Theresa built an outhouse at Glomus Commune. Some robins built a nest inside and raised a few baby chicks there.
Glomus Commune
Goat, Sheep, BBQ, Craft Fair, Primrose Party, and Crops
This was a good week on Facebook–at least in the sense that many people viewed these posts and they were successful in that regard.
When I visited Glomus Commune, a couple of months ago, I was struck by the one goat they had, who was very interested in me, and their two new sheep, who huddled as far away as they could, wanting to have nothing to do with people. I had to blow up the picture of the sheep to focus on the two of them.
This did pretty well, with three likes and two loves and a hundred and eighty-five views.
Acorn advertised a barbeque, but with a picture of stuff growing in the fields.
This did pretty well, however, with thirteen likes and loves, and a hundred and sixty-six views.
Twin Oaks have been selling their hammocks at craft fairs for years, although with the pandemic they had to stop for a while. Now, they’re at it again.
This did okay, with seven likes and loves and over a hundred and thirty views.
We’ve posted about the primroses at Acorn before and in their blurb, Acorn promised they would have primrose view parties in the future. And they did.
This post had the lowest statistics of the week which, at five likes and loves and a hundred and twenty-seven views, was not bad at all.
East Wind, which hadn’t post much for a while, recently did a couple of what they called ‘photodumps’, the first of which was of their crops.
This post did really, really well on Facebook, with fourteen likes and loves, two shares, and a whopping three hundred and twenty-two views.
What’s Inside the Door?
There’s an outhouse at Glomus Commune, and look what Theresa found inside…
History, Party, Produce, and Award
Another week with little tidbits from the communes via what we post on Facebook.
We posted this from Serenity Solidarity (a commune in process) about a Louisa history lesson.
This post just did okay on Facebook, but it did get four likes and over a hundred views.
The Magnolia Collective (a rather small community) had a party that brought in a lot of the Louisa communes.
Their Instagram post has a little video (the picture above is a still from it) from the party.
This post did very well, with five likes and three loves and almost a hundred and ninety views.
East Brook Community Farm makes its money selling at Farmer’s Markets (most years except this one), and also through their CSA and farm stand–and this year they also have produce for sale at a store in town.
This post did very well also, with ten likes and two hundred views.
Twin Oaks was very happy that Ira (who left Twin Oaks to start nearby Acorn) won the James Beard award (which we reported here a couple of weeks ago).
Here’s a link to the video.
I said when I posted Acorn’s piece on Ira winning the award (complete with pictures of Ira) that while I usually hope for a hundred views or more, when it’s about Ira I expect at least two hundred views. This post was a big exception. I don’t think that picture was very exciting and it obviously didn’t draw in folks. In spite of five likes, two loves, a comment, and a share, it only got a disappointing sixty-nine views. It seems clear to me that having a picture of Ira is a big draw.
I will repeat Zamin’s comment because it does reflect Ira’s impact.
Ladybug Larvae, Peace Concert, Craft Shows, Juneteenth, and Magic Primroses
by Raven
We have quite the variety of posts from the communes this week.
At East Brook Community Farm, they posted a bunch of pictures of ladybug larvae.
Unfortunately, as magical as these “monsters” may be, they weren’t very popular on Facebook, getting three likes and only ninety-one views.
At Acorn, at the end of June, they were holding a “Concert of Peace”.
This post did pretty well with eight likes and a love and a hundred and sixty five views.
Twin Oaks is doing craft shows again.
This almost did well, with two likes and a love and ninety-nine views. It’s quite possible over the next several days or weeks, the number of views may slide over to a hundred or a little more.
Serenity Solidarity Community posted about the Louisa County Juneteenth celebration.
This did well, with three likes and a hundred forty-seven views.
Finally, Acorn posted about their night blooming magic primroses.
This did very well, with seven likes, two loves, and a wow, and a hundred sixty-eight views.
Outhouse Painting
At Glomus Commune, Theresa and Peach cut down a branch that obscured the view of this painting, which they then polyurethaned.
Creativity, Corn, Seedlings, and Duplicates
by Raven
I will start this week’s summary of old Facebook posts with a somewhat embarrassing confession. I put the week’s posts on FB together through several days–and I don’t always have the best memory. So when I started scrolling through the posts from a couple of weeks ago, I discovered I began and ended with reposting the same post from Acorn. Fortunately, I think most folks using Facebook have rather short attention spans anyway, and I doubt very many folks noticed. The statistics I got on the two posts reinforced that idea.
The post was something Acorn put up, basically a snapshot of what someone had done with their chalkboard. Here’s what I put on Thursday, right after the video of the week.
It almost did okay, with four likes and ninety-eight views.
Then, completely forgetting that I did this, I posted it again with a slightly different heading.
Yes, I even used the phrase “chalkboard art” again without remembering I’d already did this once. I doubt that anyone would comment about it but if folks noticed or remembered, I would expect to see less likes and views. Instead there were more likes (6) and views (109–well over my hundred view baseline).
I wonder what would happen if I posted the same thing for several days in a row. How long would it take for folks to notice? However, I think getting the good word out about communal living is more important than cynical experiments.
Speaking of creativity, it’s at most of the communes and Twin Oaks posted some examples of it there.
This did quite well, with twelve likes and loves and 156 views.
At East Wind, they posted about their crop of corn.
This also did very well with seventeen likes and loves and 177 views.
I liked the one comment (from Cara Ziegel), so I’ll repost it here.
And at Glomus, it was all about seedings.
This did well enough, with four likes and loves and 112 views.
Speakers, Pollenation, Cooperation, a Shower, and a Party
by Raven
A mixed bag of communal offerings. All sorts of things and one didn’t do very well, two did okay, one did very well, and one did extremely well–and, coincidentally, that was in the order we published them. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from looking at our Facebook stats it’s that events don’t do well and pictures do very well.
The event was the Communities Conference and the post was announcing the keynote speakers.
You can read the whole thing, including what they plan to talk about and bios for both of them. Unfortunately, not a lot of folks looked at this although it got five likes and a love.
What does pollenation have to do with communal living? None of us live in a vacuum. The very air we breathe is brought to us by plants and even urban communes (sigh, which I wish there was still some of) need flowers and fruits and vegetables.
Here’s how you can read the guide.
This post did okay, with just over a hundred views and six likes and loves.
I’m really impressed with Glomus Commune’s consistent support of Iridescent Earth, a self-described “Queer, Black & Latinx led farm group from the Bronx”.
Those images are just stills. I’ll encourage you to watch the actual video with lively music and all.
This also did just okay, with a couple less views than that the last post–but it did get eight likes and loves.
East Wind crafts some lovely stuff for their community. Here’s an example.
The image was well appreciated with thirteen likes and loves and a wow–and over two hundred views.
Finally, Twin Oaks posted this about a party they had to celebrate the chamomile harvest.
Like I said, people seem to really like pictures on Facebook. I thought this was a nice post but nothing spectacular, but it got spectacular results. Maybe it was because of the person who shared it (that’s what the one and the curved arrow mean) but twenty-eight likes and loves and over five hundred views. Wow.
Community Dinner, CSA Shares, Hammocks History, and Capitalism and Slavery
by Raven
We were able to repost from Acorn, Glomus, Twin Oaks, and Serenity Solidarity before we ran out of things to post and I posted an old photoessay about East Wind from this blog–which did nearly twice as well as any of the other posts, which did good, almost good, very good, and almost good.
Acorn apparently had a seafood dinner and they posted about it.
This post did a solid good on Facebook, with ten likes and loves and 138 views.
And it’s that time of the year at Glomus Commune/East Brook Community Farm. This year, since they won’t be tabling at Farmers Markets, EBCF is dependent on its CSA for community income.
Since I have arbitrarily decided that a hundred views is at least a good goal for each post, this one almost made it.
Twin Oaks has been in Louisa County, Virginia, for 55 years, so the county considers it part of their history. Here’s something the Louisa County Historical Society published.
This post did very well, with fifteen likes and loves and well over a couple of hundred views.
And Serenity Solidarity posted this about what they are currently (or were a couple of weeks ago) reading.
Because these are pictures from our Facebook post, you can’t click on the link above, but you can click here to check out the Carter Farms/Africulture resource page. The book on Capitalism and Slavery is listed in their Finance section.
This, again, almost made a hundred views.
Usually, I try to post five things from various communities on Facebook before reprinting whatever was posted on Monday here on Facebook Tuesday and I post then a video or photoessay both here and on Facebook on Wednesday and start all over on Thursday. But when I was trying to find something for Monday on Facebook, I ran out of stuff from the communes (they just weren’t printing enough new things) so I reprinted a bunch of old (even then) photos from East Wind that we published here in 2016. I guess folks (or Facebook) enjoy looking at pictures because this old post did very, very well, with twelve likes and loves, two shares, and just over four hundred views.
Acorn Fire, Serenity Fundraiser, and Glomus Land
by Raven
A strange week on Facebook. The communes weren’t posting a lot so I only put up three new posts (and two old posts from this blog: A Brief Communal History and Critical Mass, both of which I wrote and neither of which did well on Facebook) and the three new reposts only did so so.
I feel weird about calling this first one Acorn fire (although I couldn’t think of what else to call it) because Acorn has had some devastating fires, but this was just a contained, pleasant fire.
This is just a still from the video, which is nice to watch.
It got three loves and a like but it didn’t even get a hundred views.
Meanwhile, Serenity Solidarity posted about a fundraiser they were having but I didn’t notice it until it was a bit late.
If you get inspired, I’m sure you could also donate. Their work is ongoing.
Unfortunately, this post did poorly with one love and one like and just over fifty views.
Finally, I put up a post from Glomus with a truck and a view.
This post did decently–and best of the week.
commune life 