Work Party, Tech Problems, and Lots of Dogs

by Raven

I’m still covering the Facebook posts from before we went on a break, and while the last week started off very well, in the end it went to the dogs. Quite literally.

We started with an example of the lovely outreach they do at Serenity Solidarity.

Unfortunately, I haven’t seen the blog post yet, but this post did well, with nine likes and over a hundred and eighty views.

Meanwhile, there were problems with both the East Wind website and the FEC website.

Here is the actual link to the East Wind website. The FEC website is back as well (although rather recently), however it remains very out of date.

People must have been concerned, however, because this post got seven likes and a care, as well as more than two hundred and sixty views.

It also got three comments–including one from me explaining what I knew.

Unfortunately, most folks at the communes are rather busy and don’t have a lot of time to work on things like websites.

As I started looking for some final posts to finish off the week, I noticed three of them had something in common. Dogs. In fact, two of them focused on dogs resting. The last one had some very busy dogs.

At LEF, there was a dog resting by the tomatoes–in fact on a couple of the tomatoes.

The “cute animal photo” did well enough, getting four likes and four loves, and a hundred and forty two views.

At Acorn, there were two dogs, lying together, apparently after making a movie.

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

So, of course, I had to see this dog-centric Acorn film.

Of course, this is a still from the video. The whole movie can be viewed here.

It got a like, a love, and a care, and a hundred and twenty-eight views. Not bad, but not a smashing success either.

Puppets, Hammocks, Irrigation, and a Question

by Raven

One problem with taking a month off is that I’m now reviewing stuff we posted on Facebook two months ago.

In my last Facebook update, I reposted Acorn’s invitation to their new puppet show. It happened.

This post didn’t do too badly, either, with five likes and loves and 146 views.

While looking through things to post, I found an old post from Twin Oaks Hammocks that I found amusing.

Apparently many other folks found it amusing as well, with a good fourteen likes and loves and over three hundred views.

On the other hand, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, Acorn Community’s business, posted what I thought was a useful guide to saving water during plant irrigation.

You can read the article here.

Apparently folks didn’t find this very interesting with three likes and a love and a mere seventy-seven views:

I was running out of things to post so I reposted an article from this blog on making agreements that I wrote four years ago–and it did pretty well. And then I thought I would finish by putting a Facebook question on Monday–as I occasionally do.

I never know how well one of these questions will do. Sometimes they do amazingly well and sometimes they just bomb. And some of the ones that do well are simple questions that I don’t expect to get traction and some that don’t do well at all are what I think are interesting questions. About the only thing I’ve noticed is that if I do too many questions (like one a week for several weeks) they seem to do less and less well (diminishing returns?) while if I don’t post one for a while, when I do post something, it often does pretty well.

So, trying to come up with a question I hadn’t asked and that I thought was at least interesting, I asked something that I thought was fairly simple and I thought I knew some of the answers to but I couldn’t think of anything else so I wrote:

As I said, simple and maybe a little provocative but I really didn’t expect it to take off. But it took off with lots and lots of comments, quite a few likes, and a truly astounding (at least for us) number of views. Here’s most of the comments. (I did omit a back and forth set of comments where two ex-communards started catching each other up about their currently locations and sharing family pictures as well as one comment after an explanation where someone simply replied, “I see…”)

As you can see, if you made your way through all these comments, we got a little bit of everything, from facts to opinions to silly responses. In all (including the comments I omitted) we got an astounding fifty-four comments as well as twenty-eight likes (no loves or other things), which is quite a few but I’ve never seen us have nearly twice as many comments as likes. There was also a couple of shares but the number of views went off the chart for us. Facebook simply says 1K, which means we went over a thousand but Facebook doesn’t want to count that high, so I can’t tell you how much over a thousand–although, presumably, if it went up to two thousand, Facebook would say 2K.

(Yes, and over six hundred ‘Post engagements’–whatever that means.)

Strange Music from a Teen Commune Band

Twin Oaks posted: OUR TEEN BAND. Live-performances and on YouTube, teen band “Eggs and Wine.” Their goal was to make intentionally bad music, or as they put it, “the immaculate vibrations of heart-achingly beautiful music.”

Outhouse Painting

At Glomus Commune, Theresa and Peach cut down a branch that obscured the view of this painting, which they then polyurethaned.

@teiresiaskadish

It’s paint and wood, but it’s also Goddess by @renerowe420 #selfportrait #wallart #mural #arborist #treepruning

♬ original sound – Theresa Kadish

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.

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.

Change Seeds, Communal History, Heart Circle, Transplanter, and Commune Band

by Raven

Lots of interesting stuff on Facebook a couple of weeks ago, but we got some poor viewing numbers.

An article that I thought was really interesting and did really poorly on our Facebook feed was from Cville, the local paper in Charlottesville.

The actual article can be found here.

Unfortunately, there were no likes on Facebook and hardly any looks.

Another local article was from the Louisa County Historical Society.

This did a little better and got a couple of likes, but still did pretty poorly.

The Magnolia Collective is small, but committed to each other.

This did even better, with a like and a love, but I consider anything with under a hundred views to have done poorly.

East Brook Community Farm wanted to show off a new piece of equipment.

This post did pretty well (best of the week) with three likes and a decent number of views.

Finally, Acorn put a simple Instagram post up with a black and white drawing and a notice that this was “megafauna_the_super_cool_band”. Curious, I went to their Instagram site and immediately realized that I knew these folks. They were all either members or associated with various Louisa County communes.

While it didn’t do as good as the Glomus post above, it got a like and a love and a decent amount of views.

Activists in the Woods

Serenity Solidarity posted these pictures from their trip to Atlanta. They called them: “Photos from our time visiting frontline activists in the Forest.”