Roof Repair, CSA Shares, Ira, Alexis, and Acorn Art

by Raven

It’s another weekly Facebook summary, featuring more creativity from Acorn, celebrations of well-known communards, and a post I wasn’t happy with.

It started with a repost from Twin Oaks about getting the dining hall roof fixed.

This post did very well (Twin Oaks posts often do), with lots of likes, two loves, and a wow–and almost two hundred views.

The next post didn’t do well and for once I was glad of that. It was a repost from East Brook Community Farm (Glomus Commune’s business) and featured a picture of one of their low income CSA subscribers. In retrospect I decided it wasn’t a good idea to reprint this woman’s picture. She was obviously okay with it being used for farm advertising but I think it wasn’t appropriate for larger distribution. Fortunately, most things on Facebook are ephemeral but that’s why I am not republishing it here.

I think this is a lovely thing that they are doing but, as I said, I had second thoughts about republishing the face of someone who really wasn’t involved with communal things. Therefore, the fact only fifty people saw it was a relief.

On the other hand, while I usually feel happy when a post gets over a hundred views, I republished a post about Ira from Acorn–and because it was about Ira getting an award, and I know posts about Ira do very well, I would have been disappointed if this post got less than two hundred views. I wasn’t disappointed.

As I said, this got 24 likes, loves, and cares, and two hundred and thirty views. I am only surprised it didn’t get more views.

Another well known communard who often gets noticed is Alexis from Living Energy Farm. But it was Twin Oaks that posted about his newspaper write up.

As usual, since there is a picture of a link, here’s the actual link.

This also did well (although not as well as Ira’s piece) with a good ten likes and a hundred and thirty views.

After posting here last week about duplicates I accidentally posted on Acorn’s creativity, here is a brand new repost on Acorn’s artwork.

It got five likes, one love, and one wow, and also a hundred and thirty views.

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.

Shelving the business of East Brook Community Farm

East Brook Community Farm, Glomus Commune’s business, needs to be organized to run. Lately, by building more shelves everywhere, they have gotten more organized. Here’s the farm office (which is my–Raven’s–former bedroom) and the shelves in it that Anande (who lived at Glomus and is now at East Wind) built. Rachael and Telos built shelves in the farmhouse to grow seedlings (plus a closeup of some seedlings). Then there’s the shed that Keenan and Rowan built while visiting Glomus that Telos built shelves for–which made it easier to organize the farm’s tool shed and the farm’s work shed.

Transplants, The Weekend, Green House, Hammocks, and Potatoes

by Raven

It’s clearly spring from all the gardening advice (as well as the relaxing advice). The stats this week weren’t terrible, but they weren’t that great either.

The first bit of gardening advice was from SESE.

I’m not sure how many of our Facebook readers are into gardening. Eighty-eight views and only one like isn’t great–unfortunately, this wasn’t our worst performing post of the week.

The next post was posted on a Friday on our FB feed as well on the original instagram post. I know Chamomile and he is a pretty mellow cat.

This post did a bit better. Although it also only got one like, it got almost a hundred views, which I think of as the minimum decent amount of views.

Not exactly a gardening tip, but sometimes you need a green house to grow stuff.

This post did reasonably well–best stats of the week actually.

And speaking of relaxing advice, Twin Oaks makes hammocks.

I also liked Zamin’s cute comment.

Unfortunately, despite the comment and the motto, this post didn’t do very well. While it got two likes in addition to Zamin’s comment, the sixty-one views it got wasn’t so great.

Finally, another piece of planting advice.

This did well enough: a like, a love, and over a hundred views.

Daleks, Greens, Sideways Plants, Weeds, and Growing Again

by Raven

The Facebook posts from a couple of weeks ago featured quite a variety of communal endeavors and one of the most popular posts (a question!) we have had lately.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Daleks are usually metallic villainous things that cause problems on the TV show, Doctor Who. They are seldom described as cute, but these are.

Cute enough to get three likes and over a hundred and fifty views.

You like leafy greens? They’ve got them at Glomus Commune.

This post did well enough with five likes but only a hundred views.

I never heard of sideways planting but apparently it’s a thing.

This also did well with three likes and over a hundred and fifty views. (Does this mean folks like sideways plants about as much as they like crocheted Daleks?)

The one comment is worth reprinting here because it’s from Rachael from Glomus Commune/EBCF. It seems that they also do it.

The former garden manager at Twin Oaks is a published author who has a blog on growing stuff. Here she talks about weeds.

Here’s a link to the whole article.

It also did okay, with five likes and loves and a hundred and one views.

Finally, I occasionally post a question on Facebook, usually on a Monday. These tend to either do very well or terrible. One thing I’ve found is the more often I post them, the less well they tend to do. So I try to occasionally post what I think is a provocative question. I don’t think this question was that provocative, but I haven’t posted any for a while and this did very, very well–not only in terms of likes and views, but it got (as was my aim) a lot of comments, which I will put just below the question. I was pleased with the variety of thoughts and ideas even if a few were a bit negative.

Seventeen comments, six likes and loves, and almost four hundred views. I’d say that this post was successful. I only wish this could translate in to new growth for the communes.

Rabbits, Radical Transformations, Seed Sharing, Tools, and Art

by Raven

There’s a little bit of everything in this week’s posts from our Facebook page.

East Wind’s most recent post was about rabbits.

This is a still from a Facebook video of rabbits being rabbits that East Wind posted.

I’ll admit that it’s cute and it got three loves and two likes, so I was more than a little surprised that it didn’t do well on our Facebook feed. Maybe there aren’t that many bunny lovers out there.

Then, I had to repost this when I saw it.

To my surprise and delight, it did very, very well. Maybe some folks do have their priorities straight. (Of course it probably helped that it got a couple of ‘shares’. That’s what the two next to the arrow means.)

SESE continues to be a boon for many of the Louisa communities. Twin Oaks posted this update.

That’s a picture of three links in the center. Here are the actual links to the New York Times article, the New Yorker article, and the Central Virginian article.

This post also did very, very well with thirteen likes and loves and over two hundred views.

The farmers at East Brook Community Farm (Glomus Commune’s main business) take their work–and their tools–seriously.

This didn’t do as well. I usually use a hundred views as my marker for whether something did okay or not and this came pretty close. I’ve noticed that even after a couple of weeks, the views can still creep up very slowly, so I suspect that this will make it very slightly above a hundred eventually.

Finally, Acorn, having already posted about their musical band, posted about a painting they did together.

This did okay, with seven likes and loves and a decent amount of views.

Raising Geese at East Brook

East Brook Community Farm (Glomus Commune’s business) is partnering with the Iridescent Earth Collective to help their mutual aid farm grow food and raise geese. Check out this Instagram video.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Crd8OE1MUIE/