myself uncomfortable when i was giving a tour to a group of Richmond vegans, who asked about how we killed the cows we eat.  ”With a shotgun” i replied.  ”hardly seems non-violent” one pointed out to me.

The current debate about non-violence is around BDSM.  Specifically, should the community conduct BDSM workshops at our annual Women’s Gathering.  This is not an issue about feminism as it is sometimes framed.  Twin Oaks does not have an agreement about being a feminist community, tho we often talk about our feminist principals in our presentations and our propaganda.  There is no generally agreed definition of feminism (i have always liked the idea that feminism was the practice of the philosophy of anarchism – but this will upset some folx).  But even if there were an agreed definition of feminism, Twin Oaks did not subscribe to this belief set at our inception and we do not embrace new philosophies easily now.  We are an “embrace diversity” community, which often means there is no consensus.

Many members argue compellingly that if there is consent in rough sex play, then it is not violent.  And one might think that this would be a away out of this bind, but our community history gets in our way.

Tomato season is starting to slow down around here. In the last month or so, though, we’ve collected lots of seed!

Tomatoes are one of our crops which can only be used for either seed saving or for eating. To save the seed, we’ll select ripened tomatoes, puree them, and then let them ferment for four days. During fermentation, we speed up the process that occurs naturally in the tomato life cycle. The goo substance that holds the seeds in place will deteriorate, and the good seeds will collect at the bottom of the bucket. The tomato skin and flesh (and bad seed) will float.
It’s  important to stir the tomato mush several times a day to avoid mold production.

After four days of fermenting and stirring, comes the fun part!

To separate the seed from the tomato we implement a succession of water pours.

First I add water to the fermented tomato mush

After adding water, pour off floating tomato particles (we strain out the tomato to feed to the chickens). Add more water and repeat until only seed remains. Be careful not to loose any seed from the bottom of the bucket! If too much seed is escaping with the tomato particles, you can always go back at the end and repeat the process.

This batch is almost clean!

I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, and therefore had almost no relationship to practical skills or where my food came from. This persisted through college and a couple years working as a junior bureaucrat in Washington DC. When I moved to Sandhill at the ripe age of 24, things started to change.

While I still have plenty of the bureaucrat in me (I've been a community network administrator for since 1982), I am now somewhat handier than a person who can merely change a light bulb or boil water, and this competency has been a great source of satisfaction over the years.

What do I mean? Let me walk you through what I've been doing the last 30 hours, just as an example…

A. After checking email over my morning cup of coffee (no emergencies), I drafted a fundraising letter that I'll mail in the next two weeks to the 1000+ communities listed in the FIC's upcoming 6th edition of Communities Directory. I'll ask them to buy copies of the new book and also to help capitalize our Directory Endowment, the interest from which will allow us to pay for the labor needed to keep the data fresh and readily accessible. On average, I write at least one report or draft one proposal every day. The letter I composed in the morning allowed me to meet my quota for Tuesday.

B. After circulating that draft for review, I emailed a number of friends and acquaintances in Massachusetts, inviting them to attend the FIC fall organizational meetings, to be held Nov 12-14 at Mosaic Commons in Berlin (about 30 miles west of Boston). Failing that, I'll try to get together with folks one on one (as someone who is on the road 60% of the time, I spend a hefty portion of my time on logistics, and it's good to have my oar in those waters every day).

It has been a long time since I have posted – one of the reasons is that it is being another very challenging year. This was the third consecutive very wet spring with the most rain and heavy rains I have seen in my 30 years here. When we planted crops in the fields, the heavy rains washed away a lot of the seed. The seed that remained often rotted before it could grow. We planted some of our sorghum and black beans three times – now they are very late. They will need good fall weather to mature.

This kind of weather is particularly difficult for organic farmers. Conventional farmers often no-till their seeds into the ground: they have a custom applicator spray an herbicide on the field and then plant with a no-till drill/planter and it’s done! Organic farmers rely on tillage to destroy weeds or green manure crops in preparation for planting. This means we need the soil to dry out enough to properly till the soil and kill weeds before planting. This year whenever we could work the ground, it usually rained again before we could plant. In that small window, conventional farmers planted their crops. When we finally did plant crops, we often had a heavy deluge – which made for erosion and poor germination. Then we could not get in the field to rotary hoe and cultivate – to control weeds; sometimes, the weeds took over the crops. (I now wish I had taken photos of several of our crop plantings that were so poor that we destroyed them and replanted; at the time, I found it so depressing that I did not remember how helpful photos can be).

It started out like any other Monday morning, the birds were singing and Laurne's long locks were secured in a very pedestrian ponytail.

Lauren had been talking about wanting a mohawk for some time. She didn't a faux-hawk but a real one kind of like the one Nightshade has...

Yeah, Acorn is pretty much in the sticks, so not much happens. So when something finally does there are sure to be at least a handful of spectators- Here Mardock, Andros and Darla (who also just got a DIY haircut) came to offer support and to be among the first to catch a glimpse of Lauren's new 'do.

heirloom tomatoes

Heirloom tomatoes…are ripening everywhere, and acorn is rich in them. Our tomatoes are used for seeds, eating, processing, snacking on, etc….and some of the lucky hand selected tomatoes are even fortunate to get their photographs taken by Airy.

Photo by: Airy

News of the Oaks Issue #108

by Valerie

Since the last edition of the Leaves, we've gone from the frigid cold of Winter to the sweltering heat of mid-Summer. We're taking advantage of the sun these days with our latest solar energy project. We've just completed the installation of a 10 KiloWatt array of 48 photo-voltaic solar panels in the central field of the community. The electricity generated will be used to power three of our buildings and one of our well pumps, with any excess electricity being fed back into the main power grid (via our local electic co-op), and we will be compensated for that power.

installing one of the 48 panels for our new solar energy array.

Earlier in the year, we found out that there's nothing like being snowed in for days and weeks on end to bring out people's creativity. In January, Twin Oaks took advantage of the avalanche of snow we received (and the 30-hour power outage) and members' inventiveness was bustin' out all over! Our very own 'outsider-artist-in-residence', aka our member Purl, used the time to construct a chair out of hickory saplings and hemp rope for his daughter Anya, aged 15 months. And when our pond froze, Noah decided a game of ice-hockey was in order, but we only had 2 sticks. Undaunted, he used some scrap wooden stretcher bars from our hammocks business to construct 6 very realistic hockey sticks, 5 of which lasted until the end of the game! And on a more cultured artistic note, Kayde organized a Variety Show in which members could showcase their talents, including poetry, singing, piano, dancing and a puppet show featuring Marshall Rosenberg of NVC (Non-Violent Communication) notoriety as the main character.

Anya sits in her new chair.

Another big January event was the arrival of our newest Oaker, a healthy baby boy born to Elsa and Scott. Elsa delivered him into the world at home, with the help of a midwife, her assistant, a doula, Scott and big brother Luuk. We welcome Ridgeley Ember Jennings Linden to our lives!

Ridgeley Ember Jennings Linden

In February, as an alternative to Valentine's Day, Twin Oaks celebrates Validation Day, a day in which everybody, not just people in intimate relationships, receives a handmade, individually designed card, inside of which other members have written validating messages. On Validation Day, we hand the cards out after dinner, and then break out into a dance party. This year, we also had a 'Songs of Love' performance, which was graced with the presence of the KITCH Army, sharing their version of KISS's new song 'Stand'.

Memory, Calliope, Claire and Keith transformed in to the KITSCH ARMY

Some people might say Twin Oaks has hit the big time, when we were featured in an Earth Day special on CNN news in April. In two of our fifteen minutes of fame, the piece focused on Twin Oaks as an example of how to live a sustainable lifestyle in contemporary America. We were pleased that information about our alternative culture was able to reach the masses.

There's also good news for our two largest community businesses. We've launched a new and improved website for Twin Oaks Hammocks. We sell hammocks both to wholesalers and to retail customers, and the new site makes it easier for our retail customers to make a purchase. Please go to www.twinoakshammocks.com if you'd like to take a look. And with our newest tofu account, we've increased our workweek to 5 tofu production days. This enables us to make the additional 5000 (yes, five thousand) pounds each week for the new account.

And several members have been busy working on creating new community.
We've been having meetings of a group of former and current members
who are working towards creating the Living Energy Farm. Now in the
process of finding land, the project will ultimately encompass an
intentional community with an environmental education center, which
will focus on sustainable ways of living, free of fossil-fuel. It has
been informally dubbed neo-amish (ie. Amish-style, minus the
patriarchy).

For more information: http://www.livingenergyfarm.org

A Day in the Life of a Communard

by Mushroom

6 a.m. My alarm wakes me up and I roll out of bed, ready to start my day. The sun hasn't quite come up yet, but there's some soft light coming through my east-facing window. I don't have to get up this early--we each set our own schedule--but I like being up before the hustle and bustle of the day really begins. Plus, since nine of us live in my building, I probably won't have any competition for the shower.

6:15 a.m. I make myself breakfast (toast with homemade bread and an egg from one of our chickens) in the kitchen in the Courtyard, where I live. Lunch and dinner are served buffet-style at Zhankoye (ZK), our main dining facility and community center, but we also have a handful of smaller kitchens for breakfast, snacking, and preparing meals for small groups of people. As I eat, I read a novel I pulled from our public collection of several thousand books--no library card needed.

6:55 a.m. Since I like being up early, I signed up for a 7 o'clock tofu-making shift last week when all of our labor was being scheduled. I head to the Tofu Hut, a mere two-minute walk through the woods from my room--not a bad commute. It's chilly out, but the Hut is warm and steamy. I put on boots, gloves, a hairnet, and an apron, and start pressing curds into big slabs of tofu.

10 a.m. My shift is over, and I head back to the Courtyard. I check my email on one of the public computers in the office. In addition to actually making tofu, I also do a lot of customer service for our soyfoods business. Someone has contacted us to find out where they can buy Twin Oaks' tofu in their area; I respond, and also check out the orders that have come in locally from stores and restaurants in Charlottesville and Richmond.

10:45 a.m. I see my friend Sabrina outside with one-year-old Anya in a carrier on her back. She's doing a "primary," labor-creditable child care. We make tea and go for a walk together, Anya making cute faces at me the whole time.

12:05 p.m. It's lunch time, so we walk up to ZK. Lunch is mostly leftovers, supplemented with a fresh salad and baked potatoes. We grow greens throughout the winter in our huge greenhouse, and we harvested enough potatoes in the summer and fall to last us through the winter.

12:50 p.m. I walk back to my room to put on work boots for my forestry shift, then ride a public bike up to Modern Times (MT), where Carrol, River, Purl and I will meet for the shift. MT is our main shop building, with space and tools to fix our cars, bikes, tractors, and vacuums.

1 p.m. We head out into the woods, where we'll selectively cut trees and haul them in to be processed into firewood. All the wood we harvest is done so sustainably, and all of our buildings are heated with wood all winter long. It's too hot to do forestry work in the summer, so during the off-season, I'll switch some of my work scene indoors to do data entry and accounting work to monitor our communal money budgets.

5:15 p.m. I hang out in my room a bit before dinner, finishing up a letter to my family and listening to music. I find it's important to carve out alone time for myself--it's very easy to get sucked into the social scene 24/7 here. There's always something going on, someone to talk to.

6:00 p.m. Dinner is served! Tonight it's my favorite--veggie burgers. (And, OK, hamburgers too. But I'm a vegetarian.) There are plenty of side dishes, like steamed spinach and sweet potato fries. A large percentage of the meal, both veggies and meat, is homegrown. I sit in the Lounge with about ten people and chat with McCune about his latest plumbing adventure. Sometimes at dinner there's one main conversation but tonight several smaller discussions have sprung up. Besides copper-vs-plastic waterlines, people are talking about the new fruit orchard we're planting, the latest news from our sister community 8 miles up the road, and trying to work out if people's schedules will allow our belly-dance troupe to meet on the same night as the queer-theory discussion group.

7:30 p.m. Mala has invited me to her residence (named Beechside) to hang out--there's a really cozy kitchen/living room there that's highly conducive to fun social gatherings. A bunch of people come over, and we sit draped on the couches and on the floor. Debbie and Trout play fiddle and guitar, Casey is knitting a pair of socks and Ezra makes a large amount of popcorn. Zadek, age 4, and Samir, age ten months, provide a lot of the entertainment. It's a festive atmosphere, though there's no particular occasion; we just like to enjoy each other's company.

10:00 p.m. I head home to my room. I record the work I did today on my labor sheet and write in my journal a bit to unwind before bed. I'm very tired, but happy. It's been a good day.

Jessica Marie Quintet

by Summer

Debbie (above), Elsa, Jessie and Summer, 4/5 of the Quintet

I'm standing downtown in Charlottesville with my 6-month old daughter strapped to my front, singing with four other women. We run through our repertoire as a small but steady crowd of people gathers to listen. We are appreciative of the donations they leave, and afterwards we go to soothe our voices at the gelatto place down the street.
I am part of the The Jessica Marie Quintet, nee Oakapella or FEC-Sharp, which started in 2008 with eight original members singing a broader range of a cappella music, and has gradually narrowed to a focus on barbershop. When the idea first arose, I squealed with irrepressible dorkiness my delight at the thought of being in one of these groups again--in high school I was head of our 8-member a capella group. Characterized by close harmonies and four distinct voices that often sing the same lyrics (as opposed to doo-wop, which usually features a lead singer and several backup vocals), barbershop feels more egalitarian, more cooperative.

After a few months we were down to 5 people, and renamed the group the Jessie Marie Quintet, in honor of the two members who share that name (Jess, our bass; and Jessie, our tenor). Free online sheet music eventually gave way to specific arrangements ordered off the internet; one practice grew to two 2-hour rehearsals a week; and we began to perform as much as we could, including at homespun coffeehouses, busking in Charlottesville, at the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello, Christmas/Solstice caroling, at a nursing home, at Acorn's Land Day, and for Twin Oakers in full-on JMQ concerts. Twice we've taken an educational trip to town to rehearse with the Skyline Chorus, Charlottesville's Sweet Adeline 30-member women's barbershop chorus. Their director has come out to Twin Oaks with two members of the chorus to help us through a rehearsal. We finished the practice with new warm-up exercises, help with posture, breathing, mouth shape, diphthongs, and lots of other information that has helped us advance our singing together. Last summer we used Twin Oaks' recording equipment and squeezed ourselves into the young adult library on hot evenings to put out our first CD.

Recording together was another learning experience: how far away do we each have to stand from the mic? Which room captures the best sound? We feel proud of the result and hope to make another album once we've added enough new songs to our repertoire. Right now the group is working on our theater debut singing and dancing for the community's performance of Greasel. After that, a belated two-year anniversary concert is in order. And after that, who knows? [The Jessica Marie Quintet is comprised of Jessica Marie (Jess) on bass, Summer on lead/baritone, Debbie on lead/tenor, Elsa on lead/tenor, and Jessica Marie (Jessie) on lead/tenor. Our CD, *In the Good Old Summertime and Other Modern Hits* is available for $8 (sliding scale).]

From Seed to Seeds

By Cloud Supernova

Edmund processing seeds.

Twin Oaks Theatre: 'Greasel'

by Kelsey

To most of American society, 'community theatre' means a group of theatre people, who happen to live in general proximity of each other, bound together by the act of putting on a professional-looking show. Here, it seems we take the word order of 'community theatre' more literally. It's more community, with a 'Hey! Since we're all here, let's do a ridiculous Twin Oaks-based spoof on Grease this winter!'

Talent? That, we have in buckets here. It started with the unbelievably hilarious team of writers (or re-writers, rather) creating songs and a script for the fantastic band and actors that then assembled. From within our ranks also came choreographers, set designers, props and costumes managers, publicity, lights, and no fewer than three directors. Not to mention those that pick up the slack within the community for this motley and brilliant team to have time to put a show up.

We knew we wanted to spoof the plot of the original show, placing it in a Twin Oaks setting, with lots of references to our alternative culture. Just the name alone-- 'Greasel' -immediately presented itself as a tip of the hat to the alternative energy practice of using vegetable oil for fuel, so-called 'greasel' instead of 'diesel'.

The 'cool kids' in this show were we communards. Members Michael and Summer starred as a hippie, dread-locked Danny paired with Sandra V, the mainstream commodities trader plopped into the middle of our commune for a visit. Musical highlights included 'Oberlin Dropout' as Crunchy (aka Frenchy) ponders returning to grad school, and 'You're The Ones That I Want' as an homage to polyamory. And what would Grease be without 'Hopelessly Devoted to Tofu' (performed, of course, by some of our most committed tofu workers)?

Really, though, there is more to what makes theatre here so interesting: while we do happen to have a lot of talent residing on these 450 acres, talent is also not exactly the point. In community, art is everywhere, and everyone can have a role-not just the 'artsy' people in society to whom we delegate the task of moving our culture forward. Anyone that wants a way to contribute here can probably find one, and while we don't aspire to Broadway with our work, we do aspire to enrich all of our lives through a collective creative process. So, we do. We shape our time together as we wish, and it is certainly never boring. Besides, what makes life worth living if not some Twin Oakers singing about how unexpected romance can blossom over pickling the beets?

Politics at Twin Oaks

by Valerie

Here at Twin Oaks, we generally consider ourselves beyond conventional conversation restraints; this becomes immediately obvious by listening to a mealtime discussion of the lurid details of gruesome symptoms related to the latest sickness going around.

When it comes to talking about politics, it becomes a little more complicated. There are certain topics that we can all discuss with ease and generally agree upon. However, somehow there are others that are more like opening a can of worms while walking through a field of landmines...

Acceptable: global warming and polar icecap melt

More delicate: what temperature to set the communal hot-water heater, and the ecological implications of using ice-cubes

Acceptable: Obama versus Hillary

A bit trickier: Organic versus Local

Acceptable: increasing water shortages and the evils of the bottled-water industry

Tread carefully: the fact that a certain communard-who-shall-remain-nameless replaced the low-flow shower head with one that delivers the approximate force and volume-per-minute of Niagara Falls, without any process.

Acceptable: the discriminatory aspects of impending US immigration policy

Walking on eggshells : our membership process about whether to accept that controversial visitor from the last visitor period.

Acceptable: gay marriage

Call in the Process Team: your lover announces their desire to form a polyamorous triad with that statuesque blonde who arrived as a new member last week.....

Twin Oaks Conferences!



You are invited to come to Twin Oaks and participate in our two summer events:

Join us for a weekend of sharing and celebration at the 2010 Communities Conference, August 13-15th.

With workshops and events focused on:

Goats and Barns? Two unrelated topics that are joined together  here for the convenience of having to only make one post.
At Acorn a small crew of us have been hard at work this past month building a new barn. Its two stories tall and 30 by 32 feet. The first floor is framed with post and beams and the second floor is stud wall framing. We are parking tractors and keeping garden tools on the first floor and the second floor is a massive new drying space.

Also, we recently got two goats. We bought them from a nearby goat rancher we are friends with. The breed of goats is Kiko, a type from New Zealand. Whalers would leave goats on the island and in between trips come and harvest the goats for meat. The goats became quiet feral and after a long while they were rounded up and selected for various qualities. The Kiko are very hardy foragers and have high tolerance to worms and wet climates. We keep them in a stationary overnight paddock and we have a rotating day paddock that we bring them too that we move every two days to fresh browse

Filling in the forms for the post anchors.

Fancy homemade welded post anchors

We are have lots of different types of events here at Twin Oaks. Anniversary is one of my favorites, in part because it is a principally internal affair, with most of the guests being ex-members and the closer friends of community.

This year was a smaller celebration (43 not being an especially significant number) and it was precious.  The weather cooperated, the home-grown entertainment (especially Uncle Trout’s Dead cover band) engaging, the food was glorious (see viz Rich’s fabled flame thrower salmon below) and our spirits were high.

Rich viz

uses flame thrower to cook salmon

From a funological perspective, we even had our bonding crisis experience.  For the last few songs of the Dead cover bands performance, the wind kicked up and what looked like a serious storm started to blow in.  Communards, quick to help jumped up and deployed tarps.  I had a precious moment dancing with Mushroom as we both held on of the canopy poles to the ground wrestling the storm winds.  And in what perhaps typifies our collective response, as a handful of dancers moved in to secure the stage from the storm, other participants who had been sitting, instead fo getting out of the pending storm jumped up to take the dancers places.  The storm blew past the revealers partied on.

telegenic entertainers

As i looked around at the highly telegenic crowd of current communards, each more interesting than the last, i realized that the old adage was true.  Kat‘s last book was cleverly called “Is it Utopia yet?”  To which we occasionally answer “No, but on a good day you can see it from here.”

Anniversary was a good day.

The 2010 Communities Conference at Twin Oaks will help you learn more about communal living, connect with potential and current community members, and give you the opportunity to play and celebrate with others who believe in communal living.

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 13 through
Sunday August 15, 2010
$85 (sliding scale) includes
meals and camping

Register now!
http://communitiesconference.org/?q=registration

With workshops and events focused on

Our gardens are a tremendous mish-mesh of styles right now. We’re constantly experimenting with how we grow things.

Andy has been forming his raised beds by hand with an eye hoe. Tiny variations in the beds are amplified with each iteration, so we have these gorgeous curves. He’s also planning to irrigate minimally.

Andy’s in the background of the picture, using a scuffle hoe on aisles that barely show weeds – the idea is to break up the surface just as the weeds are germinating, so they never even get a chance to get established.

River’s garlic and perennial onions, on the other hand, are in beds formed using the bed-maker implement on our tractor. We mulch them all winter long, with our own straw, to keep the moisture in and the weeds out. With all that mulch, they need to be hand-weeded to control the few weeds that do make it through. In the spring, we pull the mulch off and into the aisles.

Jon’s experimenting with strip tilling and hoeing those strips into hills. I know he wants to write about this so I won’t steal his glory.

I am dumbstruck by the size of these Imperial Star artichoke plants! We're growing them as annuals - these were started very early this spring in the greenhouse, then transplanted out under row cover. Along with cotton, it's one of the few things that's been under row cover this spring.

Andy transplanted out these Purple Hyacinth Beans today. They're an eighteenth century heirloom flower grown by Thomas Jefferson himself, and they can grow 10-20 feet tall.

Our Hanover Kale is beautifully in flower! One of the joys of growing things for seed is getting to enjoy the flowers.

The collards are enormous! With our spring spinach not yet bolted, we're overwhelmed by fresh greens. Tonight we ate sauteed Bull's Blood beet greens with dinner.

It has been a rough couple of weeks, projects have been crashing, i have been struggling with some of my intimate relationships.  And a couple of days back when things got bad and i was in the Twin Oaks courtyard i asked myself “Who should i go see? Who will make me feel better?”  And i remembered that Willow was with Trout down at the pond fishing.  So i toddled down to the pond to find my son, his fishing instructor and a 17.5? wide mouth bass.

Willow Star Falcon with his fish

Trout (who is a member here) informed me that Willow had caught the fish on his very first casting of the day.  Apparently, this is not unusual for Willow.  While i was there, Willow caught another fish that he knew was too small before he even reeled it out.  Trout used the pliers while Willow held it and then threw the happy to be released fish back in or tiny pond.

As therapy for me it worked brilliantly.  My son was pleased and proud of his accomplishment.  i ran around and got a camera to take a couple of shots.  Trout agreed to cook the fish that was served at the community dinner and Willow got to take some of the time he spent catching it as labor credits – which made him doubly happy.

Willow, Trout (the person) and Bass (the fish)

Today is National Train Day. You can earn quadruple Guest Reward points if you can arrange to be on the choo-choo this day. Much as I love the train—and I do—I will happily be at home instead, celebrating Sandhill Farm's 36th anniversary.

Sandwiched delicately between Beltane and Mother's Day, I like to think of it as a bridge party, drawing on both: a) the raucous pagan energy honoring the surging growth of the Earth in spring; and b) the supporting and hearth energy that are the quintessential qualities of mothering. Today, you might say, we're honoring both nature and nurture. Also, we'll be eating and drinking a lot.

Mostly, today is about camaraderie, and suspending our normal routines to indulge in visiting with friends and neighbors (many of whom are both). We expect a crowd of about 60-75, with people coming from as far away as St Louis and Madison. Many will stay the night. Festivities officially begin in the afternoon, with a few semi-organized activities to punctuate the progression of the day:
—A Maypole at 3 pm
—Potluck feast at 4 pm, preceded by a welcoming circle that will fill the entire side lawn
—Contra dance (after digestion has proceeded far enough to no longer inhibit free movement), featuring live music and even livelier calling
—Sweat lodge, staring around dusk and continuing in rounds (we can take about 10 at a time) until everyone has had enough or the wood runs out

I’ve been doing a bunch of research lately on electric vehicles to see what might make sense for us at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage for our vehicle co-op. For 12 years we have been focusing on biodiesel and vegetable oil based fuels but things have not always been smooth. The main issues have been related to winter fuel gelling and fuel filters clogging in general. We’ve also never gotten a steady system for  collection of used oil and production going, so we have been using biodiesel made from new veggie oil which is only marginally better for the environment than petroleum.

We are now embarking on a major re-evaluation of vehicle technologies for our co-op, with a team researching things like electric vehicles, hybrids, ethanol (including home made, potentially from cellulose), bio-gas, wood-gas, human and animal powered, and any new technologies in the veggie oil world.

My interest in electric vehicles (EVs) has come out of my research into a village-wide electric power co-op with a largish wind turbine to power our whole village. With an abundant source of renewable electricity, EVs could be our most ecological option. There are ecological issues related to batteries of course, but my research shows that EVs are a net benefit over petro based vehicles and on par with other bio-fueled options currently or soon to be available (more on that in a post soon).

This is a report from the 2010 Assembly from Drew Acorn, Enjoy!

My name is Drew Howes, and I live at Acorn Community in central Virginia. I was privileged to be a delegate at the latest FEC Assembly for 2010, held at Emma Goldman Finishing School in Seattle, Washington. This was a wonderful opportunity for me, because I have never visited the Pacific Northwest, or Emma Goldman’s. Seattle is the major city in the region, and is beautifully tucked away on Puget Sound between the Olympic Mountains and the Cascade Range. It is a creative city, a musical Mecca, and home to fantastic attractions like the Space Needle and Pike Place Market. Emma’s is an easy walk to downtown through Chinatown, and sits on Beacon Hill overlooking the striking cityscape. The local area was pleasantly diverse in culture, and I was happy to eat Chinese noodles, Mexican tortas, and Super Bowl bar food within an easy walk of the community. It was also wonderful knowing Emma members were out making a difference in this area, like social working, child activist training, and community gardening.