Theresa celebrates the land around Glomus Commune, her valley.
Animals
Animals, Ducks, Corn, and Puppets
Again, the weekly round up from Facebook posts.
Among other things, last week’s round up featured a “photodump” about their crops from East Wind. They also did a “photodump” on their animals.
This post did pretty well on FB, with twelve likes and loves and 189 views.
Most of the communes hadn’t been posting much, so I went over to Cambia’s Instagram account (which hadn’t been added to in a couple of years) and found this old picture of a duck, which I realized had never been posted to Commune Life. So I posted it to Facebook.
By now I know enough about Facebook to know silly pictures like this can get traction, and it did, with five likes, five loves, and one “Haha”, plus one comment and a nice 175 views.
The comment was interesting.
I didn’t reply because I didn’t know but I figured it probably was.
Still desperately looking for material, I found this article on the SESE website.
We had a post about corn a while back where someone commented that they had heard “Knee high by the fourth of July…” so I thought that this might also get some traction, but I was wrong. It did the worst of anything on this week.
Then, just as I was trying to figure out what else I could post, Acorn posted this.
While it didn’t do great, it got a respectable 126 views.
Finally, still desperate for material, I posted an old post from here with pictures of folks from East Wind. I was not surprised that it did very well with thirteen likes and loves and a good 232 views. Folks like pictures.
Robin Chicks at Glomus
Theresa built an outhouse at Glomus Commune. Some robins built a nest inside and raised a few baby chicks there.
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…
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.
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.
Trust and Trauma
by Raven
Lately I have been reading a lot about what has been called “evolutionary biology” or “evolutionary psychology”. I just finished (at least much of) Trust and Reciprocity, a book edited by Elinor Ostrom and James Walker, and I’m currently reading Sapien: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari and Our Inner Ape by Frans de Waal (a primatologist who also had a chapter in Trust and Reciprocity). All this has gotten me thinking once again about how humans evolved to live tribally and why we don’t anymore.
Trust and Reciprocity discusses the “evolution of cooperation”, why humans (and most apes, as well as other animal species) cooperate in the first place. Many theoretical economists see us as essentially selfish creatures and Garrett Hardin, in his influential 1968 essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons”, argued that if everyone acts in their own interest shared resources would quickly be destroyed. Yet, as Elinor Ostrom has pointed out (not in Trust and Reciprocity but in other work), there are groups that have been sharing common resources sustainably for centuries.
Trust is a major reason folks can share and cooperate. One of the issues discussed in Trust and Reciprocity is the question of how trust evolved. One theory involves what has been called “reciprocal altruism”. (I see it as a “I’ll take care of you if you will take care of me” theory.”) Robert Trivers used the term in a 1971 essay to describe why people (and animals) might take a risk and make a small sacrifice if they think it may be rewarded later.
This intrigues me because I see income-sharing as folks making a small sacrifice which has a large pay off. But income-sharing requires trust.
Trauma damages trust. When people have been hurt or used or abused, they are far less likely to trust as easily again.or often even trust at all–especially if the trauma occurred when they were young and vulnerable. I am beginning to believe that trauma may be more widespread than most people realize, and that many people may feel safer living alone or with one trusted partner (and even then more and more relationships seem to end in separations or divorces).
Trust is a hard thing to regain once it has been broken. A dozen good experiences may not offset a single bad one, especially if it was very bad. And for someone with childhood trauma, even a not so bad experience can seem to confirm that people can’t be trusted.
I’m not sure what we can do about all of this, but I do believe that sharing makes things better for everyone and that we need to build systems which can work for most folks, which means working on building trust and creating systems of accountability.
It won’t be easy but I think it’s what the world needs, and I think that the fact that the communes work at all, is a good example of what we need to do.
Pear tree, housing, seeds, and Land Day
by Raven
Saturday, April 8th, was the Land Day celebration for the Acorn Community–honoring the day they moved on to their land, and this was their thirtieth anniversary. They posted a whole bunch about it and we reposted several of what they posted. I know I posted about it last week, but here’s two more posts–but first, everything else.
Starting with a couple of pretty pictures from the Magnolia Collective.
For a couple of pictures this did okay, getting two likes and a love and just over a hundred views.
Serenity Solidarity is a community in formation that’s also doing a lot of important stuff.
Here’s the link to the article. You may only get to look at it once before they start to tell you that you can only re-read it if you subscribe.
It didn’t do anywhere near as well as I thought it should. While it got three likes and two cares, it only got eighty-two views.
Then I found something on the East Brook Community Farm Instagram account which had been dormant through the winter, but was now back in farming season–and East Brook is basically Glomus Commune so I reposted this.
This did very, very well with five likes and loves and over two hundred views.
Finally, Acorn’s Land Day posts–one from April 8th, the actual Land Day, and the other, a leftover that we published on Monday the 10th.
This did pretty well with nine likes and loves and almost two hundred views.
When I didn’t have another post for Monday, I reposted this silly one.
While it was the second post about Land Day and just featured a couple of pictures of a dog–and only got a couple of likes, it still got a respectable number of views.
commune life 