I was recently consulting with a forming group that's considering rehabbing a school to house an intentional community and they wanted my advice about optimum size and concentration. Although the school has five stories and they were open to the possibility of using the entire space for the community I advised against it—both because it gets proportionately harder to maintain group cohesion as the population increases, and because it gets geometrically harder to establish and maintain group identity as the number of floors increases. I suggested they try to contain the community on three floors.

While creating and sustaining community is mainly a social challenge, that doesn't mean that design and spatial relationships don't have something to say about the outcome.

For example, when community houses are clustered, the people tend to be more involved in each others' lives; when the housing is diffused, so are the social interactions (think about the relative isolation of people who live in the suburban sprawl of one house per acre—where you have to put on sun block in order to borrow a cup of sugar). If the houses are laid out in a circle, the differences are less pronounced. When the housing is strung out in a line, the end folks are simply not in the social flow as much as others and that affects relationships. If there's a common house and that's the epicenter of community action, then the key is how close a given house is from the common house—even if the common house is on the edge of the community.

To be clear, location is not destiny. It also makes a difference how much you hang out on your porch, attend potlucks, throw card parties, and/or have a reputation as a grouch who eats small children. In short, behavior is also a big factor. With a nod in that direction, today I want to focus on the predictable challenges associated with different physical layouts.

After years of collaborative design and research, we’ve finally broken ground for the Seed Office Headquarters.   Here 7-year resident and master mind of the project GPaul meets with concrete contractor Kevin to review the floor plans one more time before bringing in excavation machines.

Just beyond the meeting of the minds you can see the building site, the lull and quiet imminently to be replaced by the head-spinning change and activity of construction.

Looks like our frenetic anticipation might be rubbing off – here’s Sean, concrete worker, laying out the building footprint.

After coming to an understanding about the foundation plan and execution thereof, we gave the okay to get the machines rolling.

As the default project coordinator, this is both a terrifying and triumphant day for me, as witnessed below.

By Janel
I happened to be at the Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. last week, passing through an exhibit on human evolution, when the bold words “sharing resources” caught my eye. I wandered over to the display, where I learned–to my amusement, as the 2012 conference theme is resource-sharing–that humans have been sharing food and tools to build “stronger social bonds” and increase their chances of survival for 2.6 million years.

 
Sure, our ancestors shared resources because their lives depended on it. But why should now be any different? With peak oil and environmental devastation come real threats to the survival of our species. Living communally and sharing stuff such as cars and land are the best gift we can give to our children’s children–not only because of the resource preservation that sharing entails, but also because of the model of cooperation it preserves!

An exciting opportunity is opening up this season at Acorn—we’re building an office building for our community business, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.  We’ve done our best to design the Seed Office Headquarters in line with our values: a strong commitment to efficiency and non-toxicity in systems and materials, responsible and ethical stewardship to the land, preserving our diverse, beautiful, and unique heritage, and providing an educational platform in which to pass on the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve these goals.

The Seed Office HQ is a passive solar building with many elements of passive heating, cooling, lighting, and ventilation incorporated.   The frame will be modified post-and-beam, insulated with straw bale and blown cellulose (with a high content of recycled paper), and finished with earthen and lime plaster.  Solar thermal panels and a high efficiency wood boiler will supply heat to our radiant floors, and will preheat our domestic hot water.

If you’re interested in building with natural and local materials, and if you’re like to learn about efficient and sustainable systems and design, you’re welcome to join us.  Experienced builders are certainly welcome, however we want this to be an educational opportunity, and will work with whatever ability you’re at.  As a feminist community, we want to specifically encourage non-male identified folks to join us, seeing as a disproportionate percentage of males are represented in the mainstream building sector.

Construction will begin the end of April, and last through fall.  Contact darla@acorncommunity for more information.

by Valerie

What's a commune to do when a number of their musical instruments are stolen from the music room? Our answer: use the remaining instruments to hold a Benefit Concert to raise funds to replace the ones gone missing! Six different acts performed to a packed house at a local live-music venue (owned by an ex-member), and donations totaled just over $1,000. The acts included Oakers performing klezmer music, covers of the Grateful Dead, our all-women's barbershop quartet, belly-dancing and more. We're grateful to everyone who chipped in to help keep the music flowing into the future.

Despite an unseasonally warm winter, we've found various cozy activities to keep us occupied. We currently have a Philosophy Study Group, a Latin-language Study Group, and a Sunday afternoon "Young Adult Fantasy Read-Aloud and Knitting (And Other Crafts)" group. So far they've gone through all 3 books in the Philip Pullman "His Dark Materials" trilogy, and are working on Susan Cooper's "The Dark is Rising" series.

Young Adult Fantasy Read-Aloud and Knitting Group

We've also revived Dungeons and Dragons, which hasn't been seen here since the 90's. Our new DM has been hosting a game, and every other Saturday night finds various Oakers out on adventures, gaining experience points, and helping build our "geek-chic" reputation.

By Janel Twin Oaks

In just a matter of weeks, Twin Oaks’ 150 laying hens have become frozen fodder for future community meals.

It all started late in the summer when new member Sapphyre and I decided to fill the much-needed poultry management position. We started doing research about proper chicken care--and the answers we found left us shocked. Suddenly, aspects of our fenced-in chicken yard that once seemed benign to my untrained eye began to pop out at me--the lack of top soil due to vegetation depletion, for instance, or the broken feathers on birds’ backs (indicating a possible feather mite infestation). Not to mention we realized that many of the hens were too old to efficiently produce eggs anymore.

The job of running a hyper village is a rigorous one. Pretty much anyone who is willing to can take on an organizing or managerial responsibility.  There is a tremendous quantity of logistics and administrative work to keep this full service commune functioning. We have dozens of buildings in need of repair. There are half a dozen businesses which could all use more guidance and support.  Most weeks a 8 to 10 visitors some of whom want to live with us who have questions about how we do things and if their personal situation can be merged into ours. Add to this endless pocket dramas about romance, children, housing and other personal topics which frequent our little village and there is enough going on to hold almost anyones attention.

And as I have mentioned we are full. It is something like 3 years now we have had a waiting list (tho it has certainly thinned at points, it has never vanished in this time) and this means on top of the above described condition, we also have a space shortage and fewer degrees of freedom to relocate members when someone moves out. Pop Gang to the rescue!

Pop Gang is a group of members who are pulled from various community bodies (the planners, the membership team, recruiting, the room assignor and a member at large) to discuss things which can be done to make our crowded situation better. While this body is technically advisory, without any executive power in its collective state – what my experience of it is, is that when the Pop Gang agrees on a policy direction, the members take it back to their respective executive groups and make the change happen.

Thanks to Ruth for a wonderful visit, and thanks for letting us share your perspective on the community.

My five-day visit to Acorn:

It’s great to meet a group of people – especially so many young ones – who have opted out of the capitalist rat race and are trying their best to live their values: community, sustainability, kindness. The few ramshackle buildings where people live and work are surrounded by oak, poplar and beech woods. There is both seriousness – they run a seed business that sustains the community – and playful: the path to a dance party last night was lit by a row of Christmas lights. The party took place in the “love shack” just past a collection of diverse and amazing tree houses. People mostly danced in a circle and for a while, four young women were dancing on a bouncy mattress in the corner. Daniel (ah, if I was only 40 years younger!) was walking around with a box of wine, playfully offering little cups of “the blood of Christ” to willing takers. He then put a big pillow under his shirt and asked people if they wanted to punch him, then made another round and offered well-padded hugs.

Although they joke about being a hippie commune, there actually isn’t a lot of public physical affection. People seem contained. One member described himself as being on the cusp of extrovert and introvert: he would not be comfortable talking to random strangers in a bar, but he loved living with people and was friendly with those in the community.

There is a lot of talent here: Delicious meals are routinely prepared by people who sign up ahead of time to make them. Although the booklet titled “READ ME” -  which must have been written a long time ago when there were children here – says the commune is vegetarian, that has evolved and there is meat or chicken at almost every supper and often also at lunch. People are on their own for breakfast.

We are looking for new members at the Emma Goldman Finishing School (an egalitarian housing community in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle). We are, like a lot of people all over the place, trying to figure out how to have different relationships with each other and the world. We think the world is burning and the time to collaborate and try and struggle and work is now. We would love for a group of 2-5 people who know and love each other to move in, as this has worked well in the past and we have a number of openings. Individual members would be great, too.

Our community started fourteen years ago when a bunch of radicals pooled their resources together and bought a funky old twelve-bedroom house. They turned it into an egalitarian commune where people lived together and experimented with different economic and political models. For example: we save up money every month in the hopes of seeding other radical and egalitarian communities in Seattle, and have a time-based micro-economy where everyone's time is valued the same as everyone else's. Core to our project is that people need a strong home-base to be effective and healthy activists, organizers, and humans, and that we should try to live with each other in more egalitarian and humane ways. To that end, everyone who lives here has healthy food, transportation, health care, and a safe and cozy place to call home.

We are just one strategy amongst many social justice projects in this town, this country, and this world. We don't have all the answers. We don't even know all the questions. We are messed up and problematic in interesting and specific ways, and could write tell-all books about the missteps and heartaches of life at Emma's. Another way of saying this is that we are a human project made up of humans. At the very least, we are an excellent training ground in direct democracy, and all the messiness that horizontal structures bring. And on our good days, we're a lot more than that.

Hello, communitarians and friends! Janel from Twin Oaks here. We've already begun thinking about this year's Communities Conference, and let me just say that it is sure to be an unparalleled celebration of positive change!

Our annual conference is an excellent place for those interested in learning about the Intentional Communities movement. Whether you are looking for a community to call home, wish to network with others already in community or are simply curious about an alternative lifestyle to the "mainstream," come camp out at the beautiful Twin Oaks Community with fellow community-minded folks from August 19-21st! When not attending fascinating, challenging workshops on everything from sustainability to group communication, you'll find yourself making friends, swapping stories and admiring the forest from a homemade hammock.

For more information about the event, the content and the people, feel free to peruse our website. Oh, and do please check back in every once and while--we'll be blogging about our preparations from now on!

Communities Conference Website

This May, I will have lived in intentional community for 37 years, all at Sandhill Farm. That’s more than 60% of my life. While this experience has been profoundly inspirational and satisfying, it hasn’t been easy. My relationship with my home community is complex and has evolved over the years. In today’s blog I want to explore what’s precious about that.

At present, I divvy up my time mainly among four major commitments (there are other commitments tossed into the mixed salad of my life, yet these are far and away the biggest):

A. My Community

Sandhill is a rural, income-sharing community. We’re homesteaders who grow a large fraction of our own food and emphasize simple living and taking care of one another. As much as possible, we try to support whatever any member wants within the context of our common values of ecological consciousness, nonviolence, and a commitment to work through our issues with one another.

I am not the only one whose excited.

It’s finally winter!!!!  And to prove it there is a light dusting of snow covering the gardens left from the last snowstorm.  I have been looking forward to winter for a good long time.  Temperatures have dropped from triple digits to the occasional single digit, which is cause enough to merrily sing the glories of winter. But, I have also been looking forward to the legendary busy season.

Ashley chipper as always picking orders at 5:00am Saturday morning.

I have been hearing the tales post late night customer order assembling (picking) marathons, and pleas on the message board to help ship orders.  As a new member who arrived for a visitor period just after Land Day picking is something you do for about a half an hour to an hour after breakfast.   And shipping is something that just magically happened — not something I learned.  But, the whole enchilada is different during busy season, so the legend goes.

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.