East Wind Interview: Jim Adams

East Wind is now publishing weekly video interviews with current and former members. I will republish them on Wednesdays, the day we have often posted videos. You can see the first interview, with ex-member Zan, here.

Jim Adams is also an ex-member, who lived at East Wind from 1977 to 1987 and this interview is a deep history of East Wind, including the history of East Wind Nut Butters and the building of Rock Bottom, East Wind’s dining hall. Jim Adams also lived at Twin Oaks and talks about differences and similarities between the two communities.

BUILDING PROJECT AT CAMBIA, PART THREE

Cambia continues working on their strawbale house. Here are some scenes from a work party with folks from Twin Oaks and Acorn participating, taken from Cambia’s Instagram account. If you are interested in the whole story, here are scenes from Part One and Part Two.

BUILDING PROJECT AT CAMBIA, PART TWO

Cambia has been documenting their strawbale construction project on Instagram. Here is the step by step process of putting in the central beam for the roof. Part One of this story is here, documenting the beginning of the project.

I will post Part Three (a work party) on Friday, but first, a new video.

Building Project at Cambia, Part One

Cambia is this lovely, quirky little commune in Louisa, VA, very near Twin Oaks. Recently they started a strawbale building project which they are documenting on Instagram. Here’s the first set of pictures. I will have more on Monday.

LEF goes to AZ, Part Two

This is a continuation of yesterday’s post chronicling Living Energy Farm’s adventures as they went out to Arizona to install their solar systems on Navajo and Hopi reservations. Yesterday focused on the trip there–which was trickier than they expected. Today’s post focuses on the actual installations, which went very well.

On the Commune Life Facebook page, I wrote: “LEF finally is able to get to work. Here’s the first report with pictures:”

And here it is:

“In between installations, the LEF crew has time to post a Navajo joke:”

“And on to the second installation:”

“LEF goes on an installation binge–five installations in one day. Here’s some pictures and a story:”

“And here’s the story behind installation number five:”

“And here is the final post in Living Energy Farm’s saga of their road trip to Arizona to bring solar power to native folks there:”

Tomorrow, another question: “Art in Community–Is it a luxury or a necessity?”

Twin Oaks Wastewater

Meanwhile, at Twin Oaks, the treatment of the wastewater from their tofu factory was (and to some degree, even now, is) an ongoing saga.

All I wrote on our Facebook page was: ‘Here’s the latest on the Twin Oaks wastewater system:’

Here’s what they put on the Twin Oaks Facebook page: ‘TOFU WASTEWATER PROJECT. In this development there are 3 ponds, 2 big tanks, a storage building made from a shipping container, etc. Work on the project is nearing completion.

‘Tofu whey and wastewater will be processed here before land application. The whey is mostly liquid. Treatment here will involve raising the pH and reducing the organic content using aeration. The treated end-product will then be land applied when conditions are right for that or will be dispersed in an underground high-performance leach field when land conditions require.’

Twin Oaks Roof Repair

Meanwhile, moving over to Twin Oaks.

Here’s what I wrote on the Commune Life Facebook page:  ‘At Twin Oaks, the work is repairing the roofs. Here’s three Oakers doing the work:’

And here’s what Twin Oaks put on the original Facebook post:

East Wind Installs a Grey Water System

This is another post from back in February (in a sense, it is a repost of a repost). While there has been a lot of focus on Twin Oaks problems with waste water, East Wind has been dealing with waste water as well.

When I posted it on Facebook in February, here is what I wrote:  ‘Big communities like East Wind and Twin Oaks are like little towns. Important things like grey water systems need to be overhauled from time to time. Here’s a picture from the new leech field that East Wind just put in:’

And here is their original Facebook post:

The Twin Oaks Wastewater Project

by Raven East Brook

When I was down at Twin Oaks for the Social Technology Conference and the FEC Assembly, I couldn’t help but be aware of the work that was going on creating a drainfield for the tofu wastewater.

This is hopefully the ending phase of a five year upgrade to Twin Oaks’ tofu factory.  This post contains some pictures that I snapped while I was at the community as well as some that are taken from the Twin Oaks Facebook page.

The overall plans

Plans for stabilization ponds

Creating specially engineered drainfield lines

The ponds under construction

Another view of the tarped ponds

Storage tanks

The pretreatment tanks going in

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Thanks for reading! This post was made possible by our patrons on Patreon. The Commune Life team works hard to bring you these stories about our lives in community, and that work couldn’t happen without support from our audience. So if you liked this article, and want to help us make more like it, head on over to https://www.patreon.com/communelife to join us! 

Deep gratitude to all of our patrons:  

Communities

• Compersia Community
• East Brook Community Farm
• The Federation of Egalitarian Communities
• Twin Oaks Community

Communards 

• Aaron Michels
• Brenda Thompson
• Caroline Elbert
• Cathy Loyd
• Em Stiles
• Jenn Morgan
• Janey Amend-Bombara
• Jonathan Thaler
• Joseph A Klatt
• Julia Elizabeth Evans
• Kai Koru
• Kathleen Brooks
• Laurel Baez
• Lynette Shaw
• Magda schonfeld
• Michael Hobson
• Nance & Jack Williford
• Peter Chinman
• Sumner Nichols
• Tobin Moore
• Warren Kunce
• William Croft
• William Kadish
• William Scarborough

Thanks! 

Building the Showerhouse: East Wind

First published on the East Wind Community YouTube channel January 23, 2018

Check out http://eastwind.org/ to learn about various DIY projects (agricultural, building, etc) and the income sharing social experiment that is East Wind Community.

Best seen in 720p! First time lapse experiment. Two days of work on the showerhouse back to back in August of 2017.

Created and originally posted by Sumner.