Looking to Join an Egalitarian Community

The first snowfall of the year arrived today but it's not sticking to the ground yet. Just a reminder for me to make sure that i pay my power bill. They don't charge for the heating here at my apartment but i take a reminder when i can get it.

I like the winter but this will be the first time i've spent one living here.. at least i won't have to shovel this year but i do miss having a yard. Apartments have their pros and cons just like any type of living and this is still new to me so i'm trying to be mellow and not anticipate too much.

I'm trying to quit smoking tobacco but i don't think i'll be able to pull that one off this winter but at least it will give me something to do while i'm shut-in for the upcoming season. I'll just excercise some common sense and avoid chain-smoking.. 2/3rds a pack a day per day isn't so bad for my age i guess but then again the snow will make excercise difficult - not impossible though.

I'm hoping that the next time i hang out with a good friend of mine from the area i can get him to take a photograph of me to upload to my profile. I really do hate having my picture taken but it's been a long time since i had any photos of myself and never had a digital one. It's time for people to know what i look like so i'll get that done soon.

I'm starting to settle in over here, which is nice feeling. Unpacking, moving all that transitional stuff is pretty hard for me. I like to feel pretty rooted.
All that being said, it's been so wonderful here for me. I love the business, and this farm and most everything about it. I'm glad to be a part of it again.

Joan and I went all around yesterday evening harvesting herbs, identifying wild stuff, checking out the berry bushes/trees and watching the Tina James'
Magic Evening Primroses open ( I even got some video) and get pollinated by these moths that are huge and look just like hummingbirds. They are so
focused on the flowers which almost glow in the twilight that you can put your hand underneath them and they'll hang on to you while they're at the flower.

Of course, I've blogged about all this already, but it just is so exciting and feels so good. The photos of all this stuff is at http://acornista.blogspot.com

Here are some things I haven't already mentioned. We are doing a very exciting MAJOR cleanup project! Building by building, once a month (so were not to overwhelmen and not so infrequent that we lose interest) we are going to some serious organizing and getting rid of junk- One thing that happens living on the commune,
everyone and their brother wants to "donate" all the stuff they can't use themselves anymore. Plus all the members household stuff (unless going back and forth
like some communards do) ends up here too. And what are we here at Acorn? A bunch of pack rats, shuffling items off to corners, when the corners pile up they
get shuffled off to longer term, em, storage. But with all the current interest in organization- we'll be able to move stuff out for good. We're hoping to do a yard sale type
of deal with some things that may have more value, and freecycle and lastly- stuff will go to the dump.

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