Life in the FEC

You are what you eat

sorghumco — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:06:28 -0500

Occasionally, I go to a gourmet restaurant - with friends and as a treat. It is interesting to see how chefs work at presenting food - to make it taste good (and to make the eating experience attractive & enjoyable).

It is a constant reminder of why I choose to live on a farm where we grow our own food: we eat gourmet, top quality food all the time. Nothing compares with fresh picked produce - grown by loving hands in soil tended with care by all of us living here. The veggies & fruits “present” themselves - better than any chefs in a gourmet restaurant. This is the time when we are eating a lot of our own fresh produce; some of my current favorites:

*crisp tangy radishes - first thing in the morning

*asparagus - raw or lightly steamed

*strawberries - juicy & bursting with flavor

*salads: several different lettuces, spinach, violets, kale, radishes

*steamed: kale, lamb’s quarters, spinach

*rhubarb - as in krisp, pie, etc. (my favorite: rhubarb wine)

Since we also use up a lot of carbs in our daily life here, we complement it with homegrown black beans & tortillas with our own freshly ground cornmeal and wheat flour.

Now - how do you reconcile that kinda living with the fact that according to guv’ment data, we live below the official “poverty line”?

In any case, i’ve often heard the title: “you are what you eat”. We eat fresh, wholesome, organic, & mostly homegrown food; that means that we are part of the earth and our environment. Ah! that’s why we find it hard to get off the farm! Come and visit - will it work on you??

Sandhill Farm

Emma Goldman's Finishing School in YES Mag

Bucket — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 08:49:59 -0600

Check out this article in YES Magazine:
http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=2098

A Taste of Freedom at Home

by Adam & Kibby MacKinnon

“I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things.”

Emma Goldman (1869-1940)
WRITER AND ACTIVIST

Let's say you're a typical wage-slave: you work a 40-hour week—at least 160 hours a month—on top of which you've got a nasty, desensitizing commute. What little time you have left you spend feeding yourself, and then collapse in front of a DVD.

Contrast this with life at the Emma Goldman Finishing School, an egalitarian social justice commune in Seattle where we lived for a year. On a budget of $100,000 Emma's provides a 12-person community with food, housing, heat, utilities, internet and phone access, health coverage, transportation, even a pension. Each adult contributes a “quota” of approximately 110 hours a month in income hours or labor hours. To start with, that eliminates the need for a full-time job. For us, it meant that Kibby's time cooking dinner, food shopping, doing home maintenance, gardening, or caring for our child had the same value as Adam's salaried hours at YES!

Emma's members also choose to cap their personal spending. These choices provide them time to pursue their activism and a lifestyle that doesn't contradict their beliefs. Living there challenged our assumptions, which in itself is perhaps the most liberating thing that can happen to you.

Photo of the Emma Goldman Finishing School, an egalitarian social justice commune in Seattle. Courtesy of EGFS
Photo courtesy of the Emma Goldman Finishing School. www.egfs.org. Photo essay
Take food, one of the most-discussed topics at Emma's. We bought wholesale, from our local co-op, and whenever possible, direct from farms. We didn't just buy organic, we avoided giant corporations riding the organic food craze. We discussed hosting a needs-based community food pantry, and the idea of buying locally-grown produce at double or triple market value in order to make local farming viable.

There have been many attempts to create an egalitarian society: why does this model work so well? First of all, the recruitment process is rigorous. By the time we moved in, we knew what we were getting ourselves into.

But above all, it works because of trust. Emma's members have weekly three-hour meetings, so there is always a chance to bring up issues and raise suggestions. The first hour is devoted to check-in, where everyone speaks freely about what is going on for them. Now, this sounds awfully touchy-feely, but it works. Grievances are aired and nothing festers.

Because the community provides all the basics, it's easier to see what are truly needs and what are unnecessary wants. Limited consumption becomes a route to freedom, not a restrictive asceticism. And trusting others—how liberating!

The people who established Emma's didn't wait for permission. They didn't look to some non profit to set them up in a communal house. A few passionate folks got together and worked to make it happen. Brava, Emma Goldman, past, present and future!

Adam and Kibby MacKinnon wrote this article as part of Liberate Your Space, the Winter 2008 issue of YES! Magazine. Adam and Kibby now live in Winslow Cohousing on Bainbridge Island, just a five-minute walk away from YES! Magazine's offices, where Adam is the Online Editor. Kibby is currently training to be a Waldorf teacher.

Emma Goldman's Finishing School

Sandhill Farm Article In Sauce Magazine

AngieTupelo — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 20:06:13 -0600

Sweet sorghum syrup from Sandhill Farm, organically grown and processed
near Rutledge, Mo., is ready for seasonal shoppers just in time for the
holidays. Today, it’s an unusual ingredient for most American cooks,
but in the 1880s it was a common, inexpensive sweetener.

“A hundred years ago most rural communities would have sorghum
processors every five or 10 miles,” said Stan Hildebrand, a member of
the Sandhill Farm community. “Each farm would grow a patch of sorghum,
take it to the processor and have their sweetener for the whole year.”
In fact, Sandhill’s sorghum production began just that way. “There was
an old-time couple in the area near Sandhill in the ’70s who cooked the
syrup,” said Hildebrand. “At first, we just grew some sorghum
cane and processed it with the older couple. Then we started cooking
our own.” The members of the Sandhill community work each fall with
interns, friends and other cooperatives to process the sorghum cane
into syrup.

Sandhill intern Heather Osborn of Ottawa, Canada, worked her first
sorghum harvest this fall. Her internship in the simple life began
high-tech with an Internet search for organic farming communities. “I
didn’t even know what sorghum was when I came,” said Osborn. “The
social scene was always morphing here as people came and went to help
with the sorghum. I counted about 45 people working, visiting. Lots of
work, but it was fun, too.”

In this intentionally egalitarian community where everything is shared,
the harvest provides food and income for the members, much in the way
small farms did 100 years ago. In addition to the sorghum syrup, honey
and prepared mustard it sells at the Web site www.sandhillfarm.org,
Sandhill also sells seasonal items like frozen tempeh, hard-necked
Sandhill garlic, horseradish and salsas at harvest fairs and at the
farm.

The stylish blue, white and yellow Sandhill Farm sorghum label lists
only one ingredient: organic sorghum cane juice. Dark amber in color,
the syrup has a nice viscosity; it’s easier to measure than honey or
molasses. Sorghum smells light and tangy, with no hint of the sulfurous
odor that characterizes molasses. A taste straight from the jar is
sweet and lively. One can just imagine how good it will taste in
gingerbread, baked beans and barbecue sauce. Plus, it’s one of those
enjoyable good-for-you things. “As a sweetener, the nutritional value
is not much, but sorghum has more minerals and enzymes than honey,”
said Hildebrand. “Plus it’s high in antioxidants.”

Locally, Wild Oats Natural Marketplace in Ladue carries Sandhill Farm
sorghum. It’s in the baking aisle near the brown sugar, not with the
honey and molasses where one might expect to find it.

Black Bear Bakery mixes sorghum in its pumpkin pies, sorghum multigrain
loaf, muffins and granola. Baker bobEE Sweet said, “We use sorghum
because it’s flavorful and it’s locally produced. Plus we’re a
cooperative, like Sandhill. We like to support other cooperatives.”
The Buying Group of St. Louis, an organic food cooperative, is another
Sandhill customer. “We buy sorghum, tempe and honey from Sandhill
Farm,” said Marie Andrews. A Buying Group member for 16 years, Andrews
said she likes the cooperative model of shared effort and good food.
Each member works about four hours a month.

Measure for measure, the home cook can substitute sorghum for honey,
corn syrup, molasses or maple syrup. Because it’s sweeter than
molasses, bakers will need to reduce the white sugar in cookie and pie
recipes by about a third when using sorghum. The Sandhill label
recommends substituting one-half cup of sorghum for one cup of white
sugar.

Hildebrand makes it clear sorghum is not molasses. “When we sell at
harvest festivals, older folks sometimes ask for ‘sorghum molasses.’
Molasses is a by-product of white sugar cane, while sorghum is a whole
food product.”

Bust magazine article - Ecovillage People

AngieTupelo — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 22:32:30 -0600

Thirty-six years ago, one woman dreamed of creating an independent society. Today, her dream is a thriving community that's creating its own feminist culture.

By Emily Rems

Most people have never chucked a trash can through the window of a Starbucks or done time for revolutionary antics aimed at the WTO, but who among us hasn't felt the urge to throw off the shackles of global corporate culture in favor of a simpler, more independent life? If you've ever longed to be free of sexism and materialism, to live off of home-grown and homemade food, or to work in a place where your tasks are meaningful and your financial needs are minimal, you may have dismissed such ideas as being no more than a pipe dream. But for the residents of Twin Oaks, a feminist ecovillage tucked away on 465 acres of farmland in central Virginia, these dreams are a tangible reality.

Established in 1967 on a former tobacco plantation 35 miles south of Charlottesville, Virginia, Twin Oaks is part of what is known as the "Intentional Communities" movement, Intentional Communities include everything from rural farming communes like Twin Oaks to those group-house hotbeds of punk rock ON activism that tend to crop up in more urban areas. And while they numbered in the thousands at the peak of their popularity during the heady '6Os, you might be surprised to learn that there are over 600 such organizations still operating in North America alone.

Back in '67, the entire population of Twin Oaks numbered only eight people. They were all there because of Walden Two, a novel written by Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner, which Kat Kinkade-a self-described "bored secretary"-had read in a night school class. The book inspired Kinkade to look for other folks who might be interested in putting Skinner's blueprint for a new kind of peaceful, egalitarian society into practice.

Eventually, five brave souls stepped up to the plate, and together with her husband and her teenage daughter, Kinkade went on to create what is known today as one of the most successful and remarkably enduring social experiments the communities movement has ever seen. While countless other '60s-era communes and outposts of radical thought imploded under the weight of disorganization, in-fighting, and economic hardship, Twin Oaks has managed to grow and thrive with each passing decade. Today, Twin Oaks is home to 85 adults, all living and working together alongside their 15 kids, 5 dogs, 6 cats, 3 ferrets, and 30 cows and chickens in a laborsharing, cottage-industry system.

Twin Oaks calls itself "a self-supporting and somewhat self-sufficient community." Each member is promised housing, food, health care, and personal spending money in exchange for working an assigned number of hours in any of the community's businesses or domestic roles. But the citizens of Twin Oaks are not only committed to achieving economic independence pendence-they also strive to create what they call a "feminist culture." Intrigued by what that might look like, I traveled down below the Mason-Dixon line to catch a whiff of feminist utopia for myself.

Twin Oaks Road is a long dirt driveway that curves through pristine woodland, runs beside a breathtaking expanse of rolling green fields, and terminates at the white clapboard entrance to the community's front office. On the morning I arrived, the crops were teeming with the yield of late summer beneath a brilliant azure sky. As the car rolled to a stop, I spotted six tanned young people in tees and cutoffs, quietly harvesting big shiny peppers and tending to beans out in the field, while cows mooed their good-mornings from a dairy barn down the hill.

Inside the office, I was introduced to my host, Mala, a 28-year-old woman with a Chicago accent and a laid-back but briskly efficient manner. Grabbing my bags, I followed Mala up a wooded path to my accommodations in Kaweah, one of nine housing structures dotting the mile-long main drag of the community. Kaweah combined the homey wood-plank architecture and clean outdoorsy aroma or a ski chalet with the hodgepodge utilitarian decor of your typical liberal arts college dorm, minus the television. Each of Twin Oaks' small living groups houses between 8 and 20 people in individual rooms. This arrangement was my first lesson in Twin Oaks feminism. As Mala explained it, people at Twin Oaks are all seen as individual entities, regardless of relationship status, so even if you come to the community already partnered with someone, or become partnered, you will always have your own individual room to do with as you wish. The room assigned to you by the community may or may not be in !
the same building as your partner's room, and considering some of the complicated Twin Oaks relationship dynamics I learned about later, this is probably a good thing.

After ditching my bags and taking a peek at the communal bathroom down the hall, I headed over to Zhankoye (aka ZK), the massive wooden dining hall and recreation center where lunch and dinner are served daily. Food supplies are always available in each household's residential kitchen, but with a rotating roster of cooks whipping up seasonal offerings twice a day, group dining here feels like a real occasion. Atypical Twin Oaks meal may include fresh-baked bread, just-picked organic produce, fruit from the orchard, honey from the beehives, milk, yogurt, cheese, and beef from the dairy, or tofu, tempeh, and soymilk made from homegrown soybeans.

Because I arrived on a Wednesday, I was treated to a steaming plate of River's Famous Wednesday Mac 'n' Yeast. This kickass vegan concoction involving elbow macaroni, nutritional yeast and a blend of magical herbs and spices was so inexplicably cheesy, it could win over the palate of even the most devoted dairy-lover.

I had moved on from macaroni to a plate of organic greens with tahini-herb dressing when Val, a 38-year-old with a bright smile and an even brighter blond mullet wandered over to the picnic table I was sharing with Mala and her friends. Mala politely and efficiently made the introductions. "BUST? I love BUST!" declared Val, and in one fluid motion she set down her tray and whipped off her shirt. To their credit the guys at our table didn't even flinch, but there was something triumphant about the reckless glee with which Val proudly dangled her exposed ta-tas above her lunch plate that gave me the sense this was not an everyday occurrence. "This is something new," Mala confirmed, introducing me to the most recent piece of Twin Oaks feminist legislation. Apparently, when it comes to personal conduct, there aren't really many rules at Twin Oaks. Instead, there are socially enforced "norms" which govern day-to-day life. The Twin Oaks policy on toplessness had always dictated that since it was inappropriate for women to go topless in public, in the interest of gender equality, men, too, were prohibited from going topless in public, no matter how hot or strenuous their farm labor may be. However, this summer at a community meeting, the issue was raised that perhaps toplessness should be allowed for both genders. In response, this new nudity norm was established with the stipulation that the issue would be re-evaluated after a summer trial period. I could tell already which way Val would cast her vote.

In the Twin Oaks system, tasks traditionally considered to be women's work" carry as much weight as those jobs directly responsible for income earning.

After lunch, Mala gave me an eye-opening tour of the community while explaining the ingenious motor that has kept this place going for 36 years: the Twin Oaks labor system. "This community has no group religion or charismatic leader," Mala began. "Instead, our labor credit system is the glue that keeps this community together. Members are required to maintain an average of 42 hours of work per week and can choose daily from any of 100 different work areas. A third of the work to be done at Twin Oaks is in one of our three cottage industries: hammock-making, tofu-making and book-indexing, which together bring in about $2 million per year. From this income, members are each given $75 per month as discretionary income and the rest of the money goes toward supporting all the vital needs of the community [i.e. food, clothing, shelter, health care]." According to Male, pocket money is usually spent on personal travel or on things like Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey, which is picked up by volunteers who drive into neighboring towns once a day.

Jobs like cooking, cleaning, and childcare," she continued, "and other work, like farming, dairy processing, and machine maintenance are all considered equal creditable forms of labor and earn the same hourly credits as our cottage industries." In other words, in the Twin Oaks system, tasks traditionally considered to be "women's work" carry as much weight as those jobs directly responsible for earning income. This is not to say, however, that division of labor here has anything to do with gender.

Women are mechanics here. Men here find great fulfillment in the realms of childcare and gardening. There is a general openness here to the concept of non-gender-traditional work," Mala explained.

"But what about all the yucky jobs?" I asked. After all, in a society where work is self-elected,who cleans the toilets? "Everyone must do one kitchen-cleaning shift per week," Mala explained, "but every other job gets filled through volunteering. When we submit our schedules to the labor coordinators, we decide how we want to plan our week and how much open space we want to leave. These free spaces are what allow for all the necessary job posts to be filled."

As for the bigger picture of community government, decision-making for the population of 100 is a family affair. "Overseeing everything is a rotating board of planners with two to four people on the board serving staggered terms," says Mala. "Current planners collect community input and appoint new planners. There is no community leader. Everyone at Twin Oaks has equal power and equal say."

At the conclusion of our tour, Mala handed me a sheet covered with the names of Twin Oakers, mostly young women with a smattering of men, who had signed up to tell me more about life on the farm. I met with them while they chopped veggies outside the kitchen and while they milked cows in the barn. Some took a moment between work shifts to sidle up next to me on a bench in the shady courtyard, and others chattered free and loose between sips of moonshine slurped out of a mason jar by the light of a crackling community bonfire.

Most of the people I spoke with were recent college graduates or recent college dropouts when they moved to Twin Oaks and had heard about the communities movement at their schools. That explained not only the collegiate atmosphere of the community, but also helped me to understand what Mala meant when she described new members as usually being "in a transitional stage of their lives." One such member is Summer, a 23-year-old woman with white-chick-dreadlocks who has been living at Twin Oaks since she completed her three-week membership application visit last February. "I was going to Oberlin College in Ohio for two years and then dropped out," she explained. "Oberlin is big into coops, and lots of people from my school visit Twin Oaks during their independent study terms. That's how I heard about it, through word of mouth. When I visited, the diversity of the labor system and the resource sharing I saw here made me want to stay." Others told me that just as WaldenTwo had be!

en the catalyst for Kat Kinkade to start her new life, it was Kinkade's own book, A Walden Two Experiment The First Five Years of Twin Oaks Community, that inspired them to follow in her footsteps. "I had read Kat Kinkade's book in the ninth grade, so I always knew that someday I wanted to visit," 22-year-old Meredith explained. "I finally came to visit two years ago while taking a break from my studies at Kenyon College, and loved the people and the land here so much, I just never left."

By all accounts, gaining new members is rarely a challenge at Twin Oaks-it's keeping them here that's tough. Tom Freeman, a 38-year-old father of two who's lived here for eight years, says he knows why. "The worst part of community living is having to live with the people you've broken up with and their new partners. That is the biggest reason people leave," he revealed. "Families break up here and there's no support network for those in pain." Some community members are involved in "process teams," who come in at the request of an ailing couple to help broker a peaceful co-existence. Sometimes this does the trick, sometimes not "If a problem comes up, you need to process, to talk about it.

It can be annoying and hard," a 21-year-old German ex-pat named Anja told me. "I have an ex-boyfriend here. Seeing him every day was hard, but we worked it out A lot of women here have to deal with that."

Rather than putting all of their emotional eggs in one person's basket some dodge the break-up blues by engaging in the popular Twin Oaks practice of polyamory. It is estimated that about half of the adults at Twin Oaks have explored this option of mutually consensual non-monogamy between partners, but of the women I spoke to, only two seemed really gung-ho about "poly" being the right choice for them. One was Phoenix, a freespirited former actress from Cincinnati who told me, "It's a great feeling not to be defined or dependent on one relationship when you can have multiple romantic relationships." The other woman was an enigmatic 31-year-old named Anissa whose family unit, known throughout the community as "the Star family," consists of herself, her two male lovers, her one female lover and her female lover's young son.

The two women I spoke to who arrived at Twin Oaks with their male partners in tow-Mala, my tour guide, and Mele, a 24-year-old dead ringer for Lauren Ambrose from Six Feet Underboth admitted to experimenting with poly during their time at Twin Oaks. In Mele's case, it didn't work out, so she and her partner Sean, an avid knitter who moved with Mole to Twin Oaks from Chicago three years ago, elected to return to monogamy. As for Mala, her nineyear relationship with her partner Ezra is "as monogamous as it's ever been," now that a compromise has been reached between them not to carry on romantic relationships with other members. "Flings and hookups are still OK, though," she added.

Despite Tom's nookie-flight theory, the average length of a residency at Twin Oaks is a solid eight years. Interestingly enough, the two people I spoke with who had passed the eight-year mark were Val and Valerie. Val (my friend from lunch who's been hanging out at Twin Oaks for 16 years( confessed that now that her daughter Maia is about to graduate from the local high school, she's becoming a little restless. "I don't plan on always living here," she confided. "I've started to question what might be next now that my daughter is going to college." Valerie, on the other hand, a 36-year-old former college English teacher and researcher from Montreal who has been at Twin Oaks for ten years, hasn't yet felt the same wanderlust. "I have no immediate plans to go," she said, "but the rest of my life is a long time ... I've given up predicting what will happen."
As for the newbies, they all struck me as possessing a weird combination of honeymoon-stage fervor for community life and youthful confidence that there is more for them to explore in the world. "It's so comfortable here, it would be giving up a lot to move," Mole told me. "I think of leaving every time I get pissed off, though." Mole's partner, Sean the knitter, also seems pretty attached. "When I first moved here, I was behind on bills, so I figured not having to pay bills for six months or so while I live at Twin Oaks was a good idea. Now living here makes me feel much more intentional. I think sometimes I want to stay." There is also among the newer residents a pioneering contingent who aspire to one day start their own communities. "Twin Oaks is my home, I love it a lot," Anissa told me. "I'm very interested in starting my own community, but I can't imagine not living in a community now. It's nice to know I am a part of Twin Oaks' history."

There is an uncompromising idealism embedded in the citizenry of Twin Oaks, especially in those like Anissa who are looking forward to founding communities of their own one day. Not content to merely ditch all the trappings of privacy and personal accumulation, some members I spoke with want to see the community push its ideals even further. "1 would like us to be more environmentally responsible," 36-year-old Debby Bors told me. "I would like it if we bought everything organic, installed more solar panels, got off the power grid. We could collect rainwater as well as using well water, and we should stop using so many unnecessary chemicals, like Comet I'd also like it if we traded in our vehicles for hybrid cars."

Despite the daily revolutionary act of merely continuing to exist after 36 years, the people of Twin Oaks refuse to see an end to the struggle for independence they've begun. "We don't pretend to besome one or utopia was repeated tome over and over again like a mantra during the course of my visit. In fact the second book by Kinkade (who, at 72, recently moved to her own home near Twin Oaks and is reportedly in love with having her own space) is even titled Is it Utopia Yet? But on my trip home, after a hug from Mala and a bowl of homemade granola, the memory of something Anja said made me wonder if, for Twin Oaks, utopia is only a matter of time. "The people who live here come here from the outside world and bring in all their bullshit behavior," she told me, "but underneath, there is a desire to change. There are activists out there who say we're just hiding in the woods, not changing anything, but every day we are learning to consume less, to live more responsibly than they ever could. Things are getting better, but slowly."

A Bird's Eye View of a Visitor Period

AngieTupelo — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 22:29:25 -0600

by Jillian Downey

Twin Oaks is an egalitarian, income-sharing community, founded 30 years ago. They have 450 or so acres of land, and an adult population of oh maybe 80, and 15 or so kids, from 2 to 16 years of age. The overall average age is I think 44. All their buildings are all named after former communities. The standard of living here is quite nice, even though the actual cash income of each member, if you try to divide it up, is low. Sharing resources really helps! TO has a 501d tax status, which is actually what monasteries are - its the closest thing to what TO is,legal and tax-wise, even though it's secular.

Their main income source continues to be the hammocks they make by hand, although they have a rapidly-growing organic tofu business and also do book indexing. It's a fascinating place to visit, to take part in the day to day life and also learn about the systems they have in place that help the community run so well. Some people call TO the "school of community", because so many people come here to learn, along with people who come to visit with an eye to joining.

I've found the people here to be an interesting mix (with an exception on one level - the population is mostly white.). But as far as interests, backgrounds, life focuses, age, political views, etc, people are very varied. There is no one unifying goal here, other than living together in community, and their basic precepts of egalitarianism and income-sharing. So there's always a lot of discussion going on, major decisions are never very easy, with so much diversity of opinion. Most of the members are very friendly toward us visitors, happy to teach us how to do the work, answer our questions, incorporate us in the daily life of their home. Which when I really think about it is something, considering how many visitors flow through this community, never to be heard from again after their three week visit. And there are some members who don't have much to do with visitors, but they do this in an unobtrusive way; I just notice that I meet or interact with a certain bunch of members a lot more.

I spend my days doing all kinds of things, and every seven days need to have made "labor quota", meaning I have to have worked 45.5 labor creditable hours. Creditable work ranges from cooking to cleaning to laundry to weaving hammocks to doing a bread baking shift to child care to taking care of someone who's ill to weeding the garden to making tofu to delivering firewood to driving into Charlottesville to pick up things people need to drilling hammock strechers to making hammock rope to canning or drying garden produce to making all kinds of cheese to milking the cows to working a shift at their sewage treatment plant to participating in a community meeting to... and it goes on and on and on.

As visitors, we also get what are called Visitor Orientations, or Oreos, for short. They are spread out over our three weeks, and they are usually an hour or two long, each one is a talk on a different aspect of living here, given by various community members. Today we had one about TOs legal status. Yesterday it was about political activism here. We've also had oreos on the membership process, on the labor system, on the health care system, on raising kids, etc. We even had one that was a three hour land walk, the forestry manager took us on a walk along some of the many paths through the woods surrounding the community, and told us some of the history of their land.

Let's see, what kinds of work have I done. I of course know how to weave hammocks now, and do that for oh maybe five to ten hours a week. The hammock shop is set up with an elaborate system where each weaving station has two hookups dangling from the ceiling where you can plug in earphones, and then over on the stereo there are buttons where you can choose the radio, the tape player, or the CD player at each hookup, so there can be three very different types of music playing, but silently! And those who want to weave socially, facing eachother across the jig and talking, can do so with no problem. :-) And there are lots of jigs outside too for nice weather weaving. I usually assist on one dinner cook a week, and everyone does one kitchen clean a week. I've also done several four-hour garden shifts (they have a beautiful organic vegetable garden).

The herb garden is labelled really well, so community members can wander along the paths and know what plants they're looking at. It's got all kinds of nooks and crannies, a tiny goldfish pond here, a bamboo grove there, a bench under an awning of greenery, and a member who's an herbalist makes all kinds of teas and tinctures for the community, and supplies fresh herbs for the cooks every day.

I've done a stretcher-oil shift, which meant rubbing linseed oil on the newly-sawed and drilled wooden hammock stretchers. I've watched various stages of cheesemaking, and I've done several food processing shifts, mostly slicing up red peppers and putting them on drying trays, to eventually be put in jars for winter use.

Non-work-creditable things I'm up to include swimming in their pond, hanging out and talking, went contradancing one night in Charlottesville, played Pictionary, going for walks to look at the stars (which are very clear here - there are no street lights), took part in the equinox holiday celebrations (which included wreath-making, tie dying, a fancy barbecued-salmon dinner, a talent show, and a dance). Time really flies here - I always seem to be up by 7 or 7:30am, and 11pm always rolls around way too fast, past which I have trouble keeping my eyes open, despite the best-laid plans to try to do some email.

I'm really enjoying the food here - its so good to know that a large portion of it comes from their land. All their garden produce is organic; they have milk and cream (and occasionally beef) from their organically fed cows, and from it make yogurt, cream cheese, and all kinds of hard cheeses; they make tofu and some tempeh too; they have honey from their bees; they have eggs and meat from their chickens; they have a bread baking shift every day; in the summers they make large quantities of salsas and sauces, pickled beets, cukes, and other veggies, to have year-round. Today at lunch we had roasted chestnuts, picked from their chestnut grove. These past two days have been classic fall days - crisp and cool and sunny, so having chestnuts fit right in with the mood.

Today was kind of a sad day for the community though. A much beloved family left today. They are moving to a community in Oregon. It really brought it home to me that a serious challenge about living in community, especially in income-sharing communities, which tend to be pretty tight-knit, is that people you become very close to do leave. You've lived as intimately as family, but are expected to just let go over and over again as people head back out again. Ouch. Of course good friends keep in touch, and old members visit, but that's so different from the close sharing that happens here.

Twin Oaks' Planner/Manager System

AngieTupelo — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 22:27:21 -0600

by Kat Kinkade

I have thought for some years that any government system will work, provided only that the group being governed is reasonably contented with it and expects it to work. For groups that like Consensus Process, that procedure makes them happy and proud of themselves for reaching agreement. For impatient groups that prefer a straightforward majority vote, simple democracy works just fine. As to Twin Oaks, where I live, we have long used the Planner/Manager system, and most of us agree that it serves us better than most other suggested systems would. So as I describe Planner/Manager government, I am not necessarily recommending it for other communities. I am just explaining it for the curious and for anybody else who might want to try it.

There is a superficial impression that the Planner/Manager system gives that is quite mistaken. That is the assumption that we are a hierarchy, with the citizenry reporting to the managers and managers reporting to the planners. This is not true. There is no 'reporting' relationship in our system at all. There are levels of authority coupled with responsibility, and it is true that the planners can overrule a manager, but this rare occurrence does not constitute a hierarchical arrangement on a day-to-day basis. It is merely something that can be done to get a disagreement settled if necessary.

We have probably 50 or 60 managers, and they are basically autonomous. The system was originally created out of the theory that a lot of people like to have a little bit of authority. So a great many members can call the shots in their particular area. The Food manager decides whether we're going to buy bananas or not, the Bikes manager determines whether a given bike is worth fixing, and so forth, multiplied by dozens of decisions that are made every day, quietly and without having to consult anybody else. This doesn't mean that managers don't consult other people about their decisions. On the contrary, consulting another member or two who probably knows something about one's area is a daily occurrence. The point is that this consulting isn't required. The managers are empowered, within their budget, to act on their own judgment. It is only when that judgment seems to other people to have been wrong that their decisions might be appealed to the Planners, where they might be upheld or overturned or compromised.

Planners are three members who agree to serve for 18 months (plus a Stand-in Planner who served from three to six months and may go on to be a full planner later). They are in charge of the Community's general welfare, and their theoretical authority is sweeping. In their turn, they can be overruled by a majority written vote of the full membership. This happens once every couple of years. These days the Planners mostly don't even have hurt feelings when a majority vote overrules them. They figure, "We used the best judgment we could and tried to protect the Community from (whatever it was)and if the Community doesn't want to be protected, fine. At least our conscience is clean"

Planners usually meet about three times a week and deal with whatever issues come up at the time. Issues can be large or small. The larger they are the more time the Planners use in coming to a decision. They talk to people, perhaps have a meeting or two on the subject, maybe even put out a written survey to gather group opinions. Then they examine all this information, compare their own opinions to the general public input, and eventually announce a decision. This may take several months, though they have been known to move faster when a particular issue seems to require it.

Though there are norms around planner behavior, there are almost no solid rules controlling it, which means that the kind of decisions that come out of one Board of Planners might have a totally different feel from those of a different Board. Just about any member who really wants to serve as a planner will get an opportunity to do so. Members know that they can always overrule any outrageous decision the current planners might make, so they are fairly relaxed about the original appointment.

We are not always satisfied with our form of government, but we have never been able to get any agreement on how to change it, so it goes on, year after year, giving us decisions we can live with.

Sustainability at Twin Oaks: The Wave of the Present

AngieTupelo — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 22:24:12 -0600

by Valerie Renwick-Porter

As one of the communities in the Federation of Egalitarian Communities, Twin Oaks has a commitment to â€œacting to conserve natural resources for present and future generations, while striving continually to improve ecological awareness and practiceâ€. Although this part of our mission statement was crafted before the word became popular, today this might be called â€œsustainabilityâ€.

Like most communities, Twin Oaks is a mix of radical/progressive ideas and practices, and leftover-from-the-mainstream, habitual, perhaps-less-healthy ideas and practices. We value each move we make towards becoming a more sustainable community, and the process is ever-evolving. Our â€œGo Greenerâ€ group meets regularly to work on developing more ecological approaches to various aspects of life at Twin Oaks. One of our longest term members (28 years) has been an ardent supporter and builder of alternative energy systems in the community, including some of the systems featured here.

Our practice of income-sharing includes cooperative ownership of various resources including a fleet of 18 vehicles for use by our 85 adult members. No one has a private car. When a member needs a vehicle, they head straight for our vehicle board and sign-out logbook. Each night one member looks at the requests for the following day, and assigns each person one of our vehicles for use during the time they have requested. We encourage carpooling with financial rewards. We have our own community mechanic, who keeps the cars in good shape so they emit a minimum of pollution.

Each building we build is more ecologically sound than the previous one. Our newest residence has nine bedrooms, two living rooms and a bathroom completely off-the-grid. (the author, in the photo, helps to install the photovoltaic panels on the roof). The â€œeco-residenceâ€, as we call it, also incorporates various passive solar features including skylights, sun tubes, and southâ€”facing orientation with solar clearing. Other features include recycled cellulose super-insulation, retractable window insulation and compact fluorescent lighting. Over half of our buildings have solar hot water panels to pre-heat hot water for domestic and commercial use. (including our tofu business which uses hot water in the tofu-making process)

Responsible use of our water supply is important to us. We have installed low flow toilets throughout the community, as well as several specially-designed toilets, which first divert the fresh water flowing in to a hand-washing station on the back of the toilet. We also have a composting toilet, designed according to permaculture principles.

We choose to heat most of our buildings with wood heat. Firewood is from two sources: scrap wood produced from our sawmill business, and trees harvested from our own 450 acres, including trees with storm damage, dead trees, and culled select trees as part of a healthy forest management program.

A young tree is planted in the yard of the eco-residence. In addition to providing fruit for the residents, the tree was ritually planted in a ceremony welcoming a new child to the community. Such community gatherings help create a feeling of interpersonal community sustainability.

This year, Twin Oaks is offering a Sustainability Internship, as part of our efforts model a society based on ecological, cultural, social, and economic sustainability.

Sustainability Interns will help create a fleet of vehicles without motors (human-powered transportation of goods and people); will work on creating a garden meant to provide a self-sufficient level of produce year-round; will modify, repair and create passive and active solar-powered electrical, heating, and water heating systems; will be encouraged to experiment with alternative and primitivist building techniques; and will participate in creating rituals which foster connection among community members.

Where i live

AngieTupelo — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 22:22:14 -0600

by Paxus

Environmentalists seem to talk endlessly about sustainability. On one hand it makes sense, using natural resources sparingly so they can replenish themselves is wise practice. But is anyone doing this, or is it all just talk?

While it is far from Utopia, the community where i now live comes closer to actually doing something about sustainability than anyplace i have ever been. It starts with the practical stuff. We live on a farm, we grow well over half of our own food, all organic polycultures with relatively little heavy machine use. One of my great sadness' living in Brno was seeing the ever increasing amount of EU produced food arriving at the farmers market, covered with pesticides, having traveled often thousands of kilometers from giant monoculture fields. One of the on-going debates in the community is about vegetarianism, we have cows and will soon have chickens which are used for milk and eggs, but are also eaten. Brushing aside the ethical issue of treatment of animals, my original reason for not eating meat was that the whole world could not live as i did. But done as it is here, my carnivorous desires are gnawing at my objections.

The great success of the western marketing culture has been convincing people that greed is good and that everyone should own all of the things that they use. This is the road to ecocide. For me it is definitional that people in communities share things. There are personal possessions at Twin Oaks, but the vast majority of what we have is collectively owned and maintained. One of my favorite parts is "Community Clothes" where large racks of garments are available for people to take from, wear as long as they like and return to the collective laundry, where they get returned to the racks clean and fixed if necessary. People have private cloths if they like, but many people choose this simpler shared approach.

We have cars here - 15 for the 75 adults in the community. This ownership ratio is at least 1/3 of the US national average and while i have not gathered the data for exact calculations, my guess is we travel less than one tenth the number of miles in cars than our typical Yankee counterpart. International readers must remember that this is a rural US setting, the nearest bus stop is 40 km away, the nearest train is 60 km.

Beyond these practical things there are cultural choices that are hopeful. There is a very high consciousness around recycling and reuse of things, with the supporting infrastructure for it. The community works hard towards being egalitarian, meaning no individual has more rights or access to wealth than others living here. This is achieved in part by having a money-less internal economy, where everyone agrees to work the same number of hours for the community in exchange for which the community covers all of its members needs, from health insurance to completing taxes (an often complex task in the US), from building maintenance to social events.

The other half of egalitarianism is avoiding hierarchical as much as possible. The industries are structured so workers are basically responsible for their own schedules. One of the advantages and occasional problems of Twin Oaks is that you can not really force people to do anything - but largely everything gets done by people volunteering to do it. If anything is going to take us down the road to sustainability, it is people choosing to do the things they know need to be done, rather than being commanded or forced to do things.

The experience of a lesbian member

AngieTupelo — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 22:19:26 -0600

by Rita <rita@twinoaks.org>

Twin Oaks is an intentional community of 100 people, with values of cooperation, non-violence and feminism. Each summer we host our annual Womenâ€™s Gathering, and we also invite people to spend time here throughout the year, or to consider living here full-time. We support ourselves by working in one of several community-owned businesses (hammock-making, tofu-making, book-indexing). Here is the experience of one lesbian member of Twin Oaks.

You might ask how a sane 50 -year-old dyke came to travel 600 miles south in a 15-foot rental truck from Lesbianville, USA (Northampton, MA) to live in a rural commune of 100 people in central Virginia with a lesbian population of two! No, I am not crazy â€¦ Let me tell you the story.

Northampton is a great place to live. There's a thriving lesbian community and the local colleges and businesses provide a solid infrastructure. I felt at home in the community and had a busy network of friends, acquaintances and socializing as well as meaningful work. However, through the years I continued to feel a calling to explore what I believe to be a saner way of life. I was searching for a way to integrate my work life with the rest of my life “ emotionally, physically, spiritually and intellectually with folks who by-and-large share similar values to those I carry close to my heart. Those values include non-violent communication, cooperation, income sharing, diversity, feminism and egalitarianism. I wanted to be able to practice my own spiritual tradition without being part of a â€œreligiousâ€ community.

Over the years I joined friends and acquaintances in hours of intense discussion and creative play about the â€œpossibilitiesâ€ of community. Many of us had divergent views of what we wanted in community but all of us shared a passion for living together with one another in ways that fostered a more cohesive and sane world. During that time I explored various intentional communities. Twin Oaks kept coming up on the top of the pile as a community I wanted to explore because it seemed to most closely approximate the kind of community in which I would be able to grow, thrive and contribute.

After visiting Twin Oaks for three weeks (a requirement for anyone seeking membership) I knew that I wanted to return as a member despite the fact that there are so few lesbians living in the community at this time. I had come to feel, deep in my bones, the rightness of this life-style for me. The sanity of living on 500 beautiful wooded and farming acres, surrounded by an abundance of the natural world, with folks who are as human and fallible as I am and arenâ€™t afraid to show it won out. I decided to say â€œyesâ€ when I was invited to return as a member. I figured that once I got here Iâ€™d just have to spread the word to the lesbian community across the country that this is a great place to come if youâ€™re looking for a saner way to live your life. The women here are terrific! â€¦ and so are the men!

Imagine living and working day-to-day with women and men who are actively feminist. Imagine working in almost any area that interests you, without regard for whether itâ€™s typically a â€œmanâ€™sâ€ job. Imagine having lots and lots of strong womenâ€™s energy surrounding you and working with you. Imagine living with folks who want to see the â€œrealâ€ you â€“ the â€œyouâ€ that can act silly, be sad, ask for a hug, operate a sawmill, milk the cows, direct a play, get mad, be an activist, or do most anything else your heart desires. All that within a labor-creditable system that gives you labor credit for doing almost everything that needs to be done.

Is it Utopia? No it's not - we come with the same warts as the rest of the world. But weâ€™re certainly working on a vision passionately. And weâ€™d love for all you dykes to come visit! Write for information or ask about our visitor program:

Twin Oaks
138-L Twin Oaks Rd.
Louisa,VA 23093.
Phone: 540-894-5126

website www.twinoaks.org

My first day as a member of Twin Oaks

AngieTupelo — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 22:18:00 -0600

by Paxus.

i have not gotten a clock for my room
i have mixed feelings about acquiring one
but i have nothing schedule for this morning

Tycho mailed me a color xerox picture of my head D-locked to the bottom of a bus at a Berlin action i stuck it up on my wall along with a poem she wrote about the real Heisenburg principals and i wonder a bit when i will be a full-time activist again

i threw my wallet into a sticky drawer in my dresser we donâ€™t use money here my left pocket felt empty

going thru bags and boxes for other pictures to decorate my new room (last night, i removed the puppy pictures on my wall - the previous resident was 6) i found a key ring with a few keys i threw that in the sticky drawer another antique - no locks here

i thought i would weave hammocks for my first work since we do a lot of that here the shop was empty most people had taken the jigs outside to work in the sun but i wanted to listen to an old Bruce Cockburn CD from the large hammock shop library so i slipped one of the many headphones and did almost an hours work shuffling my feet to "lovers in a dangerous time"

i e-mailed for the rest of my first official morning as a member not creditable, of course E. Europe & New England nuke stuff, fundraising, love letters, the usual

i grabbed one of the many "free bikes" and pedal to lunch (basically the Am*dam white bike idea, only here it continues) there is fresh lettuce and strawberries from our garden (i had forgotten that strawberries actually do taste like something) i choose the cuscus with broccoli and black beans grab a glass of milk from our happy cows i leave the bread and tofu (both of which we make) behind

Hawina and i sit in the sun at one of the half dozen picnic tables and eat We are surrounded by perhaps two dozen dinners - ages 1 to 70 Sassafras, one of our youngest members, crawls up onto the table and seems vaguely interested in my strawberries she is so young, i think it is the color more than the taste which beckons

i play hackisack for a couple of minutes before i split i have gotten much better since being here still in the low tier compared to most folx who play here but respectable enuf for me to feel okay jumping into the games which spark up perhaps every other sunny day

i walk down to the courtyard, because my bike with a basket has disappeared and while there are others, i have bunch of papers to carry

Deborah is teaching me labor assigning a complex, elegant and archaic art which manages to take the requests of almost 100 people the needs of all of the various business and households and fuse them together in a nearly all volunteer system we schedule community meetings and milk moves, the popular garden shifts and dreaded dishwashing there are requisitions for hot tub dates and pagan sing alongs, the team constructing the new warehouse pillow shop, rope production, sawmill, elderly care sewage treatment plant monitoring, school bus drivers, road cleans, health team mtgs, building maintenance, cooking, recycling, visitor orientations and dozens of other activities

after 4 hours and a dozen notes we are finished (tho Deborah worked it for a dozen before i showed up) of the perhaps 300 assignments only one "serf" shift is unfilled (this is a kitchen or house cleaning) almost all volunteer - i am amazed

then i spend an hour teaching Deborah how to use a spreadsheet also creditable it does not matter that the motivating reason she wants to learn is so that she can sort songs and performers for the small library of songbooks which live in the compost cafÃ© our smokers lounge and live music hot spot

we are in the cafÃ© when Kana shows up with pizza our cheese, our tomato sauce, crust from scratch and our former happy cows are ground up on top of it my vegetarianism is waning here

Kana is a wild old man with a gray streaked father christmas beard he spent some time in a monastery i would not be surprised if they threw him out for laughing too much now he is one of our regular cooks makes beautiful walking sticks, which Deborah and i sold at a fair and plays a mean guitar and sings with a gravelly voice never thought i would appreciate country music

He has come down in one of the 3 or 4 golf carts we have for people who have trouble walking the long distances around here while he is delivering the pizza and chatting Calypso (one of our few dogs) eats most of his rice pudding which was in the gold cart there is some chiding and laughing

At dinner small wooden signs mark the pizzas "No dairy", "No Onions", "Meat" and more i sit at the regular Thursday polyamory discussion (what i used to call "open relationships") the group has been over a dozen people but dinner did not get promoted this time so just four of us chat about the forming regional poly network and whether it will work on the issues and support or if it will be more for sparking new romances Melissa brings up group intimate agreements as she was part of at another community in NYC just as the conversation gets interesting we have to break up

i have a 7 PM movement support meeting and i donâ€™t want to be late a video about the School of the Americas (SOA) is shown (the newest residence has a nice video hall, where there are movies and some taped tv shows show three nights a week - there remains no "live" tv anywhere on the community one of the handful of prohibitions which has lasted 30 years) the short video is compelling and several communards were arrested at SOA last year there are plans to go again in November and to continue lobby work for the upcoming house vote

we spend most of the meeting talking about which projects we will support with our few thousand dollar budget which is divided between supporting members activism and giving money to existing groups (tho the tax resistance protest we are involved with gives about $10,000 mostly from Twin Oaks resistors to non- profit groups but it is separate from movement support). we cut several requests slightly but fund most of what was requested, likely creating a cash pinch later in the year Marione will do prison trainings for women, Stevik does tax resistance and gay support stuff, Ione will meet a conservative rep and bark about SOA Hawina is interested in the hunger group RESULTS Nexus wants to go to a conference on communities and space travel i will drag nuclear issues onto the agenda we talk about restarting the letter lobby i mention the success with stopping the FDAâ€™s proposed "organic food" standard 200,000 letters of protest - some from here we finish with a quick evaluation

because i am a new member i can get 2 hours credit for movement support in the future this will be volunteer time the movement support creditable hours are generally dedicated to activities more direct than meetings

i walk thru the darkness back down to the courtyard for my date with Alex she is organizing one of the communities conferences which is just about to start we talk about using one of the expert outside facilitators from the communities meeting to run a Twin Oaks meeting we are having on business planning she fires off an e-mail and packs up her work

we walk up to her room and decide to lay on her roof looking at the stars we talk about idealism in the community i want to take over her job as recruitment manager and she has some concern about targeting young people to bring our population back up (we are down about 15 people from last year) but most of our chat is more personal we discuss the rumors which have started because we are skipping around together holding hands but she is tired so we crawl back into her window

and i realize i have forgotten my Tupelo "serf" shift so i head back to my residence and clean the house till midnight with the stereo blasting Ani i try to decide if these crumpled crayon drawings are trash or precious child masterpieces [mostly my art patron side won this tussle] (one of the reasons i choose live at Tupelo is because it has no "quiet hours")

it has been a long day but i am very satisfied it ainâ€™t paradise but there are some similarities

Paxus at Twin Oaks Community