Scrappy Little Communities

by Raven

I said in my last blog post that I was planning to expand what we cover on Commune Life–just a little bit.  One of the places I want to explore is little communities that often have a big mission.

For example, while Twin Oaks and Acorn in Virginia get lots of coverage here, there are a whole bunch of little communities in Louisa County that are doing interesting things: Living Energy Farm, Cambia, Little Flower, the Magnolia Collective, etc.  Some of them are doing income sharing, some of them are doing variants of income sharing, and some of them aren’t income sharing at all but seem to be doing some worthwhile stuff.  And who’s income sharing and who’s not seems to change at times so it’s hard for me, many miles away, to know.  And there are still new communities popping up there.  I hope to have a piece about Bramble (perhaps the newest community in the county) in the not so distant future.

Another example is the Baltimore Free Farm.  They started off squatting and then created a housing unit which they originally called Horizontal Housing but have renamed it Green Eggs in Hampden.  I’m trying to find out what they are up to these days.

Meanwhile, up here in New England, I’m living in a very small income sharing community in western Massachusetts.  The reason that I haven’t written about it is that they don’t want publicity.  But I think what they are doing is very interesting.  The place has a focus on interdependence and mutual aid and I have learned a lot more about those things by living here.

I’m excited by all the things going on in the area around me. I’m finding small communities of all kinds around here–political collectives, farm focused communities, a co-op house built around New Culture–and I’ve been hearing about a bunch of anarchist collectives emerging in Worcester, an old city between here and Boston.

And now, Serenity Solidarity is not far from here, having moved from Louisa County to a place near Albany, NY. At the moment there is only one family there, but they are determined to make it a refuge for many people–especially for BIPOC folks, who have often had trouble fitting in communities created by white folks and based on white culture.

Ericka of Serenity Solidarity and Ethan of the Possibility Alliance (holding baby Kiwi)

Also, the Possibility Alliance, mostly Ethan and Sarah and children, is in New England now, having moved to Maine from Missouri some years back and they are attracting folks and working with indigenous tribes around there. They are the most low tech and yet very progressive group I know.

I’m currently exploring some stuff up in Vermont, including Earthseed Ecovillage which has a lot of land, a few people, and some very big ambitions.  I am in dialogue with them, hoping they will write a bit about what they are doing.  I’m also working with some folks in that area to create a small community to work on emotional and relational intelligence.  Maybe something will emerge from this that I can write about.

And I keep hearing about interesting communal projects.  One of the ones that I think is most intriguing is a new squat (an illegal home) created in a major city by some former communards that is trying to house immigrants and former prisoners that have nowhere to go.  I doubt that they would want publicity either, but it certainly sounds creative.

And while most of what I’m talking about is on the east coast of the US, I know there are a lot of little projects happening around this nation and around the world. It’s an exciting, if scary, time.

Unfortunately, most of these small communities are ephemeral.  It’s hard starting a community and even harder when you are doing something experimental and you don’t have very many people.  In my eight and a half years managing Commune Life, I have watched what seems like dozens of communities come and go.

Still, big communities like Twin Oaks and East Wind, etc, started off small.  It’s hard to tell what is going to work and what isn’t and it’s worth learning from the stuff that didn’t work.  I do want to report on some of these communities because I think they have a lot to offer and a lot to learn from.  I admire the ambitions of these scrappy little communities.

LEF June/July 2024

Living Energy Farm
June – July 2024 Newsletter

How to Bring Climate Change to a Screeching Halt
Conceptually at least, stopping climate change is not a difficult task. People need to live close enough to work so they don’t need a private car. If you live in a temperate climate, you need to live in a home where walls, solar space heating, and solar hot water systems are shared. It really helps to eat food that is primarily plant-based. Top that off with a DC Microgrid like we have at LEF, and you have a modern lifestyle at something like a 98% reduction in energy use compared to the average American.
Sound impossible? Well, in the coming decades, we are moving toward some industrial simplification whether we like it or not. But landing an airplane is very different than crashing one, though either way brings you back to the ground.
The tools we have developed at LEF are a live demonstration of how you can live in a
comfortable, energy independent home with modern conveniences. Our home is warm in winter, we take hot showers when we want, and we have ample electricity for lights and electronics. All of that is accomplished without grid power, nuclear, coal, natural gas, industrial “renewable” energy systems, a generator, or even much firewood.
We want to see our model grow. We want to start a movement that builds hundreds of cooperative housing projects and ecovillages powered by DC Microgrids. Imagine you live in one of these ecovillages. Your home looks much like a typical condo or apartment building, with thick walls that surround several units, big windows on the south and shade trees on the east and west, and solar collectors (both thermal and electric) on the roof. There are gardens and orchards south of the buildings. There’s no grid connection or propane tanks on site. Instead of paying electric and gas bills, residents pay a modest monthly fee to support a caretaker. That caretaker keeps the biogas digester fed, waters the batteries, and pops your dinner in the solar cookers before you come home from work. Then you get to enjoy your dinner in the company of the other people who live there, or in the privacy of your own unit. Over time, the residents become a community of people who know and support each other. If you get tired of it, you sell your unit and move on.
We need an alternative to the mass “electrification” plan that has turned into a mass deforestation program. Here in Louisa County VA, the local board has “limited” the solar deforestation of the county to “only” 3%. Taking down tens of thousands of acres of hardwood forests and paving them over to put up solar panels in the name of stopping climate change is very, very wrong, and has only a marginal impact (if any) on actually reducing fossil fuel use. We cannot hope to address the climate crisis with these supply-focused solutions alone, we need a demand-side solution that reduces energy consumption to the levels required by our ecological emergency.
WE NEED YOU. Living Energy Farm is a small organization. We are farmers, parents and
teachers, we are wizards of pipes, wires and things that whirrr, but we have not had the resources to promote our ideas all that much. Starting this fall we would like to do speaking events, to talk to people about ecological living at 2% of current resource use. We need you to help us get out (or connect online) with more people. So please help us set up events. Talk your friends, your church, or some strangers. Tell them we are for real. Find us a venue, or help us set up online meetings.
The goal is to help small groups of people in create entities that can build or retrofit cooperative homes using DC Microgrids. Where we are going could be a good place, but bringing people together to make that happen is going to be a challenge. We look forward to hearing from you.

DC Solar Training at LEF
In July, we hosted a four day DC Solar Training at LEF. We had a dozen focused, motivated people representing many exciting projects in Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. It certainly helped that the weather was perfect for the training. But that said, the infrastructure at LEF did not hiccup at all with a dozen extra people here. Everyone was fed. Everyone took showers and charged their devices at will. This training was focused, a bit shorter than prior trainings, but the group was very technically inclined and picked things up quickly. They were very enthusiastic about taking on challenging electrical projects, like converting appliances and building charging stations. After a few days of workshops, the group went over to Little Flower Catholic Worker (a small community 8 miles from LEF) to work on upgrading their DC Microgrid. We installed a 55AH 12V battery kit, and extended their 90V direct drive electrical supply into their kitchen so they could use the power for cooking (previously they were only using it to run their well pump).
Instead of asking people to pay for the event, we asked them to commit to helping with a socially worthwhile project. We discussed various projects and will look forward to seeing how that unfolds.

DC Appliance Conversion Workshop

Biogas
In the last newsletter, we were excited about our cheap air mattress biogas storage system. It seemed like a good idea, until they all started leaking. Darn. Biogas bags for sale in the U.S. are very expensive. We found a Chinese company that sold us a couple of quite large, very cheap biogas bags (Shenzhen Teenwin Environment Co., Ltd). As we head to print, we are plumbing those up and putting up a shed to house one large bag. Meanwhile, we have gotten some practice keeping Seymour (the biogas digester) under control. It’s fairly easy to push production up or down. If we cut off food and heat, biogas production tapers down over the course of a couple weeks. Turn on the heat and feed it, and it only takes a few days for biogas production to climb noticeably. We are pleased to realize how easy it is to produce more or less gas as we need it. We remain convinced that biogas, solar thermal, and solar direct drive photovoltaic power are the most accessible energy sources available for our sustainable future.

Horse Progress Days — Hanging Out with the Amish
The largest Amish gathering in the USA is an event called Horse Progress Days. The event focuses on horse drawn farming equipment, and there are many demonstrations of farm equipment. But the event is huge — well over 50,000 people in one very large field with massive tents, hundreds of vendors, and quite a festive atmosphere. The Amish are using a lot of solar energy at this point, primarily small, battery-based systems. We spoke to hundreds of people about direct drive DC energy.

The long term impacts of those interactions remains to be seen. The Budget newspaper — a paper read among the Amish — published an article about direct drive. The Amish are similar to LEF in some ways. They consciously limit their consumerism. They have farms and large families that function like small communities, and least in some ways. It seems like direct drive DC systems could be of benefit to them. If the Amish started using more direct drive DC systems, it would help the technology to spread.
In driving into the event area, we saw solar panels on many homes. We also saw quite a few very small horses. We were puzzled. The Amish are such practical people. What do they do with little horses that are too small to pull a plow or a buggy? Well, we got the answer at Horse Progress Days.
Those small horses are tended by the children, and hooked up to very small buggies that the children use to zip all over (think Amish drag racing). Thus the kids learn the skills to drive larger horses as they become adults.

Harvesting wheat with the combine that has one belt and eight spinning shafts.

Easy Reaper
We mentioned in the last newsletter that we were using our Easy Reaper — the simplified combine harvester. We harvested barley, oats, and more than an acre of wheat. We were enormously pleased. We have spoken to a few agricultural equipment manufacturers, and have not found anyone who wants to make Easy Reapers just yet. Our current plan is to keep working on them at LEF. We have been making some upgrades to our tooling to make that (and other projects) easier, though our shop is feeling pretty undersized at this point. We are trying to get pricing from some local fabricators who might make the drum and shell, which are the hardest parts for us to make. Meanwhile, we will probably be participating in a World Food Prize event called the Borlaug Dialogue. The dates are October 29 – 31 in Des Moines Iowa. That is a large event with thousands of participants from many academic, governmental and business entities. This may be a big opportunity for us to bring some attention to the project.
And, here’s a video of cutting wheat with the Easy Reaper.

The Farm
The farm is doing pretty well this year, although the rabbits ate most of the cantalopes, the deer went after over fence to get to the beans and peanuts, and did considerable damage to the watermelons. The birds ate a lot of the blueberries, and now a very large, and not very shy, black bear has taken to ripping the limbs off the pear trees and helping himself. Other than that, things are great.
We are canning lots of peaches. We have quite a bit of fruit in spite of the managerie of animals showing up at the dinner table. The corn crop is untouched thanks to Otto’s diligent efforts. Last fall, a landscaper brought us a huge pile of leaves.
Those are great for building soil, so we did some large scale sheet mulching. That was a mixed bag. The leaf mulch worked amazingly well with our spring potato crop, it was our best in years. The melons were more challenging; we should have transplanted them as the leaves tend to cool the soil and blow around a bit, which makes seed sprouting difficult. Then the rabbits showed up.
We are moving into the peak of harvest. Our seeds crops are a bit smaller than past years, but still some considerable work. We are looking forward to the persimmons, as well as making apple sauce, and perhaps some pear sauce, depending on the activities of the bear.

How many pears is a large black bear allowed to eat?
As many as he wants, apparently…

We look forward to hearing from folks who can help us set up speaking events.
Please support us if you can.

Living Energy Farm is a project to build a demonstration farm, community, and education center in Louisa County that uses no fossil fuels. For more information see our website
http://www.livingenergyfarm.org, or contact us at livingenergyfarm@gmail.com or Living Energy Farm, 1022 Bibb Store Rd, Louisa VA, 23093. Donations to the Living Energy Farm Institute are tax deductible. To make tax deductible donations, do not go to the Virginia Organizing website, go here: instead: https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/1388125
Make sure to designate your donation for Living Energy Institute.

Articles and videos about LEF:
Low-Tech Magazine (based in France) did an lengthy, well-researched article, largely about LEF, entitled Direct Solar Power: Off-Grid Without Batteries. It’s at
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2023/08/direct-solar-power-off-grid-without-batteries/
That article talks a lot about optimal utilization, translate “community is the magic bullet that makes renewable energy work.”

Matt Dhillon at Cville Weekly did one of the best brief summaries of LEF we have ever seen. The article is entitled Power Shift, Award-winning Living Energy Farm Makes Living Off-grid Sustainable. It is at https://www.c-ville.com/power-shift

Truthdig did an article on LEF by Megan McGee, an excellent review of our work in Puerto Rico. It is entitled Decolonizing Puerto Rico Through Solar Power. It’s at
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/decolonizing-puerto-rico-through-solar-power/

We continue to post new videos on Youtube. The latest is Solar Power Systems That Last
Forever, focused on our solar powered kitchen. See https://youtu.be/6XiHClx8d2Q

How to Never Pay an Electric Bill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5Wk7inoIxI&t=201s
This video is a walk-through of our energy systems at Living Energy Farm. It is a concise
summary of how these systems work, and why they are not in common use already.

Solar Installations In The Navajo (Dine’) And Hopi Reservations, March 2020
http://livingenergyfarm.org/solar-installations-2020/
This is a photo essay about our project to bring durable solar energy systems to the Dine’ and Hopi Reservations, where thousands of people live without grid power involuntarily.

Support Living Energy Farm’s Climate Justice Campaign, and Bring DC Microgrids to People
Who Need Them
http://livingenergyfarm.org/support-our-climate-justice-campaign/
This is an updated web page describing our broader social justice ambitions.

How to Live Without Fossil Fuel (Introductory Video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri2U6u8p65E
Powering a Community with Solar Electricity (LEF has the only DC powered community that we know of, here’s how it works) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvdExgvHnRI&t=23s
The Best Way to Store Off-Grid Energy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wOxQ3sL9zc
Batteries that Last (almost) Forever https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfrgLsyFs0E

Virginia Homegrown created a program at LEF (the LEF part starts at the 29 minute mark in the program)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDGP0C9MIzU

International Permaculture has done 2 articles on LEF. One is in issue #93, Autumn 2017, and the second is in issue #94, Winter 2017. See https://www.permaculture.co.uk/

Article about LEF at the Atlantic Online Magazine
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/anarchism-intentional-communities-trump/
513086/

Article about LEF in The Central Virginian
http://www.livingenergyfarm.org/cvarticle.pdf

LEF on CNN
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2015/09/us/communes-american-story/

Cville weekly in Charlottesville VA
http://www.c-ville.com/off-grid-model-environmentalism-made-easy/#.VcHobF054yo

Living Energy Farm: Mixing Electrolytes for NiFe Batteries

Living Energy Farm recommends Nickel/Iron Batteries for backup use for off-grid living. If your batterie came dry or runs dry, here’s how to mix up the electrolytes for it.

Easy Reaper: First Harvest

Living Energy Farm has developed a new harvester they call “Easy Reaper”. Here’s a trial run.

Easy Reaper

Alexis introduces the newest bit of technology from Living Energy Farm, a simplified combine harvester they call “Easy Reaper”.

Message Dog, Today, Combine, Conferences, and Convergence

by Raven

Yet another week on Facebook. Most posts did okay and one did very, very well.

Acorn often posts weird pictures and I try to go with it. Here they’ve posted a dog with a message.

This post just did okay with one like and a bit over a hundred views.

When I was down in Virginia in January, I took a bunch of pictures with the idea of posting them when things got quiet. This is one of my last. It was from one of the many boards Twin Oaks has in their dining hall.

This did pretty well, with seven likes, one love, and a hundred and thirty-three views.

Living Energy Farm put out this bulletin about a harvesting combine that they are developing.

This did phenomenally well with nineteen likes, five loves, one wow, two comments, three shares, and a full three hundred and sixty-six views. (Three shares is a lot of shares–very few of our posts get even one–and I suspect that contributed to the large number of views.)

The fire around Twin Oaks spared the residences but it decimated their industrial area as well as the conference site where Twin Oaks usually holds summer events. And they are still planning to hold them, as they are working on the site as quickly as they can.

The conference site after the fire

This did fairly well on Facebook, with eight likes, three loves, and a hundred and seventy-one views.

In the blurb for that post, I mentioned that there would be a brand new event this year. Here’s a bunch more about it.

This did fairly well also, with six likes, four loves, and a hundred and sixty-two views.

LEF May 2024

Living Energy Farm
May 2024 Newsletter

There have been two big events at Living Energy Farm in the last month. The first is that we are now using our simplified combine harvester in the field to harvest grain, and it’s working. The second is that, after 14 years of cooking on solar and wood, we are now making a lot more biogas and have enough to say goodbye to firewood.
And The Central Virginian newspaper here in Louisa VA did a very good article about LEF. That is here.
Easy Reaper
We have renamed our simplified combine harvester the Easy Reaper. Almost everyone relies on grain for food directly or indirectly. In the U.S., farmers have access to old American equipment. But the smallest combine harvesters are still fairly large, and quite complex. Globally, the lack of small harvesting equipment cripples the economic viability of small farms. The Easy Reaper could be a big help.
A video that shows a step-by-step walk through of how the machine works is here: https://youtu.be/5CF4laghKd4
A second video that shows the machine harvesting grain is here: https://youtu.be/i5GDyEB_VA8
The Easy Reaper is a product of many years of work. It has one belt and eight spinning shafts. In terms of the number of moving parts and overall mechanical complexity, it is an order of magnitude simpler than any other combine harvester of which we are aware. It could probably be mass manufactured for well under $2000. The cheapest Chinese made combine harvester currently available costs several times that much. We have contracts the University of Missouri and an entity called the Feed the Future Soybean Innovation Lab to produce Easy Reapers in Africa.

The first step in harvesting is to cut the grain and get it into the harvester. A “header” on a conventional combine does this. This photo shows the cut behind the easy reaper. It is bringing the grain into the machine quite effectively.

Our connection at the University of Missouri is Kerry Clark, (PhD, Assistant Research Profession in the Division of Applied Social Sciences, the CAFNR International Programs Director, and Project Manager for smallholder productivity for the USAID Soybean Innovation Lab) refers to the Easy Reaper as a “game changer for small farmers across the African continent.” She goes on to say “There are few people like [Alexis Zeigler who] dedicate themselves to helping smallholder farmers. His design will help revolutionize crop production in Africa.” We hope those statements prove true, and we are doing our best to make them come true.

The second critical function of a combine harvester is threshing –removing the grains from the seedheads. This shows us looking for leftover kernels of grain in the straw coming out of the harvester, and not finding any.

Going forward, we are going to “tighten up” the machine. That means moving the fan and cleaning screen to reduce the detritus in the grain. We want to build an Easy Reaper with a smaller threshing drum, and build one that is powered from its own wheels so it can be pulled by draft animals or a small tractor or tiller, and perhaps build a self propelled model. We also need to put some work into making the actual assembly simpler. Although the Easy Reaper is already much simpler than any other harvester, any prototype has many inefficiencies in assembly. We can reduce the number of parts, and make assemblies of parts that can be put together more easily (stamped and spot welded sheet metal instead of welded and riveted steel, for instance).
Many people have asked us, “why didn’t someone invent this before?”
Everything we do is influenced by legacy — the traditions and habits we inherit from those who came before us. That legacy can be helpful or crippling. Grain harvesting moved from one manual step to another, from one machine to another, and the grains themselves have evolved. Wild wheat is six feet tall, modern wheat is 18 inches. No one ever went back to step one and tried to simplify the whole process in one machine using modern materials and considerations.
Our job at LEF is to challenge legacies and find more sustainable ways of living. We are very happy with what we have achieved.

This shows harvested seed kernels of a rare Tibetan variety of barley. We are going to modify the machine so there is less detritus in the grain, but it is not intended to clean the grain as much as the large, expensive combines.

The Easy Reaper. Future Easy Reapers will look very similar, though the big round part on the left (the thresher) will likely get smaller.

Biogas
We have been building biogas systems for over 10 years now. Without recounting that long and inglorious history in detail, we have arrived at a biogas system that will produce a phenomenal amount of gas. A biogas digester is a colony of archaea. As the microbe colony matures, it becomes more productive, and more resilient.
Our current digester, named Seymour, is a seven foot tall, seven foot diameter tank. It has 3 feet of straw wrapped around it. It has a five panel solar thermal rack keeping it warm with internal stainless steel heat exchangers. Now that have figured out how to do this, we can say that Seymour is probably larger than we actually need.
The most astonishing thing about Seymour is how efficient he is. We had pictured something resembling a haying operation, mowing grassy fields or collecting wheat straw, bringing in lots of organic matter to feed Seymour. Well, we currently have a biogas flush toilet (which is less smelly and buggy than composting toilets, which is nice). We are feeding grass clippings from the front yard and small amount of kitchen waste twice a week. And that’s it! It’s really quite surprising that we are getting enough gas to cook three meals a day, right through long cloudy spells, with so little feedstock.

Biogas lofts in the barn. The commercial biogas bag on the left cost about $.43 cents/ liter of biogas storage. The air mattress on the right cost about $.03 cents/ liter of biogs storage. Smokers are not allowed to sleep on these air mattresses…

We have expanded our storage. We have found that air mattresses cost much less per cubic foot/liter than official biogas storage bags. So we have put lofts in various spots and filled them with biogas. The whole system generally runs at less than 1/2 psi (15 inches water column max), so lightweight storage containers work fine. It remains to be seen if we can make it all the way through next winter. But currently we are turning off the solar heat and keeping Seymour on a diet so as to prevent over-production.
Crunching some numbers about how much energy the farm uses and how much Seymour can produce, it’s quite clear we can produce enough gas to power small tractor(s) on the farm. The problem with biogas is that it has very low density. The burnable fraction of biogas is the same thing as natural gas, and that is methane. There is a lot of industrial handling of biogas and natural gas, including CNG (compressed natural gas). We are looking at the equipment to do that on a modest scale. Our friend Kris in Missouri continues to be a very helpful consultant on figuring out things like compressors.
Seymour’s good health owes a lot to Otto who tends to his needs diligently. Biogas is a lot like having a flock of animals to care for. It’s not a huge amount of work, but it must be tended regularly.
Both the expense and the regular tending of a biogas digester argue for community scale systems instead of household scale. One problem with biogas is that the digestion process is smelly. That’s not a big problem in rural areas, but it hard to imagine a lot of digesters in the crowded urban areas. Perhaps that could be improved (??) Sure would be handy to have a commercial biogas consultant on call…
Many rural ecovillage projects rely on a lot of firewood, which is not sustainable at all on a global scale. We are at the point where we can go through most of the year with no firewood at all. We do burn a small amount of wood in winter to back up our water heating system, but the amount is microscopic compared to most rural households. We are pleased with the level of energy self sufficiency we have been able to achieve.

Which Way Forward?
LEF is already fully energy independent at the residential level, and that with 250 watts of solar electricity per person and biogas. (Plus good insulation, cooperative design, and solar thermal systems). In considering setting up a biogas tractor, it is exciting to think about being fully energy independent, on a reasonably modest budget using durable technologies. We are continuing to work on plans for energy self sufficient communities (aka off-grid condos) outside of LEF. We get some donations (thank you very much!) that get used to buy solar materials for Puerto Rico and other projects. We have a lot of projects on our plate, and not all of them move forward quickly.
Much of what we do at LEF is to challenge unhelpful legacies — with building design, energy systems, and food. Even the Easy Reaper has proven a little disruptive. It’s clear that some people do not believe what we are saying, or are offended by our presumptions of simplified harvesters or making grid power obsolete with DC Microgrids in conservationist oriented communities.
The glass is always half full and half empty in terms of support and recognition for our work. We communicate with people inspired by our work on every continent. And we remain a small organization that is entirely volunteer run. We would like to spend more time promoting the idea of conservationist lifestyles, but it’s hard to know which is best. Do we spend our time making better machines, or talking to people? Promoting lifestyles that challenge consumerism is never going to be easy. We keep trying to do what we can.
Our farm is doing well. It is a good fruit year. We have an excellent, dedicated group of people at LEF. Rosa has learned how to make cherry pies from our sour cherries. Nika is honing his arguing skills to a sharp edge, especially when it comes to matters like chores and personal hygiene. David is still improving the simple washing machine. David and John continue to improve the electronics connected to DC power systems. Otto takes care of everything that everyone else forgets. Deb is managing the farm and planning our summer immersive on DC Microgrids (registration is now closed).
Please support us if you can.
Living Energy Farm is a project to build a demonstration farm, community, and education center in Louisa County that uses no fossil fuels. For more information see our website
http://www.livingenergyfarm.org, or contact us at livingenergyfarm@gmail.com or Living Energy Farm, 1022 Bibb Store Rd, Louisa VA, 23093. Donations to the Living Energy Farm Institute are tax deductible. To make tax deductible donations, do not go to the Virginia Organizing website, go here instead: https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/1388125
Make sure to designate your donation for Living Energy Institute.

Articles and videos about LEF:
Low-Tech Magazine (based in France) did a lengthy, well-researched article, largely about LEF, entitled Direct Solar Power: Off-Grid Without Batteries. It’s at
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2023/08/direct-solar-power-off-grid-without-batteries/
That article talks a lot about optimal utilization, translate “community is the magic bullet that makes renewable energy work.”
Matt Dhillon at Cville Weekly did one of the best brief summaries of LEF we have ever seen. The article is entitled Power Shift, Award-winning Living Energy Farm Makes Living Off-grid Sustainable. It is at https://www.c-ville.com/power-shift
Truthdig did an article on LEF by Megan McGee, an excellent review of our work in Puerto Rico. It is entitled Decolonizing Puerto Rico Through Solar Power. It’s at https://www.truthdig.com/articles/decolonizing-puerto-rico-through-solar-power/
We continue to post new videos on Youtube. The latest is Solar Power Systems That Last
Forever, focused on our solar powered kitchen. See https://youtu.be/6XiHClx8d2Q

How to Never Pay an Electric Bill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5Wk7inoIxI&t=201s
This video is a walk-through of our energy systems at Living Energy Farm. It is a concise
summary of how these systems work, and why they are not in common use already.

Solar Installations In The Navajo (Dine’) And Hopi Reservations, March 2020
http://livingenergyfarm.org/solar-installations-2020/
This is a photo essay about our project to bring durable solar energy systems to the Dine’ and Hopi Reservations, where thousands of people live without grid power involuntarily.

Support Living Energy Farm’s Climate Justice Campaign, and Bring DC Microgrids to People
Who Need Them
http://livingenergyfarm.org/support-our-climate-justice-campaign/
This is an updated web page describing our broader social justice ambitions.

How to Live Without Fossil Fuel (Introductory Video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=Ri2U6u8p65E
Powering a Community with Solar Electricity (LEF has the only DC powered community that we know of, here’s how it works) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvdExgvHnRI&t=23s
The Best Way to Store Off-Grid Energy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wOxQ3sL9zc
Batteries that Last (almost) Forever https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfrgLsyFs0E

Virginia Homegrown created a program at LEF (the LEF part starts at the 29 minute mark in the program) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDGP0C9MIzU

International Permaculture has done 2 articles on LEF. One is in issue #93, Autumn 2017, and the second is in issue #94, Winter 2017. See https://www.permaculture.co.uk/
Article about LEF at the Atlantic Online Magazine
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/anarchism-intentional-communities-trump/513086/
Article about LEF in The Central Virginian
http://www.livingenergyfarm.org/cvarticle.pdf
LEF on CNN
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2015/09/us/communes-american-story/
Cville weekly in Charlottesville VA
http://www.c-ville.com/off-grid-model-environmentalism-made-easy/#.VcHobF054yo

Gardening, Garlic, Upkeeping, Lexing, and a Festival

by Raven

We’ve gotten to the week where Facebook changed things on us. I don’t know if we did something wrong or what, but suddenly we weren’t getting pictures from outside posts. One day, if we reposted something here, Facebook put a picture with it and then suddenly they didn’t. If I added a picture they put it on but they didn’t copy it from any other site. As far as I can tell, other folks still get pictures on reposts, so it makes me wonder if Facebook has a problem with us doing it.

The first few posts came with pictures and the first one was a Twin Oaks post advertising one of their member’s blogs, that of Pam, the master gardener.

This did okay on Facebook, with five likes, two loves, two shares, and a hundred and four views. Not great, but okay.

Our second post was from Acorn’s Instagram, claiming that Justin Bieber was visiting. (Would Facebook get upset about that? You’d think they’d go after Acorn, not us.)

This didn’t quite make it, with just one wow and ninety-nine views.

The last post where Facebook reposted a pic was when we reposted Eastwind’s description of their House and Maintenence work. It’s on their website and the photo Facebook associated with it is the one that is at the top of all of the pages on the site with the title “Eastwind Community” and the links to other pages on it. Facebook just reprinted the site photo without the captions.

If there was a problem with that, as far as I can tell, that was Facebook’s doing.

Here’s what I wrote.

And here’s a snippet from their House and Maintenence page, along with the photo I would have selected.

It didn’t do badly at all, with four likes, four loves, three comments, and a hundred and sixty-six views.

So what went wrong?

The next day we reposted something from Twin Oaks. It seemed innocent enough. They had a picture of Debbie from Living Energy Farm LEXing (doing a Labor EXchange) at Twin Oaks. They had the picture, we didn’t. All we got was:

That’s the usual thing Facebook puts when we repost something from Facebook, except there used to be a picture underneath. This time there wasn’t.

Here’s what we wrote followed by what Twin Oaks had on their site.

In spite of the lack of a picture on our site, this did pretty well, with five likes, three loves, one comment, and a hundred and eighty-four views.

I thought that this was just a one-off thing from Facebook, but the next day it happened again with an Instagram repost from Acorn. And we haven’t had any pictures on any reposts since. (Although, if we create the post and add pics, they show up.)

Anyway, here’s the Acorn repost, starting with what I wrote on Facebook.

And here’s some of what Acorn wrote as well as the picture that only showed up on their Instagram page.

It didn’t do great, but I’m not sure if that had anything to do with the lack of a picture on our FB page. It did about as well as our previous Acorn repost, which had a pic. It got five likes, one love, but only ninety-seven views.

I’m not going to complain in future posts, but know that Facebook no longer passes pictures on to our feed, unless we actually put them there.

MAMA, Training, Megafauna, Earth Day, and a Question

by Raven

It was a busy week on Facebook, about a month ago.

The folks at Serenity Solidarity pointed out to me that they had just become able to support a project they really wanted to support.

This did pretty well on Facebook, with ten loves (including one from Serenity Solidarity), one comment, two shares, and one hundred and twenty-seven views.

Meanwhile, Living Energy Farm announced that they are offering a training for solar installation.

Since this is a photo off of Facebook, you can’t click on the link but here’s the application form.

This did pretty good as well, with seven likes, three loves (including Serenity Solidarity), one comment, and a hundred and forty-two views.

There’s a band made up of folks from Acorn Community called Megafauna and Acorn made a very trippy video of them.

This is a still, but here’s the actual video.

It’s a really interesting video but it didn’t do that well. It got one like and just fifty-seven views.

East Wind Nut Butters is East Wind Community’s business and they wanted to honor Earth Day.

A lovely message but it didn’t do great on our Facebook feed. While it got three loves (including one from East Wind Nut Butters), two likes, and a care, it only got eighty-eight views.

I’ve often said, that if I want to rack up the Facebook views, all I need to do is ask a controversial question. “Controversial” is the key word here. This time I asked something simple.

Even though I thought it was an interesting question, very few other folks apparently did. This bombed on Facebook. Not only did it get no responses, it got no likes, and only fifty-nine views (just slightly better than Megafauna, which at least got a like).

LEF March-April 2024

Living Energy Farm
March – April 2024 Newsletter

Now Accepting Applications for our 2024 DC Solar Immersion/Training at Living Energy Farm!

Since 2022, LEF has been collaborating with El Departamento de la Comida (a Puerto Rican nonprofit) to offer annual DC Solar Immersion /Training(s) at Living Energy Farm. Our goal with this program has been to educate Puerto Ricans in designing and building DC Microgrids (the training), while also allowing participants to experience life powered by the DC Microgrid at LEF (the immersion). Thanks to these and other promotional events organized by El Depa, there are now many DC Microgrids across Puerto Rico and Jamaica. (Check out the “Guide to DC Microgrids in the Caribbean” on our website!) In order to lower costs and make the program more accessible, going forward, El Depa will be hosting the trainings they organize in Puerto Rico.

Building a batch collector at our 2023 training.

But these programs have been so much fun that this year, in addition to the program in Puerto Rico, we will be offering one at LEF as well! This training is not just open to Puerto Ricans, but to anyone with a sincere interest in incorporating this technology into their lives. If you are interested, visit this link to apply.

Marielisa learning to wire a DC breaker box at the 2023 immersion.

The LEF program will take place on July 26 – 29, 2024. The first two days of the program will be dedicated to lecture and workshops, and will happen at Living Energy Farm. The second two days will be onsite training at a DC Microgrid installation site, Little Flower Catholic Worker house, which is 8 miles from LEF. The program is free and includes meals and accommodations (might be camping). In exchange for the training, we are asking that participants volunteer for 30 hours on a future installation on a project that has some social value to the public or a population in need. (It could be a project you find or choose.) Spaces are limited, and priority will be given to applicants who have an active project that will be applying DC Microgrid technology.

Want to learn more about DC Microgrids in the Caribbean?
Check out the “Guide to DC Microgrids in the Caribbean” recently added to our website. (https://livingenergyfarm.org/guide-to-dc-microgrids-in-the-caribbean/) This page includes maps of Puerto Rico and Jamaica, with DC Microgrid sites labeled on each map. Scroll down and click on the names of the sites to learn more about each project. We’ll keep this site updated as more systems are built. It’s exciting to watch the movement grow!

A map of Puerto Rico with DC Microgrid installation sites.

Devastating Fire at Twin Oaks
Tragedy struck our friends at Twin Oaks Community (a 57 year old intentional community 10 miles from LEF) a few weeks ago. A brush fire was started by a neighbor on an extremely dry, windy day. It quickly grew to a 200 acre wildfire that threatened several houses in the neighborhood (including a few of Twin Oaks’ residential buildings), as well as Twin Oaks’ warehouse complex. As the local fire department concentrated on saving residences, the entire warehouse complex burned. For Twin Oaks, the loss is massive: several million dollars worth of uninsured equipment and inventory that was built up over decades. Twin Oaks probably can’t afford to replace the equipment and will likely have to stop making hammocks and hanging chairs. They also lost a lot of machinery for rope making, a sawmill, and a lot of very valuable woodworking equipment. Seed processing and drying equipment was also lost in the warehouse fire.
It’s a loss for Living Energy Farm as well. Twin Oaks had been very generous about letting us use the warehouse for the storage and shipping needs of our solar equipment business. Luckily, we didn’t have any inventory in storage at the warehouse at the time of the fire. It was a close call, as our big annual shipment to Puerto Rico had gone out about a month before.
We’re doing what we can to support our friends in this difficult time. One thing we can do is help them set up better firefighting equipment. Alexis, an ex-fire fighter and ex-Twin Oaker who is very familiar with their water system, has been working with Twin Oaks to help them improve their internal firefighting capacity. In this emerging age of climate chaos, the scary reality is that even in the east we are going to need to be prepared to fight wildfires. The fire at Twin Oaks was much bigger and moved much faster than anything that is normal for this area, driven by unusually windy and dry conditions. As farmers, we are seeing more weather extremes every year.

LEF Fire Truck

Back home at LEF, we’ve been motivated by the fire at Twin Oaks to improve our own fire fighting setup. We’ve known for years that we’re particularly vulnerable to brush fires at LEF, since we live in the middle of a recovering clearcut, and our road is not accessible in very wet weather. Years ago we set up our own modest fire fighting equipment.
But we let it languish and re-purposed the storage tank for biogas. One reason our system was not kept up is because gasoline pumps are hard to maintain over time. The gas goes stale quickly. Last week, motivated by the Twin Oaks fire, we installed water tanks (that we already had acquired for that purpose), and set up our own “fire truck”- a hand wagon with a propane-powered pump and fire hose, ready to be pulled out and attached to the tanks at a moment’s notice. Propane is stable indefinitely, so hopefully this pump will be easier to maintain than a gasoline one. Fire fighting is one use of fossil fuels that we can approve of.
Recordbreaking Fruit Year?
In happier news, between our maturing orchard and mild spring temperatures, we seem on track to have the best fruit year so far at LEF. If you have been thinking for a while about coming out for a visit, this summer and fall might be the time to come! Our list of fruits include (roughly in order of maturity): strawberries, guomi berries, juneberries, mulberries, blackberries, blueberries, peaches, muskmelons, watermelons, pears, apples, muscadines, jujubes, persimmons, jujubes, and probably more I’m forgetting.
Please support us if you can.

Peach blossoms in front of Eartheart.

Living Energy Farm is a project to build a demonstration farm, community, and education center in Louisa County that uses no fossil fuels. For more information see our website
http://www.livingenergyfarm.org, or contact us at livingenergyfarm@gmail.com or Living Energy Farm, 1022 Bibb Store Rd, Louisa VA, 23093. Donations to the Living Energy Farm Institute are tax deductible. To make tax deductible donations, do not go to the Virginia Organizing website, go here instead: https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/1388125
Make sure to designate your donation for Living Energy Institute.

Articles and videos about LEF:
Low-Tech Magazine (based in France) did an lengthy, well-researched article, largely about LEF, entitled Direct Solar Power: Off-Grid Without Batteries. It’s at
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2023/08/direct-solar-power-off-grid-without-batteries/
That article talks a lot about optimal utilization, translate “community is the magic bullet that makes renewable energy work.”

Matt Dhillon at Cville Weekly did one of the best brief summaries of LEF we have ever seen. The article is entitled Power Shift, Award-winning Living Energy Farm Makes Living Off-grid
Sustainable. It is at https://www.c-ville.com/power-shift

Truthdig did an article on LEF by Megan McGee, an excellent review of our work in Puerto Rico. It is entitled Decolonizing Puerto Rico Through Solar Power. It’s at
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/decolonizing-puerto-rico-through-solar-power/

We continue to post new videos on Youtube. The latest is Solar Power Systems That Last Forever, focused on our solar powered kitchen. See
https://youtu.be/6XiHClx8d2Q

How to Never Pay an Electric Bill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5Wk7inoIxI&t=201s
This video is a walk-through of our energy systems at Living Energy Farm. It is a concise
summary of how these systems work, and why they are not in common use already.

Solar Installations In The Navajo (Dine’) And Hopi Reservations, March 2020
http://livingenergyfarm.org/solar-installations-2020/
This is a photo essay about our project to bring durable solar energy systems to the Dine’ and Hopi Reservations, where thousands of people live without grid power involuntarily.

Support Living Energy Farm’s Climate Justice Campaign, and Bring DC Microgrids to People Who Need Them
http://livingenergyfarm.org/support-our-climate-justice-campaign/
This is an updated web page describing our broader social justice ambitions.
How to Live Without Fossil Fuel (Introductory Video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=Ri2U6u8p65E
Powering a Community with Solar Electricity (LEF has the only DC powered community that we know of, here’s how it works) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvdExgvHnRI&t=23s
The Best Way to Store Off-Grid Energy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wOxQ3sL9zc
Batteries that Last (almost) Forever https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfrgLsyFs0E
Virginia Homegrown created a program at LEF (the LEF part starts at the 29 minute mark in the program)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDGP0C9MIzU

International Permaculture has done 2 articles on LEF. One is in issue #93, Autumn 2017, and the second is in issue #94, Winter 2017. See https://www.permaculture.co.uk/

Article about LEF at the Atlantic Online Magazine
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/anarchism-intentional-communities-trump/
513086/

Article about LEF in The Central Virginian
http://www.livingenergyfarm.org/cvarticle.pdf

LEF on CNN
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2015/09/us/communes-american-story/

Cville weekly in Charlottesville VA
http://www.c-ville.com/off-grid-model-environmentalism-made-easy/#.VcHobF054yo