Now for a three part digression back to Science World.
When I was at Dancing Rabbit, I discovered that they had a pretty good library. I spent quite a bit of time there reading various books. One thing they had a lot of were books on soil science. (Which make a lot of sense since many people there were into growing food.)
As I was looking through the books, I realized that a lot of the things I'm interested in (composting--see my post Thinking in Circles, 1/6/13, humanure--see Humanure, 1/10/13, and growing food--see Gardening as Social Change, 5/7/10) were related to soil and that soil science was a very complex discipline involving the sciences of geology, botany, microbiology, ecology, and a lot of chemistry. (I will write more about chemistry in my next post.) I've also written about extensively about soil and my interest in it before--see Food (Soil and Seeds), 5/13/09, and especially The Story of Soil, 3/13/10. This post will be a recap of a lot of that.
Soil science begins with rock. Due to water and wind the rock is broken down or weathered. The fractured rock becomes boulders, stones, cobble, and gravel. This collection of loose mineral material is called 'regolith'. This is the 'parent material' from which soil is born.
As even the gravel is pulverized, it's broken into the grains which become soil: sand, silt, and clay, each finer than the one before. A soil of mostly clay won't drain water very well, a soil of mostly sand won't hold water and drains too quickly. Loam, the best soil for growing things is 40% sand, 40% silt, and 20% clay. (A little clay goes a long way.)
The most important element in the soil, both to hold water and for plant growth, is the organic matter, also known as humus. This is the endpoint of things like compost and humanure.
About half of typical soil is solid material (sand, silt, clay, and humus) and half is air and water, which is also very important to the health of plants, since roots need to breath and take in water. Pores in the soil (the spaces between soil particles) is where the water and air reside.
"Good structure allows the soil to retain adequate water as well as drain excess water; promotes ease of seedling emergence, root penetration, and tuber growth; air movement; and erosion control." (from Eash, Green, Razvi, and Bennett, Soil Science Simplified, Fifth Edition--this is a good reference book on soil science that I got out of the public library and have been reading since I got back from Dancing Rabbit. It's not one of the books I read while I was there.)
There are also a lot of creatures that live in the soil, ranging from microorganisms such as bacteria, actinomycetes, algae, fungi, mycorrhizae (fungi that live in or around the roots of plants and provide nutrients and water for the plants), protozoa, and nematodes, (a really good book about all of this is Teaming with Microbes by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis, a book I did read while I was at Dancing Rabbit) to larger organisms such as earthworms, springtails, mites, pill bugs, sow bugs, ants, and even larger animals like mice, shrews, rabbits, and moles.
There's a lot more I'm learning about soil chemistry (see my next post), erosion, and types of soil, but this is the basics. If we are going to focus on the needs of people (which I think any radical social change is going to need to do), we have to realize that plants provide our food and air and basically keep us alive. Soil is what keeps plants alive.
Quote of the Day: "The soil is the lifeblood of your land and, therefore, you." - Nicole Faires
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Saturday, July 6, 2013
Same Sex Marriage and Social Change
In spite of how it feels sometimes, social change happens--and it sometimes happens fairly quickly. The Vietnam War was ended. Racism is not okay today. It still exists, even if we have a black president, but the very fact that Obama is in office shows how much things have shifted. Discrimination against women is no longer okay either, even if the Equal Rights Amendment never passed.
But if you want to see the speed at which things can shift, look at what's happened over the last decade with same sex marriage. Prior to 2012, thirty states banned it--including eleven states which voted to ban it in 2004 and seven more voting to ban it in 2006. However, last year four states voted in favor of it. It's now legal in twelve states and the District of Columbia, and one of last week's Supreme Court decisions made California the thirteenth state. The polls have shifted over the last five years from a majority of the country opposing same sex marriage to a majority favoring it. I think the Supreme Court was pushed into their twin decisions last week. It wasn't hard to see which way the wind was blowing.
While some of this has come about because of protests and other actions, I think most of the change was due to hard work in what I will call 'education' and Joanna Macy refers to as 'A Shift in Consciousness'. (For more about these ways of looking at social change strategy, see my posts on Creating Social Change, 7/2/08, The Great Turning, 1/15/09, and Social Change: My View, 6/29/10.) I think that change came about mostly because queer marriage activists kept putting out one clear, simple message: "I deserve the right to marry the person I love." They made it clear that this was a matter of fairness and justice.
On Wednesday of this week I went to a public reading (led by the governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick) of a speech by Frederick Douglass, "The Meaning of the Fourth of July for the Negro". It was given in 1852 before the civil war and the end of slavery. It was a powerful speech, mainly because Frederick Douglass had one clear message in it: slavery was inhuman and violates all the principles implied in the American Revolution. He makes a very clear and simple case for it--this is just wrong and there can be no argument about it.
I think that the climate change people are trying to do something similar now--putting out a message that fossil fuels cause climate change and we are going to need to stop using them. We'll see how well it can be heard.
At some point, I'm hoping the message will get out that our whole way of life is oppressive and not sustainable and that we could live very differently--and live quite well. It's a hard message to get out, but I take heart when I see what's happening with same sex marriage, and what happened with slavery. Social change is indeed possible, but it takes time and persistence.
Quote of the Day: "But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? ...
"Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employments for my time and strength than such argument would imply." - Frederick Douglass
But if you want to see the speed at which things can shift, look at what's happened over the last decade with same sex marriage. Prior to 2012, thirty states banned it--including eleven states which voted to ban it in 2004 and seven more voting to ban it in 2006. However, last year four states voted in favor of it. It's now legal in twelve states and the District of Columbia, and one of last week's Supreme Court decisions made California the thirteenth state. The polls have shifted over the last five years from a majority of the country opposing same sex marriage to a majority favoring it. I think the Supreme Court was pushed into their twin decisions last week. It wasn't hard to see which way the wind was blowing.
While some of this has come about because of protests and other actions, I think most of the change was due to hard work in what I will call 'education' and Joanna Macy refers to as 'A Shift in Consciousness'. (For more about these ways of looking at social change strategy, see my posts on Creating Social Change, 7/2/08, The Great Turning, 1/15/09, and Social Change: My View, 6/29/10.) I think that change came about mostly because queer marriage activists kept putting out one clear, simple message: "I deserve the right to marry the person I love." They made it clear that this was a matter of fairness and justice.
On Wednesday of this week I went to a public reading (led by the governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick) of a speech by Frederick Douglass, "The Meaning of the Fourth of July for the Negro". It was given in 1852 before the civil war and the end of slavery. It was a powerful speech, mainly because Frederick Douglass had one clear message in it: slavery was inhuman and violates all the principles implied in the American Revolution. He makes a very clear and simple case for it--this is just wrong and there can be no argument about it.
I think that the climate change people are trying to do something similar now--putting out a message that fossil fuels cause climate change and we are going to need to stop using them. We'll see how well it can be heard.
At some point, I'm hoping the message will get out that our whole way of life is oppressive and not sustainable and that we could live very differently--and live quite well. It's a hard message to get out, but I take heart when I see what's happening with same sex marriage, and what happened with slavery. Social change is indeed possible, but it takes time and persistence.
Quote of the Day: "But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? ...
"Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employments for my time and strength than such argument would imply." - Frederick Douglass
Monday, July 1, 2013
Nine Communities, Many Thoughts
As of the moment, I feel like I'm done my community touring for a while. I started off, as you might remember, at the Communities Conference at the beginning of last September. I went right to the Acorn community after the conference, to begin a three week visit.
Now, ten months later, while I still intend to end the year with another Communities Conference, I feel like I'm done otherwise. At this point, I've checked out nine different communities, two of which are barely up and running (the community I visited in Pennsylvania and Living Energy Farm), one of which had just ended before I got there (Skyhouse), and six up and functioning communities (from the six year old Still Waters Sanctuary/Possibility Alliance to the forty-six year old Twin Oaks--not to mention Acorn, Dancing Rabbit, Red Earth Farms, and Sandhill).
I did three-week visits at Acorn and Dancing Rabbit and two three-week visits at Twin Oaks. I spent nearly five weeks in Pennsylvania with the couple trying to build a community there and I've done three work days at Living Energy Farm. I've done tours of Sandhill, Red Earth Farms, and the Still Waters Sanctuary, and I talked with three different people involved with Skyhouse about it (and ate several meals in the building, which is still around).
What have I learned from all this? First, that community comes in all sizes and flavors--from the hundred folks at Twin Oaks and the seventy at Dancing Rabbit, to midsized communities like thirty-person Acorn, to smaller communities like Red Earth Farms, the Still Waters Sanctuary, and Sandhill. However, small communities can have it rough--the community in Pennsylvania hasn't really started because it's just the couple that are starting it and Living Energy Farm hasn't really got going because it was also mostly two people (with a bunch of interns). Similarly, a good part of why Skyhouse fell apart was because it shrank away.
Most of the communities that I visited were rural communities but I have a soft place in my heart for urban communities like the one in Pennsylvania. (In the nineties I started an urban community that lasted five years. It also fell apart partly because of the small number of people involved.) Twin Oaks, Acorn, and Sandhill are all income-sharing communities, as was Skyhouse and hopefully Living Energy Farm will be. The Still Waters Sanctuary runs on a 'gift economy', Dancing Rabbit has various forms of entrepreneurship (or, as I put it, reinvented capitalism), and Red Earth Farms is homesteads that all run individually. The folks I visited in Pennsylvania were also trying to do things on the gift economy.
Each community had it's own tale to tell and lessons to be learned from it. From Twin Oaks I learned if you grow a community large enough, it can last fifty years or more. (At this point I'm sure it will be going strong for its fiftieth anniversary. It could fall apart--as could anything--but I think it would take a while if it did.) I also learned that over that time systems will evolve in their own way and may not turn out as anyone would have intended--but may work very well anyway. From Acorn I learned the importance of persistence (they were down to a couple of folks at one point, but one of them--Ira Wallace--wasn't willing to give up) and the importance of community support (the other thing that got them through was having Twin Oaks nearby). From Sandhill I learned that persistence can pay off unexpectedly. After hanging in as a very small community for over twenty years, they persuaded Dancing Rabbit to build an ecovillage near them--and eventually they had a community of communities grow around them. Likewise, from Dancing Rabbit I learned the importance of building where there was already a community, and Red Earth Farms is even stronger for having two communities nearby. Living Energy Farm is also benefitting (as they struggle to build) from having two large, well functioning communities nearby. (In spite of their problems, I'd be surprised if they didn't succeed with Twin Oaks and Acorn supporting them.) The location far from any other communities is one of the difficulties that the crew in Pennsylvania is struggling with, and I'm not clear whether the Still Waters Sanctuary is close enough to the Rutledge communities to really benefit from them. On the other hand, Skyhouse had Dancing Rabbit all around it, but without the internal connections that wasn't enough. (In fact, Dancing Rabbit ended up taking energy away from Skyhouse.)
The biggest lesson I've learned is that there's many different kinds of communities out there and communities can be quite different and still function very well. There's also many wonderful people in those communities and I'm glad that I got to know some of them. (These were in the communities that I did three week visits at--Acorn, TO, and DR--and obviously not the ones I had just had brief tours of.)
I'm glad I visited these nine communities. Now I want to live in a community.
Quote of the Day: "...as long as I can remember I've had a desire to make some difference in the world. But the world is one great, big, hard place to make a difference. Community is a small enough chunk that you can make a difference. And it also is a good place from which you can, from time to time, try to make a difference in some bigger subset of the world." - Ira Wallace
Now, ten months later, while I still intend to end the year with another Communities Conference, I feel like I'm done otherwise. At this point, I've checked out nine different communities, two of which are barely up and running (the community I visited in Pennsylvania and Living Energy Farm), one of which had just ended before I got there (Skyhouse), and six up and functioning communities (from the six year old Still Waters Sanctuary/Possibility Alliance to the forty-six year old Twin Oaks--not to mention Acorn, Dancing Rabbit, Red Earth Farms, and Sandhill).
I did three-week visits at Acorn and Dancing Rabbit and two three-week visits at Twin Oaks. I spent nearly five weeks in Pennsylvania with the couple trying to build a community there and I've done three work days at Living Energy Farm. I've done tours of Sandhill, Red Earth Farms, and the Still Waters Sanctuary, and I talked with three different people involved with Skyhouse about it (and ate several meals in the building, which is still around).
What have I learned from all this? First, that community comes in all sizes and flavors--from the hundred folks at Twin Oaks and the seventy at Dancing Rabbit, to midsized communities like thirty-person Acorn, to smaller communities like Red Earth Farms, the Still Waters Sanctuary, and Sandhill. However, small communities can have it rough--the community in Pennsylvania hasn't really started because it's just the couple that are starting it and Living Energy Farm hasn't really got going because it was also mostly two people (with a bunch of interns). Similarly, a good part of why Skyhouse fell apart was because it shrank away.
Most of the communities that I visited were rural communities but I have a soft place in my heart for urban communities like the one in Pennsylvania. (In the nineties I started an urban community that lasted five years. It also fell apart partly because of the small number of people involved.) Twin Oaks, Acorn, and Sandhill are all income-sharing communities, as was Skyhouse and hopefully Living Energy Farm will be. The Still Waters Sanctuary runs on a 'gift economy', Dancing Rabbit has various forms of entrepreneurship (or, as I put it, reinvented capitalism), and Red Earth Farms is homesteads that all run individually. The folks I visited in Pennsylvania were also trying to do things on the gift economy.
Each community had it's own tale to tell and lessons to be learned from it. From Twin Oaks I learned if you grow a community large enough, it can last fifty years or more. (At this point I'm sure it will be going strong for its fiftieth anniversary. It could fall apart--as could anything--but I think it would take a while if it did.) I also learned that over that time systems will evolve in their own way and may not turn out as anyone would have intended--but may work very well anyway. From Acorn I learned the importance of persistence (they were down to a couple of folks at one point, but one of them--Ira Wallace--wasn't willing to give up) and the importance of community support (the other thing that got them through was having Twin Oaks nearby). From Sandhill I learned that persistence can pay off unexpectedly. After hanging in as a very small community for over twenty years, they persuaded Dancing Rabbit to build an ecovillage near them--and eventually they had a community of communities grow around them. Likewise, from Dancing Rabbit I learned the importance of building where there was already a community, and Red Earth Farms is even stronger for having two communities nearby. Living Energy Farm is also benefitting (as they struggle to build) from having two large, well functioning communities nearby. (In spite of their problems, I'd be surprised if they didn't succeed with Twin Oaks and Acorn supporting them.) The location far from any other communities is one of the difficulties that the crew in Pennsylvania is struggling with, and I'm not clear whether the Still Waters Sanctuary is close enough to the Rutledge communities to really benefit from them. On the other hand, Skyhouse had Dancing Rabbit all around it, but without the internal connections that wasn't enough. (In fact, Dancing Rabbit ended up taking energy away from Skyhouse.)
The biggest lesson I've learned is that there's many different kinds of communities out there and communities can be quite different and still function very well. There's also many wonderful people in those communities and I'm glad that I got to know some of them. (These were in the communities that I did three week visits at--Acorn, TO, and DR--and obviously not the ones I had just had brief tours of.)
I'm glad I visited these nine communities. Now I want to live in a community.
Quote of the Day: "...as long as I can remember I've had a desire to make some difference in the world. But the world is one great, big, hard place to make a difference. Community is a small enough chunk that you can make a difference. And it also is a good place from which you can, from time to time, try to make a difference in some bigger subset of the world." - Ira Wallace
Friday, June 14, 2013
Thoughts as I Leave Dancing Rabbit
I'm pretty glad I came here. I've gotten numerous tick bites and had to share my tent with ants, spiders, and pill bugs, but overall the experience was positive. In addition to workshops on DR's ecological agreements, consensus decision making, deepening communication, alternative construction, alternative energy, and, of course, land use planning, we've also had workshops on permaculture, humanure, their co-op fee structure, and their alternative currency. We had a session devoted to 'inner sustainability', which is their term for various techniques to keep yourself going--including NonViolent Communication, ReEvaluation CoCounseling, and Restorative Circles. We later learned more about Restorative Circles in a discussion group about conflict resolution at Dancing Rabbit. There was a useful session on the whole communities movement (with a tool that I liked to compare communities as well as figure out what you're looking for) and discussion session about 'community economics' which tied together a bunch of the earlier workshops (like co-op fees and alternative currency) and provided a good framework for looking at how people manage at DR. I liked the blend of focus on technical stuff (construction, energy, land use, and economics) with ways of connecting and taking care of yourself (communication, conflict resolution, and inner sustainability). Obviously some people here are aware that there's more to community than building houses and growing food.
We also had a bunch of work parties--some of which were cancelled due to the wet weather and other problems, but we did get to help finish a living roof, help build a straw bale wall, help mulch pathways in a vineyard, help stake out pasture land, and help work on the foundation to someone's house. The hands on work was a nice supplement to all the lectures and workshops. I also attended a men's group, several Quaker meetings (which, for some reason, they hold here on Saturdays), and a Five Rhythms night of dance and music.
The people at DR were very welcoming and helpful. We were hosted at different people's houses for dinner and lunch and so got a chance to talk with many of the folks here.
I did get to talk with Tony Sirna about what happened to Skyhouse, the income sharing community that was part of Dancing Rabbit until last January. He told me that there were three other people he'd been doing it with for years. At one point, one of them (another founder who Tony was close with) left to go on to other things, and when the couple that was left decided they wanted to raise a child outside DR, it left Tony to start a new group. He told me that he really likes income sharing communities but didn't have the energy to keep Skyhouse going because his focus right now is on building DR and guiding it through the next stage in its process. So, right now, he is renting rooms in Skyhouse and there is no income sharing community at DR.
Which brings me to my biggest difficulty with DR. Dancing Rabbit is not an income sharing community. As I wrote in my post on Red Earth Farms (6/4/13), "at DR there's a strong sense of 'this is mine' and 'I need to make sure I'm being paid for what I do'". It can be a bit much at times. The alternative currency discussion focused on their electronic currency and made me feel like they were trying to reinvent capitalism. Still, I do believe there is a need for many different types of community--I don't believe that income sharing is the only way to go. The problem, as it became clear in the discussion on community economics is that it makes it easy for some people (especially those with jobs where they can 'telecommute') to live here because they have worked hard to make the place affordable, but for others, they are barely making a living trying to work from the land here. Unfortunately, they seem to have reinvented economic classes as well. I heard from some people who talked about who had power here and who didn't--and made me aware that those who were barely scraping by did not have time to be involved in decision making groups, even if those groups are open to anyone (at least in theory), let alone take any leadership.
Please, don't let that last paragraph turn you off of Dancing Rabbit. Like any other community, DR is a work in progress. None of the communities I've visited has been even near perfect and I'm very glad they all exist. In fact, because DR is still growing and early on in their community building, I think I've learned more (at least from the point of view of someone who wants to build community) here than at any of the other communities I've visited.
Which leads me to my last insight. I have made some nice connections here and it feels really weird to be leaving never to return. I had thought of visiting other communities (like Earthaven in North Carolina and Heathcote in Maryland) and now I'm rethinking that. Twin Oaks and Acorn were fine, because I intend to keep returning there, but I don't want to just hop all over the communities circuit--perpetually visiting places and leaving. Besides, I hope I will be actually building community with others soon. (More on this in the future.) It's good I got to see DR, Red Earth, Sandhill, and the PA, but I've had enough of traveling. I'm headed home. I will be going to the Communities Conference again at the end of the summer but aside from that, I hope to settle down for a while.
Quote of the Day: "In addition to being a wonderful home for us, DR is a model for social change. Outreach and education are integral to our mission. Rather than isolating ourselves completely from the mainstream, we promote DR as a viable alternative. We enjoy sharing discoveries and ideas of sustainable living with people who have a wide variety of lifestyles." - from the Dancing Rabbit website
We also had a bunch of work parties--some of which were cancelled due to the wet weather and other problems, but we did get to help finish a living roof, help build a straw bale wall, help mulch pathways in a vineyard, help stake out pasture land, and help work on the foundation to someone's house. The hands on work was a nice supplement to all the lectures and workshops. I also attended a men's group, several Quaker meetings (which, for some reason, they hold here on Saturdays), and a Five Rhythms night of dance and music.
The people at DR were very welcoming and helpful. We were hosted at different people's houses for dinner and lunch and so got a chance to talk with many of the folks here.
I did get to talk with Tony Sirna about what happened to Skyhouse, the income sharing community that was part of Dancing Rabbit until last January. He told me that there were three other people he'd been doing it with for years. At one point, one of them (another founder who Tony was close with) left to go on to other things, and when the couple that was left decided they wanted to raise a child outside DR, it left Tony to start a new group. He told me that he really likes income sharing communities but didn't have the energy to keep Skyhouse going because his focus right now is on building DR and guiding it through the next stage in its process. So, right now, he is renting rooms in Skyhouse and there is no income sharing community at DR.
Which brings me to my biggest difficulty with DR. Dancing Rabbit is not an income sharing community. As I wrote in my post on Red Earth Farms (6/4/13), "at DR there's a strong sense of 'this is mine' and 'I need to make sure I'm being paid for what I do'". It can be a bit much at times. The alternative currency discussion focused on their electronic currency and made me feel like they were trying to reinvent capitalism. Still, I do believe there is a need for many different types of community--I don't believe that income sharing is the only way to go. The problem, as it became clear in the discussion on community economics is that it makes it easy for some people (especially those with jobs where they can 'telecommute') to live here because they have worked hard to make the place affordable, but for others, they are barely making a living trying to work from the land here. Unfortunately, they seem to have reinvented economic classes as well. I heard from some people who talked about who had power here and who didn't--and made me aware that those who were barely scraping by did not have time to be involved in decision making groups, even if those groups are open to anyone (at least in theory), let alone take any leadership.
Please, don't let that last paragraph turn you off of Dancing Rabbit. Like any other community, DR is a work in progress. None of the communities I've visited has been even near perfect and I'm very glad they all exist. In fact, because DR is still growing and early on in their community building, I think I've learned more (at least from the point of view of someone who wants to build community) here than at any of the other communities I've visited.
Which leads me to my last insight. I have made some nice connections here and it feels really weird to be leaving never to return. I had thought of visiting other communities (like Earthaven in North Carolina and Heathcote in Maryland) and now I'm rethinking that. Twin Oaks and Acorn were fine, because I intend to keep returning there, but I don't want to just hop all over the communities circuit--perpetually visiting places and leaving. Besides, I hope I will be actually building community with others soon. (More on this in the future.) It's good I got to see DR, Red Earth, Sandhill, and the PA, but I've had enough of traveling. I'm headed home. I will be going to the Communities Conference again at the end of the summer but aside from that, I hope to settle down for a while.
Quote of the Day: "In addition to being a wonderful home for us, DR is a model for social change. Outreach and education are integral to our mission. Rather than isolating ourselves completely from the mainstream, we promote DR as a viable alternative. We enjoy sharing discoveries and ideas of sustainable living with people who have a wide variety of lifestyles." - from the Dancing Rabbit website
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
The Possibility Alliance
A week ago Monday, we got to visit yet another community, this one in La Plata, 40 miles away from Rutledge, called the Possibility Alliance (and also known as the Still Waters Sanctuary). I had hoped to visit it after I was done with my Dancing Rabbit visit because the train station I was being dropped off at is in La Plata. However, I was told the only time we could visit was in the middle of our DR stay (because they're in a 'retreat year'), so I figured it wouldn't happen. However, it turned out that most of the
visitors group wanted to check out the Possibility Alliance and a couple
of people had cars so a whole bunch of us went off attend their community
tour.
The tour was led by Ethan Hughes, their charismatic leader. (At least one
person at DR warned me about him--but for our brief visit he seemed fairly
easy-going.) He began the tour by citing the mission of the Possibility
Alliance: "Living for the upliftment of all life and reaching for our
highest human potential." He also claimed that the PA was guided by five
practices: 1) Simplicity--he said others called it 'radical simplicity'
and he thought of it as 'necessary simplicity', 2) Service--many different
kinds of service, but one that's often associated with the PA is their
'Superhero Bike Rides' where people dress up as superheroes and ride into
towns offering to help in any way that's useful, 3) Social Engagement and
Nonviolent Activism, 4) Self Transformation, and 5) Silliness,
Celebration, Gratitude, and Joy. Finally, after quizzing us on things
like dying people's regrets and what our most passionate wishes were, he
led us on a tour of the sanctuary.
We got to see his house and the new timberframed/straw-bale home that they were building, the very mellow draft horses that they own, the pond that they've recently tranformed, and the land and how they've been taking care of it.
Life at the Possibility Alliance is extremely low-tech. They don't have
electricity (they use candles, they also don't have a website although
they do have a phone). All the building done there is with hand tools
rather than power tools. They try to apply permaculture principles to
their work.
They also run on 'the gift economy'--taking what is offered but not
charging for all their courses and workshops, including a permaculture
design certification course which other places often charge enormous
amounts of money. We all enjoyed the tour and the place, although we were
clear that this was only a taste of what the place was about.
For another view of the PA, see this post by leavergirl on her blog Leaving Babylon.
Quote of the Day: "What we would like to do is change the world. Make it
a little easier for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God
intended them to do.... There is nothing we can do but love, dear
God--please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor,
to love our enemy." - Dorothy Day (as quoted in the Possibility Alliance
newsletter)
visitors group wanted to check out the Possibility Alliance and a couple
of people had cars so a whole bunch of us went off attend their community
tour.
The tour was led by Ethan Hughes, their charismatic leader. (At least one
person at DR warned me about him--but for our brief visit he seemed fairly
easy-going.) He began the tour by citing the mission of the Possibility
Alliance: "Living for the upliftment of all life and reaching for our
highest human potential." He also claimed that the PA was guided by five
practices: 1) Simplicity--he said others called it 'radical simplicity'
and he thought of it as 'necessary simplicity', 2) Service--many different
kinds of service, but one that's often associated with the PA is their
'Superhero Bike Rides' where people dress up as superheroes and ride into
towns offering to help in any way that's useful, 3) Social Engagement and
Nonviolent Activism, 4) Self Transformation, and 5) Silliness,
Celebration, Gratitude, and Joy. Finally, after quizzing us on things
like dying people's regrets and what our most passionate wishes were, he
led us on a tour of the sanctuary.
We got to see his house and the new timberframed/straw-bale home that they were building, the very mellow draft horses that they own, the pond that they've recently tranformed, and the land and how they've been taking care of it.
Life at the Possibility Alliance is extremely low-tech. They don't have
electricity (they use candles, they also don't have a website although
they do have a phone). All the building done there is with hand tools
rather than power tools. They try to apply permaculture principles to
their work.
They also run on 'the gift economy'--taking what is offered but not
charging for all their courses and workshops, including a permaculture
design certification course which other places often charge enormous
amounts of money. We all enjoyed the tour and the place, although we were
clear that this was only a taste of what the place was about.
For another view of the PA, see this post by leavergirl on her blog Leaving Babylon.
Quote of the Day: "What we would like to do is change the world. Make it
a little easier for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God
intended them to do.... There is nothing we can do but love, dear
God--please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor,
to love our enemy." - Dorothy Day (as quoted in the Possibility Alliance
newsletter)
Saturday, June 8, 2013
Sandhill Farm
There once was a small village in northeast Missouri called Sandhill. In
the 1960s it disappeared as it was incorporated in the town of Rutledge.
In the 1970s, four people (two couples) were searching for land to start a
commune and purchased a plot in Rutledge very near the Sandhill Cemetery
(which is still there). They named the place Sandhill Farm.
It's still there nearly forty years later. On Tuesday night last week,
there was a 'tri-community' dinner at Sandhill Farm and along with that,
we visitors to Dancing Rabbit, got a tour of the Sandhill community. Of
the three communities here in Rutledge, this is the only one that's an
income sharing community. Unlike Twin Oaks or Acorn, it sounds like the
income sharing procedure at Sandhill is rather informal.
Sandhill makes its income on what our tour guide called 'value-added
products'. He mentioned honey and salsa and other products like that but
their biggest money maker is sorghum--which is used to make Sorghum Syrup, a natural sweetener popular in the midwest. They produce about 800 gallons of the syrup a year and sell it in Missouri, Illinois, Iowa,
Kansas, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
The Sandhill community has never gotten very large. They currently have
around six adults (and one child) and have had at most twelve adult
members. They also (like the other two communities here) have a bunch of
interns and work exchangers. Sandhill also participates in a lot of
interactions with Dancing Rabbit and Red Earth Farms. To give one small
example, there are a bunch of maple trees at Dancing Rabbit and last year
someone tapped some of them and collected the sap. Since there wasn't a
facility at DR to boil it down, they brought it to Sandhill which has a
'sugar shack' which they use mainly for the sorghum, but they also boil
down maple syrup. Sandhill was glad to boil the syrup down for DR (and
they got paid in a small amount of the maple syrup).
A bigger example is that the very reason Dancing Rabbit is in Rutledge is
because Sandhill was here. It's fascinating to watch the interactions of
the three communities and see how much they depend on each other. There's another way of living going on in Rutledge, MO, and Louisa County, VA.
Quote of the Day: "We envision Sandhill Farm as a stable, progressive,
fluid and vibrant community thriving in abundance. We prioritize building
and maintaining the health of our members, systems and facilities. We hope
to integrate more alternative energy, natural building, empowered health
care and self sufficiency in our lives. Sandhill Farm, in cooperation with
our friends and neighbors, will continue to expand and network a culture
of sustainable living in northeastern Missouri." - Sandhill's Vision
Statement
the 1960s it disappeared as it was incorporated in the town of Rutledge.
In the 1970s, four people (two couples) were searching for land to start a
commune and purchased a plot in Rutledge very near the Sandhill Cemetery
(which is still there). They named the place Sandhill Farm.
It's still there nearly forty years later. On Tuesday night last week,
there was a 'tri-community' dinner at Sandhill Farm and along with that,
we visitors to Dancing Rabbit, got a tour of the Sandhill community. Of
the three communities here in Rutledge, this is the only one that's an
income sharing community. Unlike Twin Oaks or Acorn, it sounds like the
income sharing procedure at Sandhill is rather informal.
Sandhill makes its income on what our tour guide called 'value-added
products'. He mentioned honey and salsa and other products like that but
their biggest money maker is sorghum--which is used to make Sorghum Syrup, a natural sweetener popular in the midwest. They produce about 800 gallons of the syrup a year and sell it in Missouri, Illinois, Iowa,
Kansas, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
The Sandhill community has never gotten very large. They currently have
around six adults (and one child) and have had at most twelve adult
members. They also (like the other two communities here) have a bunch of
interns and work exchangers. Sandhill also participates in a lot of
interactions with Dancing Rabbit and Red Earth Farms. To give one small
example, there are a bunch of maple trees at Dancing Rabbit and last year
someone tapped some of them and collected the sap. Since there wasn't a
facility at DR to boil it down, they brought it to Sandhill which has a
'sugar shack' which they use mainly for the sorghum, but they also boil
down maple syrup. Sandhill was glad to boil the syrup down for DR (and
they got paid in a small amount of the maple syrup).
A bigger example is that the very reason Dancing Rabbit is in Rutledge is
because Sandhill was here. It's fascinating to watch the interactions of
the three communities and see how much they depend on each other. There's another way of living going on in Rutledge, MO, and Louisa County, VA.
Quote of the Day: "We envision Sandhill Farm as a stable, progressive,
fluid and vibrant community thriving in abundance. We prioritize building
and maintaining the health of our members, systems and facilities. We hope
to integrate more alternative energy, natural building, empowered health
care and self sufficiency in our lives. Sandhill Farm, in cooperation with
our friends and neighbors, will continue to expand and network a culture
of sustainable living in northeastern Missouri." - Sandhill's Vision
Statement
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Red Earth Farms
A week ago Saturday, the visitor's group I'm in at Dancing Rabbit went on a tour of the nearby community of Red Earth Farms. The relationship between DR and REF reminds me of the relationship between Twin Oaks and Acorn. (See my posts on Update 2: The Acorn Community, 9/14/12, and Update 6: Life at Twin Oaks, 12/4/12.) Dancing Rabbit and Twin Oaks are both large sized communities that are high on structure and policies, where Red Earth Farms and Acorn were much smaller and more into individual freedom and figuring it out as they went along. The big difference is that where Twin Oaks and Acorn were both income sharing communities and very strong on sharing
everything, DR and REF are both much more individually oriented--while they both share a bunch (particularly DR), at DR there's a strong sense of 'this is mine' and 'I need to make sure I'm being paid for what I do', and REF (which is a homesteaders community) is divided into individual sites with the expectation that each site can pretty much do what they want (although they're all pretty committed to sustainable, ecological living and most of them live rather simply).
On the other hand, the REF homesteads are quite interesting. Since there
are no rules about what anyone can do or can't do, each of them is pretty
different. One in particular had a house that was very old fashioned and
obviously hand built. Several people said that when they entered it they
had the sensation of going back more than a century in time.
And it's important to note the back and forth between DR and REF--I've
seen a bunch of folks from REF hanging out at DR from time to time and
people at each community will say, 'I built this with the help of
so-and-so at ...' the other community. This interconnecting of the two
communities also reminds me a lot of the relationship between Twin Oaks
and Acorn. But both communities here have a strong interelationship with
the third community in Rutledge, Sandhill, which is also the oldest of the
three. I'll write about that next.
Quote of the Day: "Red Earth Farms is an intentional community of
homesteads sharing a 76-acre land trust in the rolling hills of northeast
Missouri. Our community’s mission is to creatively explore and evaluate
sustainable ways to meet our needs in accordance with our guiding
principle: 'Love the land; love your neighbors.' " - from Red Earth Farms'
website
On the other hand, the REF homesteads are quite interesting. Since there
are no rules about what anyone can do or can't do, each of them is pretty
different. One in particular had a house that was very old fashioned and
obviously hand built. Several people said that when they entered it they
had the sensation of going back more than a century in time.
And it's important to note the back and forth between DR and REF--I've
seen a bunch of folks from REF hanging out at DR from time to time and
people at each community will say, 'I built this with the help of
so-and-so at ...' the other community. This interconnecting of the two
communities also reminds me a lot of the relationship between Twin Oaks
and Acorn. But both communities here have a strong interelationship with
the third community in Rutledge, Sandhill, which is also the oldest of the
three. I'll write about that next.
Quote of the Day: "Red Earth Farms is an intentional community of
homesteads sharing a 76-acre land trust in the rolling hills of northeast
Missouri. Our community’s mission is to creatively explore and evaluate
sustainable ways to meet our needs in accordance with our guiding
principle: 'Love the land; love your neighbors.' " - from Red Earth Farms'
website
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