April, 2009 written by Apple

The FEC assembly was hosted this spring by Twin Oaks Community. There were representatives from five of the six member communities of the FEC, though only four of those representatives had decision-making power. Attending were:
Acorn Community (Virginia): G.Paul, delegate
East Wind Community (Missouri): Key, observing
Emma Goldman's Finishing School (Washington): Monica, delegate
Sandhill Community (Missouri): Apple, sitting in for Stan
Twin Oaks Community (Virginia): Bucket, delegate and FEC secretary, and Ethan

Skyhouse Community (Missouri) was unrepresented, as their delegate Amy is busy taking care of her newborn, Jolyon.

Also attending the first days of the assembly were Lila, Hop, and their daughter Ayana. They are part of a forming community, currently residing in Wisconsin, and have been communicating with Bucket for some time about becoming involved with the FEC. They are temporarily calling themselves the 529 Collective, but are clear that they will have a new name in the future. They are planning to relocate as their community process moves forward, and are open to different possibilities, though they have some leaning towards the west coast, where they have friends and family, and have done organizing in the past.

Scott of Twin Oaks checked in for Nadmadawining Community in Wisconsin. This community is affiliated with Teaching Drum, a Primitivist Skills School, and is also interested in membership in the FEC. Scott has both attended and taught at the school, and though he's had little interaction with Nadmadawining in the past, he is hoping they will become part of the FEC, to make it easier for him to keep up his connection with the school and community there.

Well, it’s been a crazy winter for Acorn. The business’ rapid growth in the past couple of years has given way to breakneck growth this winter. Southern Exposure Seed Exchange grew at a rate of about 70% over last year for January and February of this year. The community population, however, has not and the resulting situation has meant widespread craziness and long long hours. So significant has been the growth that this year we’ve begun, in a charming bit of historical reciprocity, to hire Twin Oakers to help us handle the extra business. For the first many years of Acorn’s existence we supported ourselves making hammocks for Twin Oaks and it’s nice to finally be in a position where we can be there for them.

The extra income from the business has finally allowed us to get serious about constructing more buildings and we’ve been having a number of meetings towards that end. Plans under consideration include a renovation of our old farmhouse in the style of ex-Oaker Alexis’ renovation of Woodfolk House in Charlottesville, the construction of a new dormitory style residence, and the construction of a new centralized SESE office building.

While our membership has not been in any way keeping up with our business we have been growing at a steady pace. New members Jason and Ashley joined us in January and jumped right in. Puck of Twin Oaks joined as a dual member in January and we were also able to convince ex-intern Sabrina to join while she waited for her spot at Twin Oaks to open up. We’ve accepted two other women who plan to return to us in the not too distant future. Sadly, both Emily and Marielle left us at the end of 2008, each to pursue their own adventures.

News of the Oaks: Equinox - to - Equinox (Autumn 08 - Spring 09)
by Valerie TO

We've had a busy winter at the Oaks, with the theme tending towards
Growth and Abundance. We had two babies born in Kaweah-Anya Margery
Joy Samoheyl to Summer and Purl in November, and Samir Ghoshal
Freeman to Mala and Ezra in March. Both births were attended by
Brynne, a Charlottesville mid-wife who is the daughter of TO member
Jayel.

Even without two new humyns, we were already pretty full-in fact we
have been at "Pop Cap", our population maximum for some months. As of
this writing (late March) the Waiting List is about a dozen people.
We'll see if the historical trend of members leaving in the Spring
plays out this year, or if reports of the economy keep people in the
communal nest.

We also have a new structure-a metal building to replace Oz, which
burned down last summer. It was paid for by the insurance we had on
the old Oz. We hired out it's installation, but will do the final
custom-fitting ourselves, so it can be used for it's intended
purpose-where we do the oil and varnish finishing on our hammock
stretchers and chair frames.

In business news, we've taken on more seed-growing, some of which
are sold to Acorn for their seed business, some are sold to other
seed companies, and some used for our own garden. We've also begun
talk of starting a new business, to diversify our income and just
plain old bring more of it in.....

Random social/cultural occurrences: Validation Day "Songs of Love"
concert, Games Night at Beechside, a St Patrick's Day Irish music
concert, a performance by The Richmond Indigenous Gourd Orchestra,
twice-weekly Ultimate Frisbee, Art Show at ZK, Yoga classes in the
Bijou, and FEC Sharp--the women's a capella music group at TO
featured on YouTube.

Happy spring from Emma’s! And it is starting to feel like spring here in Seattle. Yesterday the sun was out in full force, people were walking the streets in shirtsleeves, and the cherry trees and daffodils have bloomed. The warmer air (and rain ?) are a welcome change from what was a winter of abnormal snow. In December and January we had snow that shut down the city! At first the urban winter wonderland was a fun change that had us all inside crafting, cooking, eating, relaxing with our friends and fellow communards. But after a few weeks, that got old.

So now we’re busy planning our garden for the summer, cover-cropping, composting, starting seedlings. Along with a group of other urban farmers that calls itself Food Not Lawns, Marc built a greenhouse at a collective house a short walk away, so now we have a place to nurture our baby plants. In addition, our neighbor is letting us use part of his yard as garden space, so we’re looking forward to an even bigger garden this year. We’re also still participating in the collective farm Shoulder to Shoulder, growing some of our produce on Vashon Island.

This winter we also were able to host many great guests, including family and friends of our members, past Emmunards, friends in the wider communities movement in the region, and activists from the arts education collective The Beehive who were in town on their national tour. You can check out their work at www.beehivecollective.org.

The last couple of months have felt empty at Emma’s with Johanna, Sheldon, and their daughter Ruby on leave in Vermont. After the passing of Sheldon’s mother, they decided to spend a few months with their family on the East Coast, connecting with loved ones there and having a break from life-as-usual in Seattle. We’ll be happy to have them back home in May.

Bucket for the FEC - 3/30/09

On March 19th, 2009, I attended the Forum on the Solidarity Economy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. My travel costs and labor credits were provided by the Federation of Egalitarian Communities (FEC). The FEC requires a written report whenever it pays for any FEC member to attend an event. This is just such a report.

I attended the Forum to represent the FEC to the US Solidarity Economy Network (USSEN), to present a workshop on income sharing communities, and to evaluate whether the USSEN and the Forum are good fits for our organization. I also attended several of the workshops, and I hope to pass on some of what I have learned.

What is the US Solidarity Economy Network?

The US Solidarity Economy Network is an organization that serves as a networking, policy and education hub for the solidarity economy. What is the solidarity economy? This was a question asked by many folks at this forum. It took me a while to really grasp it myself. One of the organizers of this conference, Ethan Miller, has given the following definition:

"The term ‘solidarity economy’ is the English translation of economia solidária (Portuguese), economía solidaria (Spanish), and économie solidaire (French). Broadly defined, it names a grassroots form of cooperative economics that is working throughout the world to connect thousands of local alternatives together to create large-scale, viable, and creative networks of resistance to the profit-over-all-else economy.

Like all terms of political struggle, the definition of ‘solidarity economy’ is widely contested. For some, it refers to a set of strategies aimed at the abolition of capitalism and the oppressive social relations that it supports and encourages; for others, it names strategies for ‘humanising’ the capitalist economy – seeking to supplement capitalist globalization with community-based ‘social safety nets’."

The term "solidarity economy" is very broad in its definition, as it was created to name the many diverse ways in which people are resisting the worst parts of globalization, capitalism and environmental degradation. It includes many alternative economic approaches, like food coops and community supported agriculture, complimentary currencies and credit unions, community land trusts and intentional communities, open-source software and worker owned cooperatives. Many of these models & organizations rose up from the grass roots as responses to the injustices inherent to our current capitalist economic systems. These organizations would do well to communicate and cooperate together and the US Solidarity Economy Network intends to provide the structure to facilitate this by serving as a bridge between various organizations.

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…

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.

Skyhouse is looking for an experienced gardener to join us in growing food for our table for the 2009 season. Our ideal person would have some experience in growing organic vegetables and a desire to organize and manage the garden from April to November. Ability to work independently and collaboratively a must. We have currently been growing and storing most of our vegetables for our group of approximately 8 and hope to continue that this year.

In exchange for your work in the garden we would provide a room in our off-grid strawbale home, organic vegan meals, and would cover basic expenses. You'd also help out with cooking, cleaning and other rotational chores and could of course join in with other work that interested you (food processing, natural building, etc.)

Skyhouse is a small income-sharing communal group within the Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage. In many ways you would be joining both communities for the duration of your stay and would be part both of our tight-knit household and our ecologically focused village. While Skyhouse is a small group now we are looking to grow so long-term membership is also an option.

For more information see: www.skyhousecommunity.org and www.dancingrabbit.org

Contact us if you are interested or if you want more information.

A Human Sized Answer to a Global Problem
Sharing & Climate Change

The global community is facing a serious ecological problem. Unless we change our way of living we may be passing on to our children a world with rising sea levels, extreme weather conditions and disrupted ecosystems. According to governmental studies done in the UK and EU, a global average temperature increase of over 3 degrees Celsius would cause irreversible changes to our environment, the effects of which may include a potential rise of the sea level of up to 7 meters and widespread water and food shortages.

Nathan Rive of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo says that if we are to have any chance of preventing the average temperature from increasing over 2 degrees "we would have to cut global emissions by 80 percent by 2050."

How can we stop consuming resources and producing carbon at such high levels? Is it possible to do so and still maintain the level of comfort that we have in modern life? Are we willing to make the changes necessary, when the ultimate effects of our actions (or inaction) will not manifest until decades from now? We have the technology now that can help, but investment in these technologies on a massive scale is needed now if we hope to see the changes we need in place in time to make a difference. Government programs like carbon taxes might help motivate our industries to pollute less. However, in places like the European Union and the UK where such laws have been enacted, carbon reduction is still falling short of their goals. In addition, the USA is the largest producer of carbon emissions per-capita and there are currently no comprehensive carbon emission regulations in America.

Don't give up hope yet! There exists today a solution that could drastically reduce the energy consumption and carbon emissions of the modern citizen that does not require new technology or a drastic reduction in quality of life. It is not anything new or complex, in fact it is something we all learned in Kindergarten. It is called sharing.

Juan here, reporting on Skyhouse's comings and goings and doings since the last FEC assembly in February at East Wind.

The biggest news in Skyhouse is that Skyhouse will be welcoming a new member in March, as Amy & I are pregnant. Preparations and modifications are being made to room layouts to accomodate the new one, and we had a significant amount of fun calling my family in Argentina to let them know the news.

Skyhouse has been having some practice with children, however, as Ma'ikwe Ludwig and her son Jibran are renting a room in Skyhouse; I, for one, am happy that we have ten years before our child is his age. Dan Steinicke, a former member of Dancing Rabbit, returned and is also renting a room for the winter.

We had our first strong contenders for Skyhouse adult membership since Cecil left when Lauren and Shannon, a couple from Philadelphia, expressed an interest in us. After Amy and I met them briefly in Philly, Skyhouse decided to forego our usual method of encouraging interested folks to visit Dancing Rabbit, and instead hosted them directly. Their visit was pleasant, and it seemed like they might be a good fit for Skyhouse. Unfortunately, they decided to take a different path, and have not returned.

We've done a lot of travelling, as well. Tony went to the Art of Community and the FIC conference in May. Much family-related
travelling ensued, with visiting of parents and friends all over the country.

On the business side of things, Tony has continued his hard work on the FIC's website, and Amy and I built the online store for the
Milkweed Mercantile (http://www.milkweedmercantile.com). A dream of Alline Anderson and Kurt Kessner of Dancing Rabbit, the Mercantile's physical building isn't finished yet. But when it is, it will be host to a bed and breakfast, a cafe and a general store. Skyhouse is now extremely close to seeing the last of the debt it incurred building our house go away, and I for one, can't wait.

As I write this, a child is being born here at Twin Oaks. In the upstairs living room of Kaweah, Summer and Purl are being assisted by friends, family and a midwife in giving birth to our newest member.

In June of this year we celebrated Twin Oaks' 41st Anniversary. Around 200 members and ex-members gathered together to watch slide-shows, have dinner and dance together to mark the occasion. Unfortunately, while we were waiting for dinner word got to us that one of the buildings next to our warehouse, named Oz, was burning. The destruction was total, but luckily the fire did not spread to any of the other buildings. The folks at Louisa Fire Department contained the fire and put it out for us. Work is already underway to replace Oz with a new steel building by this spring.

This years Halloween party was a blast. Many members dressed up and partied down. Costumes included: Sarah Palin's pregnant teenage daughter (costume worn by a 40-year old man), Peak Oil (person adorned with garbage bags and car-oil cans, with a trickle of fake oil dripping out of their head) and Johnny Cash (complete with 3-piece live band, led the whole room in singing a round of "Ring of Fire")

As of this moment, Twin Oaks is at maximum capacity. In early November we took on our 93rd adult member, which according to our current policy is our Population Capacity (or Pop Cap for short). Already since then we have collected a waiting list of a dozen people ready to move here once the opportunity arises. Is this the beginning of a new trend or just an anomaly? Only time will tell.

The weather made this a challenging year: we had rain, rain, & more rain. We had problems planting crops in a timely manner and yet, overall, our crops did well. We made raised beds in our main garden – which helped a lot. We also had lovely fall weather and so late crops – like peppers – matured and yielded plentifully.

We are excited about our greenhouse: this will be the first year that we are growing greens in it in the winter months – Gigi hooked up a wood stove and fired it yesterday. We are looking forward to fresh greens during the winter!

Membership stayed the same - Jacob became a provisional member for several months and plans to return to Red Earth next year. We had a lot of additional folks – so the work got done joyously. Ann & Kevin were interns all year and are still here. Thea returned for another internship. We also had numerous visitors including ex-members. The board game, crokinole was played a lot.

Local Activism:

Several of us – together with folks from Dancing Rabbit and Red Earth – did a Peace Vigil in March in the small town of Memphis, our county seat.

Gigi has become the spokesperson for Concerned Citizens of Scotland County – a group that is alarmed at the recent influx of CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) and attempting to make the CAFO operators manage animals and manure responsibly.

Renay continues in public school and is a great public relations ambassador – by being herself.

Celebrations:

Our annual mayday party was a great one – this year we had a contra dance in the loft of one of our barns.

We also re-instituted our annual sorghum festival and had a good turnout.

Jo came back from N Carolina to celebrate her 21st birthday and made over 600 sushi rolls for all to enjoy.

Meetings

Together with Skyhouse, we hosted the FEC assembly in November

With Dancing Rabbit, we hosted FIC meetings

This past year has been one full of changes. The biggest being the birth of our first baby, Ruby, who is the daughter of Johanna and Sheldon. As a community, we’ve been learning how to support new parents, how to do baby sign language, and how to relate with this little one. It has been a challenging and rewarding learning opportunity for us. Now, Ruby is walking/tottering and that is bringing with it a whole new set of fun and challenging things.

Also, we have seen some dramatic membership flux. After taking on two new adult members and two children in the fall of 2007, in the summer of 2008 one of our adult couples, and our new member and her two children moved on. So there was that. But we also had the blessing of bringing on our newest member Wilson. That brings us to our current membership of 7 adults (Sheldon, Johanna, Addy, Monica, Marc, Patience, Wilson) and 1 Ruby, which means we have 5 rooms available.

We decided to open up two of the rooms for non-membership-seeking subletters, and have Marc’s partner Tamara filling one room, and our past member Thea (also of Sandhill) in the other for the winter months. We’re excited to have their upbeat energy and great skills around Emma’s.

Each year, we are expanding our own food production, and this year we joined a collective farm on Vashon Island, which is just a ferry ride away. We have 1 out of 8 shares, where we put in $400 upfront, do 6 hours of a labor a week, and get our share of the harvest. That in addition to what we grow in our own garden has made it so that we have a pretty decent produce supply in the summer months. We’re planning on continuing this next year.

Well, 2008 has been a wild year for Acorn. We've seen some significant changes in our membership and our businesses.

Seed businesses across the USA have been seeing phenomenal growth rates this last year and our own Southern Exposure Seed Exchange has been no stranger to the trend. Overall, sales have increased by something like 50% for the year with some of our historically slower months seeing their sales double or more over last year. It could be rising fuel and food prices, a maturing organics and green movement, all the promotion that we've been doing this last year, or just a good old fear of the apocalypse. Or some combination thereof. Speaking of promotion, this year, on the first Saturday in September, we held our second annual Heritage Harvest Festival with Monticello, Whole Foods, and the Master Gardeners. We fretted and worried when the tropical storm decided to roll through our area precisely on Saturday morning but were stunned when an estimated 1000+ people came out and braved the rain with us. This year also saw us purchasing Garden Medicinals and Culinaries, a seed company specializing in herbs, off the same fellow we purchased SESE off of some 10 years ago.