East Wind

Thank you all for your help. Monday July 13th I am leaving from Dayton, TN and heading to Highland, Arkansas to the "Love Light" community. I will be hitch hiking there with a 50-75lb. hiking pack and tent. Well, if I don't talk to you all for a while it is because I am on the road of adventure. I really like the community I have found and am eager to get on the road. If you are looking for a community and are new all I can tell you is that if you are really serious about it just start checking the communities directory on this site and keep looking until you find one that interests you, . . . then just go for it when you got the chance to. I hope all have a good one. Till I talk to you later, arrivaderchi for now.
Your Friend,
SeekerOfTheGreenLife
Josh Nordyke

I do not now, nor have I ever, personally owned stocks. I don’t think I’ve ever even felt the slightest financial interest in investing in the stock market. It’s likely due, it part, to my more pressing financial interests in groceries and heat bills, but I’m not sheltered or dense. I’m aware of the systems and carry some layman knowledge of its mechanisms. I read history and I didn’t sleep through my economics class. And, I’ve got this unending, morbid fascination.

I’ve had the “advantage” of an education that prepared me, in its own way, to negotiate the modern socio-economic system, one which isn’t likely to survive as it is much longer. I was taught, through nearly exclusive saturation, the memes of the global ruling class. I’m talking about people with sprawling cul-de-sac homes and armies to insure their economic interests.

And, along with that education I was told, by my family, educators, and the television, a highly popular and inaccurate fairy tale. This very same story has buoyed the stock market to its heights. It is there that the seed of my interest takes root.

On March 6th, the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit 6,477.20. It’s lowest point in recent years. The high, for the day I was born, May 19th, 1983, was 1,208.49. The all time record high hit at 14,164 on October 9, 2007.

The fairy tale goes like this…

Howdy everyone;

I hope everyone's new year has been wonderful so far and will continue to be just as good! I am glad for another year as well, plus the fact that as an author amongst other things, I'm now a published author through CreateSpace, and while not trying to plug it, it's just another wonderful thing that's happened to me that I'm always willing to share with friends and family alike, while I am looking to eventually have an extended family or family like a lot of the rest of you have while living at the many different communities.

I am writing to announce that I am working towards a goal of mine in sharing and more! I am starting an Intentional Community and though I've never had the opportunity to visit one, I'm still aimed at a Community Ranch that's going to be like so many others, yet different. I don't seem to fit into society any more as I'm not a person who is 'greedy, self-serving, full of hate', and though I could go on, there's really no need to as I'm sure there's so many of you out there who feel the same!

I'm not one for living alone and though I'm a work-a-holic, I would still like to live in a place where I can openly share with others while knowing that I can turn to others and feel or know they are family or extended family.

I have a website already up and a MySpace account page, which I am trying to link to as many friends and groups as possible to help this become a reality! I know it takes time. The URL for both the Official site and MySpace account follows: http://www.manyspiritsranch.com and http://www.myspace.com/manyspiritsranch

11-23 08

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you Rob.
Enjoy
L~

http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=42509731151&h=FYFMG

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

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

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

Kat Kinkade died at 7:40, July 3rd, 2008 at Twin Oaks Community in the building called Nashoba. Her family and friends were here with her when she passed.

Kat Kinkade was a founding member of 3 communities in the Federation of Egalitarian Communities; Twin Oaks, East Wind and Acorn. Each of these communities are still thriving to this day.

Kat died due to complications related to bone cancer, an illness she has been living with for quite a while.

Kat will be buried tomorrow in Twin Oaks Community's cemetery with family and close friends in attendance. The burial will be at a closed ceremony. A memorial service will be held in the near future. For more information on Kat's memorial service, please contact Valerie at valerie@twinoaks.org

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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