Little Flower is a Catholic Worker community in Louisa, VA. When I visited, I was struck with all the mosaics and other art. The first photo is of the front of the main house that greets you when you arrive.
The statue in the second picture is of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, also known as the Little Flower, who the community is named after. The third picture, the mermaid, is on an outdoor shower stall. The rest are of various art I found around the place.
by Raven
It’s the weekly catch up on Facebook posts, and since the new year (and the resumption of both Facebook and this blog) began on a Sunday, and the only unique Facebook post was on that Monday before I copied the blog post over to FB on Tuesday and shared the same photoessay on here and FB on Wednesday, I’m going to include the Thursday and Friday Facebook posts to have three this week, and I will probably have three posts copied on next Friday before reverting to the usual five the following week.
That one Monday post was from Twin Oaks where Valerie demonstated an artistic method of reusing stuff.
It’s a lovely picture and it did very, very well on Facebook.
On Thursday, I reposted a picture from the Magnolia Collective who pointed out one of their members is in the catalog from Acorn’s business.
This did well on Facebook, though not as well as Twin Oaks quilt.
Finally, the Friday post was from the Serenity Solidarity community showing the work being done on the house they are staying in at Little Flower (more communal cooperation).
This also did well on Facebook.
by Ericka Williams Rodriguez
LEF and Serenity Solidarity Visit Puerto Rico in Preparation for a January 2023 Distribution of Sustainable, Reliable Energy Systems
Earlier this year, Living Energy Farm, Serenity Solidarity, and El Departamento de la Comida organized together to bring two cohorts of activists and electricians from Puerto Rico to LEF to train on DC microgrid systems. We hope to bring inexpensive, reliable electrical systems to people suffering from the aftermath of Hurricanes Maria (2017), and now Fiona (2022). LEF was able to fundraise to cover travel expenses from Puerto Rico to Virginia, and folks started to arrive in June 2022.
The first Puerto Rican electrician to join the training program happened to be infamous, daredevil activist Tito Kayak. Ericka from Serenity Solidarity knew Tito from her days in the Catholic Worker movement. Tito was instrumental in stopping the military bomb testing in Vieques and has climbed the Statue of Liberty to hang the Puerto Rican flag in protest. Tito is a founder of Electricistas En Acción, a group of electricians that fixes electricity in people’s homes for little to no cost.
12 other people came to train in two separate, 2-week training programs. The groups have some amazing initiatives and projects that they are working on in Puerto Rico, and we were moved to organize bringing solar panels, refrigerators, ovens, fans, charging kits, and lights to different people and projects connected to the cohorts that visited LEF. The overall goal is to eventually set up manufacturing and distribution of DC solar appliances in Puerto Rico, run by Puerto Ricans.
While the cohorts were in Virginia they learned a lot, but we also had some fun times with them. Donna Gasapo and Luis Oyola of Fireflower Farm hosted some of the cohort staying at their farm, and they organized nights out in Charlottesville. Some of the folx got to see the Louisa communes, Brenda from LEF organized river trips, Elenor from LEF helped with translating, and Littleflower Catholic Worker organized a few dinners and Karaoke nights.
Ericka from Serenity held two events at Visible Records to support and publicize the work of activists who were part of the cohort, including the work of Tara Rodriguez Besosa, queer farmer and activist who founded El Departamento de la Comida. Tara was essential to finding people from Puerto Rico interested and available to travel to Louisa. Ericka met them through Amy Rose of Virginia Free Farm.
After the Summer 2022 training program was over, Debbie and Ericka began to plan a trip to Puerto Rico to see the sites that are going to have solar systems installed. Then, another devastating hurricane hit Puerto Rico in September 2022, Hurricane Fiona. They started to question if the time was right to travel to Puerto Rico, what kind of support the cohorts needed, if they were going to be able to get around the island, and if they would be using valuable resources – like gas and water – that Puerto Ricans desperately needed. After talking with many people that came to Louisa from Puerto Rico, Debbie and Ericka decided to push their trip back a month. The electricity situation was even more unreliable and unstable now, and people from the cohorts expressed that there was scarcity of water and gas and that we should wait until they were more readily available. When the scarcity dissipated, the cohorts said that we should come because the technology LEF is bringing is needed now more than ever. Some people are still without reliable electricity and because of climate change, there are sure to be more storms in future years that will knock out the electricity yet again. So in Mid-November, Debbie, Ericka, and Debbie’s Spanish-speaking uncle John traveled to Puerto Rico to start the task of evaluating the sites that wanted solar installations.
The first site we visited was Darshan Elena Campos’ projects- their home in a public housing complex where they want to be as off grid as possible, and Somos Semillas Antillanas – a proposed safe house for trans youth in Cabo Rojo. Homophobia is prevalent in Puerto Rico, as it is still prevalent in many places, with trans people, especially youth, being discriminated against the most. Elena’s safehouse is much needed for the trans youth in Puerto Rico! Elena traveled with Debbie and Ericka for much of their trip across Puerto Rico, helping with translating and driving. Elena is also very passionate about identifying and teaching about native plants and trees, and has started several gardens in their housing complex.
The next project we visited was artist and activist Licy Rodriguez’s Proyecto Arawako in Lajas. Licy is in the early stages of transforming 18 acres of land that she owns into a food forest and cultural center that helps Boriken people reconnect to their Arawak and Taino roots. She is an incredible artist who works towards decolonization, food and seed sovereignty, and Indigenous land access. She isn’t quite ready for a solar set up, as the project needs help clearing land and building their first structure on the land.
In a town called Arroyo, we visited one of the few Black Boriken farm owners in Puerto Rico, Miguel and his wife Dinorah. They are coconut farmers that need a new solar water pump and solar refrigeration. Tara Rodriguez Besosa and Millo from El Departamento de la Comida met us there. El Depa has set up a mentorship program for elder farmers in Puerto Rico, and Millo works with Miguel and Dinorah to get them help on their farm. Elena and Ericka cooked a lovely vegetarian meal for them as Debbie evaluated what type of systems they would need.
Puerto Rico has closed 100’s of schools since hurricane Maria hit, and people are reclaiming them and turning them into community centers that provide desperately needed services to the people. One of the reclaimed schools we visited was in Adjuntas and was retaken by a group called Centro Paz Para Ti. At Centro Paz, we met Alana Feldman Soler, who is director of the project. They are a feminist group that provides free water and a place to charge phones when the electricity is out. They are a center for women’s projects and offers educational services, works to eradicate economic dependence and geographic isolation of women who have experienced domestic violence, gender violence, and sexual assault. They offer resources and tools for women to help protect themselves if faced with domestic violence or gender-based violence. The services the center provides promote self-management and empowerment for women who live in rural areas.
We visited several reclaimed schools, the next being Tara Rodriguez Besosa’s project, El Departamento de la Comida, or the Department of Food. El Depa is a non-profit collective that acts as an alternative agency in support of small-scale, decentralized, local food projects and farms. They have a resource library with tools, seeds, books, educational materials, and a kitchen with product-making equipment. While we were there we met with Vidal Carrion, a local business owner who came to Virginia as part of the cohorts, and Tito Kayak. El Depa members prepared a delicious vegetarian lunch for us, and we got to visit Tara’s personal farm, which is just down the road from El Depa.
One of the larger reclaimed schools we visited was Fundación Bucarabón in a very remote area called Maricao. They offer education and services to farmers and women in Maricao and surrounding areas. We had to drive some pretty treacherous, flooded roads to get there. Activist Jacqueline Perez started this project by scaling the fence in front of the closed Francisco Vincenty Second Unit School in the Bucarabones neighborhood, and setting up services for people without asking anyone for permission. A few years later, they now have a lease from the Puerto Rican government on the school, help from Americorp volunteers, 2 donated AC solar systems, a thrift store where locals can get clothing and shoes, and have grand plans for a daycare center, a hostel where volunteers can stay when they are working on a project at the school, and more. The Fundación Bucarabón volunteers deliver prepared food made in their industrial kitchen to people in the area who are food insecure.
The AC solar setup at Fundación Bucarabón is a top of the line system, with very high quality batteries. Mostly this works for their needs, but they are already experiencing difficulties running their heavy loads on the system, including their pump and refrigerators. This is due to the inherent inefficiencies in converting solar power to AC for use in appliances engineered to run on grid power. LEF is working with Fundación Bucarabón to convert these heavy loads to high-quality DC appliances that will have much more reliable performance.
Fundación Bucarabón also recognizes that the solar system they have, which cost many tens of thousands of dollars, is not affordable for the majority of the community that they serve in Maricao. They are interested in setting up a demonstration of lower cost DC systems for residential use, and possibly serving as a distribution site for these systems in the future.
Another excellent connection we made was with Zenaida Cortes. Zenaida is the president of the community association that manages a recreational center at Señorial park in Cupey, a suburb of San Juan. The park is shared by three adjacent neighborhoods. In the months after hurricane Maria, when the area had no power, the community center was set up with a kitchen running on gas, so food could be prepared by volunteers and distributed throughout the neighborhoods. In the years following Maria, public funding was slashed, and park maintenance was neglected.
But now, Señorial Park is undergoing a revitalization. A number of dedicated volunteers and organizers from the community have taken on its care and maintenance, cleaning and repairing the center, and planting trees around the park. One of these volunteers is Aidelise Darin, whose son, Epic, attended the training at LEF in the summer. (It was Epic who suggested we reach out to Aidelise and Zenaida).
Zenaida uses the center to organize fundraising events to support neighbors with medical expenses. The center is also used for a youth program in the summer. Zenaida is very interested in expanding the potential for the center to be a resource for the community during times of crisis and natural disasters. She is interested in setting up a solar refrigerator, so community members can store food and medications when the power goes out. She is also interested in a community charging station for phones and other electronics.
Living Energy Farm will return to Puerto Rico in January 2023 to install DC solar systems at the project sites that were visited this month. Many of these projects and people are suffering from economic turmoil and can not afford the equipment LEF wants to install for them. Serenity Solidarity has pledged $1000 towards supporting Miguel and Dinorah’s solar system, and LEF is also helping to raise funds for these very important projects. LEF has raised enough to pay the thousands of dollars in shipping costs required to send the equipment to Puerto Rico. As you gather with your communities and families this holiday season, please consider donating funds to LEF to help make these projects energy independent. Let’s not just talk about racial equity and reparations – let’s push the movement forward!
by Raven
I’ve been traveling–a lot, two cities in Virginia, up to Massachusetts, where I’ve been staying at a friend’s house and traveling around the eastern part of the state. I’m still at my friend’s house but I’m settling in finally and I think I have enough time and space to begin letting blog readers know what stuff has been on our Facebook feed that hasn’t made its way here. I think that it’s been about four weeks since I did a recap so I’m not going to republish everything and I’m not going to try to cram it all into one post. Instead, I’m going to cover what I think are the more interesting and important posts. I hope to cover two or three weeks in this post and then, maybe, finish up next week–including the stuff that was published in between.
I went down to Acorn at the beginning of February with a crew from Glomus who were working over at Twin Oaks. Around the end of their stay, they decided to tour Living Energy Farm and I joined them. When I published pictures from our tour (just a few, there’s a bunch more I hope to post at some point) on Facebook I said, “Folks from Glomus Commune got a tour of Living Energy Farm in Louisa, Virginia. Alexis showed us around all the projects they are doing there and talked about what they are doing and why. Maybe we can do some of those projects at our farm in New York.”
Here’s the pix:
The pictures were all taken by Reji who was also on the tour. Alexis is a good teacher and has written a book about all the technologies that they are using at Living Energy Farm. I hope to publish more pictures from our visit and maybe review the book in the future.
This post did very well on Facebook:
Another place I got to see while I was visiting the Louisa County communities was Little Flower. On Facebook I wrote: “Little Flower is a Catholic Worker community in Louisa, VA. When I visited, I was struck with all the mosaics and other art. The first photo is of the front of the main house that greets you when you arrive.
“The statue in the second picture is of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, also known as the Little Flower, who the community is named after. The third picture, the mermaid, is on an outdoor shower stall. The rest are of various art I found around the place.”
This post also did very well on Facebook:
The comments are also worth posting, especially the information from Reji (aka Rejoice):
At Twin Oaks, the destruction of Llano kitchen has resulted in some location changes. From Facebook: “Part of all the work that they are doing at Twin Oaks Community as they renovate Llano Kitchen is moving the milk processing into the dairy barn. Twin Oaks just posted this:
‘MILK PRO MOVED. Milk Processing has now completed the move into the Dairy Barn building! McKenzie and Eleanor (visitor) are finishing up a yogurt batch.'”
Again, this did well:
Finally, this bit from Acorn:
“Acorn Community’s business, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, which Mother Earth News recently referred to as ‘a small company with a big heart’, just publish this list of reasons to save seeds.”
Here’s a link to the SESE’s post on saving seeds.
This did very well:
More next week, when I hope to actually catch up.
by Raven
This won’t be my usual Friday wrap up of Facebook postings. I’ve left Acorn and I’m currently traveling and don’t have the time to do all the cutting and pasting I usually do to create that. I’ll catch up some next week, hopefully.
I thought of entitling this post “Acorn to RVA to Cville to Camberville” because my journeys are taking me to Richmond, VA, and Charlottesville, VA, before I go up to Massachusetts and settle into my old neighborhoods of Cambridge and Somerville for a while, but most of that is personal and not relevant to communal living. What is relevant to this blog and also personal is to talk about my month at Acorn and what I learned about the Louisa County communities from my stay there.
Acorn, at present, is a community in transition. This isn’t unusual for Acorn–or most of the other long-term communes. There are often periods of extensive change. Acorn lost a lot of folks last year (and Twin Oaks did a couple of years ago) but they have some good folks interested in them and a couple of nice folks on the verge of becoming members (see my interview with Amanda), so I think they are doing well. It was definitely fun to hang out there.
It was also lovely to check out the communal scene in Louisa. After really seeing what is happening there close up, I would no longer say that there were ten communities there. Many of these “communities” really consist of two people (and in one case, one person), often with a lot of visitors, guests, interns, etc, who come and go. (Sure there are still Acorn and Twin Oaks that are long-term and stable. Twin Oaks is also at low population, for them, but we’re talking about around seventy members, which may be more than the membership population of the rest of the Louisa County ‘communities’ combined.) Then there’s also Baker’s Branch, that one of the residents describes as a “neighborhood community” filled with ex-Twin Oakers that’s been there for 42 years. I think the best way to describe what is going on in Louisa County is that there are ten experiments in creating community going on there.
I was pleased to get to see Little Flower, the Catholic Worker community in Louisa, and meet Sue and Bill who keep the place going. I also got to talk with the folks who are creating the Magnolia Collective, a very new and very small community in Louisa with big dreams. With a bunch of communards from Glomus (we sometimes refer to ourselves as Glomunards), we got a tour of Living Energy Farm, which I have seen many times before, but I am hoping that we might try some of their technology at Glomus. Most of all, I got to connect with the Serenity folks, who I think are trying one of the most important community experiments in decades.
One of the main reasons that I went down to Acorn was to see if there was any place for me in the Louisa communities. What I realized after a month there is basically the conclusion I came to a decade ago when I visited Acorn and Twin Oaks with the idea of becoming a member at one of them. What I really want to do is to help start an income sharing community in New England, so I am slowly returning to Glomus, visiting many friends and family folk along the way. I probably won’t be back there until sometime in April but I will keep posting stuff from wherever I am. In the meantime, if you know anyone interested in creating income sharing community in New England, please let me know.
It was another varied week on the Commune Life Facebook feed.
We started off with a link to an article about Little Flower, the Catholic Worker community in Louisa.
Here’s a link to the article itself.
It did very well on Facebook.
Twin Oaks Community keeps a public calendar of member’s menstrual cycles.
This also did quite well.
Serenity Community posted about one of their founders, Tangle, who will be talking about them.
https://www.facebook.com/events/252049303627620
Unfortunately, this announcement of an important event did not do well at all. I am sometimes at a loss as to why Facebook decides to share somethings widely and others barely at all, but this is one thing I’d really like shared, but Facebook seems to disagree.
At Acorn, their business won another award:
This, again, did very well.
It got a couple of nice comments as well.
Finally, we have been having fun at Glomus Commune with our dress up nights. And yes, that’s me with the red smear across my face, and yes, it was taken with my fellow “Glomunards” in our commune in New York state, and yes, I am currently at the Acorn Community in Virginia. These pictures were taken a couple of weeks ago before I traveled down here.
Unsurprisingly, this did very well also–Facebook likes pictures and weird pictures even better.
by Raven Glomus
Louisa County is a 511 square mile county in central Virginia with a population of over thirty-three thousand folks. It is also home to ten communities, including Twin Oaks, the oldest secular income-sharing community in the United States.
I had not realized how many communities there were in the county, until Paxus published his post on Meet the Communities and I counted the communities listed that were in Louisa, Mineral, and Cuckoo (all locations in the county). There are nine in the table Paxus included and I am adding a tenth that I know of. Here’s my summary of the communities in the county. (I want to thank Jules from Twin Oaks who went over all the communities with me and knows a lot more about them since they actually live in the county.)
Twin Oaks
Twin Oaks, as I said, is the oldest of the communes, having been established way back in 1967. It has a population capacity of 93 adults and 15 children but currently has around seventy members. It has a lot of industries, from making hammocks to making tofu and from indexing books to growing ornamental flowers to changing the flooring of an auditorium in Charlottesville to managing the Seed Racks portion of Acorn’s seed business . Right now, given their low population, they are actively seeking new members. They ask interested folks to begin the membership process through their visitor program.
Acorn
Acorn Community has been around for around twenty-eight years now (established in 1993). Traditionally, they kept their numbers low–to around thirty full members. Recently they began talking about expanding to closer to forty full members, however, there has been some major disagreements among members resulting in a lot of folks leaving and their population has plummeted to currently about fifteen folks. They have one, very successful business, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. They are actively looking for folks now.
Living Energy Farm
Living Energy Farm is a community dedicated to the idea that it is possible to live a fulfilling life without the use of fossil fuels. Although they started planning the community in 2010, they began living together in 2012. They originally started with the idea of being an egalitarian, income-sharing community, but they have changed their status with the FEC to being an ‘Ally Community’, mostly to focus on their work of developing sustainable living situations. I sometimes refer to them as being the research arm of the communes in Virginia. They run Living Energy Lights as a way to make some of their solar energy systems available to the public. They have done projects to help underdeveloped areas use these systems, like their work in Arizona with the Navajo and Hopi reservations and in Jamaica. They are currently looking for both volunteers and members.
Magnolia House
Magnolia House is a house in the town area of Louisa that Living Energy Farm owns and has retrofitted it to be “off-grid.” In his table of communities, Paxus lists it as an ‘LEF Affiliate’. My understanding is that the people who are living there would like it to become a community in its own right. Unfortunately, beyond this I have little information and no pictures–I have never seen the place and know little about it other than what I have heard.
Cambia
Cambia is a quirky, creative little commune with a high degree of playfulness and whimsy. Founded in 2015, they see themselves as trying “to create human habitat that emulates the beauty and complexity of living systems.” They run an educational program that they call “Rustling Roots” and do a variety of work for other communities and outside programs. I’m not clear whether they are currently looking for folks or not, but they do write a bit about visiting and joining them on their website.
Little Flower
Little Flower describe themselves as a small Catholic Worker homestead.My understanding is that it is primarily a couple who grow food, practice radical hospitality, and engage in political activism. They welcome visitors.
Community of Peace
Community of Peace describes itself as “an ecumenical Christ-centered community of welcome, sung prayer, dialogue, and solidarity” and claims to be inspired by the Taize Community in France. I know little about this community, other than it’s in Louisa, it was listed on Paxus’ table of communities that might be coming to the Meet the Communities at the Quink Fest, and what I could get from the website. Honestly, it looks like the efforts of one person at this point. It’s not clear whether the community is looking for members right now but the website talks about what they do and how to connect with Brother Stephan Andre.
The Cuckoo Compound
The Cuckoo Compound is in a village that is part of Mineral, Virginia, and is actually called Cuckoo. They say that they are “a loose collective that anticipates hosting lowkey events like potlucks, craft nights, and shows!” I know of some of the folks there and they seem pretty cool but I’m not sure that they are looking for new members. They look like they have some fun events there, though.
Serenity Community for Justice and Peace
The Serenity Community is one of the newest, forming communities in Louisa. It’s an ambitious project to start a BIPOC led community and, as far as I know, they do not even have land yet. They do have support from the other communities around them. I am hoping to have more about them on this blog as the community develops and I, personally, am hoping to become more involved with them. I don’t think they have a membership process yet but, particularly if you are a person of color who has been disappointed in how BIPOC folks have been treated in most communities, you can probably contact them through their Facebook page. (Also, for those interested in understanding the experience of BIPOC folks in community, the Foundation for Intentional Communities is sponsoring a panel on Zoom called BIPOC Members Speak: A Conversation About Community. Follow the link for more information.)
Bakers Branch
I have been hearing about these folks for years but have little information about them other than they are an association of ex Twin Oakers and others that have formed a land trust on a road halfway between Twin Oaks and Acorn. I doubt that they are looking for new folks (they were not even listed in Paxus’ Meet the Communities event) but I just think that it’s good to know that they’re there, one more part of the conglomeration of communities in Louisa County.
commune life 