Diversity, Artmas, Hammocks, Pizza, and a Trump Question

by Raven

This week in mid-January on Facebook really did have a diversity of stuff.

It started with a proclamation from Acorn Community that they are now forty percent folks of color.

This got an amazing response: twenty-one likes, eight loves, and a care, four comments, and a full three hundred and forty-eight views.

East Wind talked about one of their winter holidays:

This post just did okay on Facebook, with four likes, two loves, and a hundred and nine views.

Twin Oaks Hammocks posted about one use of their product.

This did the least well of the week’s posts, with five likes and two loves, but only eighty-nine views.

What really got people’s attention was homemade pizza.

This did incredibly well on Facebook, with twenty-one likes, nine loves (including one from East Wind Community!), two comments, one share, and a whopping four hundred and eleven views. (Who likes pizza? Apparently a lot of folks.)

Finally, on the day that Trump was inaugurated, I asked how folks thought he would affect the communes.

Disappointingly, we only got six comments, but they were interesting.

Even with only six comments, this still did well, with four likes and a sad, and a good two hundred and forty-six posts.

Land Day, PR, Pumpkins, Brownies, and a Kibbutzim Question

by Raven

We’re still looking a couple of months back on Facebook and this week we have everything from pumpkins and brownies to a provocative question about the kibbutzim.

But let’s start off with Living Energy Farm. They’ve had their place for fourteen years.

This post did okay, just sliding in with six likes and a hundred views.

Twin Oaks was happy to get a bit of local publicity.

Unfortunately, this did do very well on Facebook, with three likes, a love, and a mere fifty-seven views.

SESE wrote about pumpkins.

I thought it was interesting but apparently not many folks did. It got no likes or loves and only thirty-nine views. This was our worst performer of the week.

And East Wind Nutbutters posted a recipe.

Okay, lots of pictures and a recipe for a sweet treat. Yes, it did well, although not as well as I would have expected, with only three likes and a respectible hundred and fourteen views.

Finally, I thought it was time for another Facebook question and I wanted something controversial and having mixed thoughts about the Kibbutzim (plural of the Kibbutz) these days, I decided to put out a provocative question.

I wanted comments but I only got a couple. (Some good thoughts, though.)

While I was hoping a controversial, provocative question would attract a lot of views, I had also been warned that Facebook was limiting the views of “political” stuff. And that seemed to be true, at least at first. There were only two comments and only two likes and after the first day there were less than a hundred views, and so I thought that was that. But something happened that I had never seen before. I’m not sure why (it didn’t seem to have gotten any shares) but it started gathering more views over the next couple of days and while a hundred and eighty-six views is not much for a controversial question, it’s a lot more that I thought we were going to get. I’m not sure what happened but this post did well after all.

The Last Hammocks–plus Almond Butter Coffee and Tatsoi Mustard

by Raven

Twin Oaks posted a bunch of stuff this particular week (a little over a month ago) and most of it was about their hammock business. The big fire wiped out their warehouse full of hammock supplies and business had been declining and so Twin Oaks decided to discontinue making hammocks.

Historically hammocks was the business most associated with Twin Oaks (I can remember when almost every proper commune has at least one Twin Oaks hammock) and it was what kept them going economically for many years. Therefore, making the last hammocks at Twin Oaks was a big deal.

This post, surprisingly, didn’t do that well, although it got three likes, two ‘Sads’, and a ‘Care’, it only got seventy-eight views. Fortunately, this was only the first post on the subject.

The next Twin Oaks post was about their plans for the hammock shop. It contains the interesting line: “Heritage and heirloom seeds are now Twin Oaks’ largest income source.” A lot of this work is for Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, Acorn Community’s business (Acorn having been spun off of Twin Oaks). In some ways this is like a parent becoming employed in their kid’s very successful business.

This was probably the most successful post on Commune Life on this particular week, with five likes, five cares, two loves, two sads, two comments, and a very nice hundred and eighty-four views.

The final post from Twin Oaks had a picture of one of the last hammocks being made.

This post did well, with six sads, four likes, two cares, and three comments, and a hundred and thirteen views.

In other communal posts, East Wind Nutbutters (East Wind Community’s business) made an unusual suggestion for something to put in your coffee.

This post did well, with six likes, a ‘Wow’, a comment, and a hundred and eleven views.

Finally, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange (Acorn’s profitable business) posted about a cold hardy leafy green.

Unfortunately, this didn’t do so well. It got two likes and only sixty-two views. Maybe there weren’t a lot of gardeners reading–or they weren’t interested in exotic greens.

Pepper Tasting and Acorn’s Team

by Raven

This was a slow week on the commune scene. There weren’t a lot of postings from the usual communities on Facebook and so I made up for it on Fb by reposting stuff from this blog. There were a couple of interesting posts on Facebook however that I reposted to our Facebook page.

The first was from Twin Oaks where they encouraged people to sample peppers.

This didn’t do so well, it got just two likes and ninety-five views, and considering I think of a hundred views as the minimum to feel a post is doing okay, it fell just short of that.

The other new post for the week was from Acorn where they put a picture of a bunch of their members who they referred to as their “amazing team”.

This one did a bit better with one like, three loves, and a hundred and four views.

Communal Kitchen Efficiency

A Brit looks at the way they cook at Acorn.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Beau Gordon (@gaybritishbear)

Internet, Seed Selling, Crackers, and Ira

by Raven

This mid-September week on Facebook went pretty well.

We reposted from Twin Oaks their delight at getting an internet upgrade.

This did pretty good with seven likes and a hundred and thirty-four views.

Acorn posted what the called an “Ambiguous and artsy” picture of Turtle, one of their members.

This also did fairly well, with six likes, two loves, one comment, and a hundred and forty-seven views.

East Wind’s post was all about home grown and home made food.

This post did really well, with nine likes, four loves, a comment, and a hundred and ninety-six views, making it the most popular of the week.

And where would Acorn be without Ira? She helped start the community, she has been there all along, she’s the face of their business, and she is incredibly respected in the communities movement, the seed business, and the local area. And she’s now seventy-six.

Unfortunately, this post did the least well of the week. Yes, it got five loves and three likes and it did get over a hundred views, I generally expect more views for a post about Ira–and especially one featuring tomatoes and her birthday.

C-ville Article, Prison Abolition, and Watermelons

by Raven

We are now into early September articles on Facebook.

And we start off with yet another article about the Twin Oaks fire–but this one is from a local newspaper.

This did fairly well on Facebook, with six likes, a ‘care’, a ‘sad’, one share, and a hundred and sixty-seven views.

Serenity Solidarity posted about an “anti-prison” event.

This, unfortunately, did not do very well, with no likes (etc) and only sixty-seven views.

Finally, East Wind posted about their watermelons.

This post also did well, with thirteen likes, six loves, and a hundred and eighty-six views.

Richard at East Wind

East Wind published this post: “Meet Richard, our long term garden manager since 2009. He’s an All-Star EastWinder. You can find him cooking dinner featuring all EastWind homegrown produce and participating in our Nut Butters jar shifts. In his free time, he loves beating people at strategy board games. He knows the surroundings woods like the back of his hand and often takes our visitors on Land Walks.

“I first came to East Wind in 2008. The process that led me here started with my lifelong interest in plants/horticulture, which evolved into learning more sustainable and regenerative methods for working with the land such as organic gardening and permaculture design. When I learned about intentional communities, I was intrigued and visited several before settling on East Wind. I have managed the gardens for the majority of the time that I have lived here. In recent years, I have been putting more energy into seed saving and plant breeding to adapt crops to be more resilient to our particular conditions as well as the needs and desires of the community while being less dependent on outside inputs. 

“East Wind is a good setting for those interested in land based activities such as gardening, animal husbandry, and forestry, as well as recreational activities in nature such as hiking, camping and paddling the Ozark rivers. An advantage to living at East Wind is that you can both have nature all around you but also not be super isolated as there is a good sized group of people here as well, and group social activities ranging from games, parties, to group float trips and camping trips.”

#organicgardening#permaculture#ozarks#intentionalcommunities

Music, Kakao, Scramble

by Raven

Another decent week on Facebook, statistics wise. Not much happening at the communes so besides posts from Acorn and East Wind Nutbutters, I added another commune puzzle.

While Acorn/the VA communes have their own bands, apparently Lucas is also playing in an area band, Circle the Drain (which Acorn posted as “Square the Drain” for some Acornish reason). Lucas is also part of the communal band Megafauna.

You can see a tiny clip of the show, with Lucas finishing off with a lovely bass run.

It did fairly well, with six likes and a hundred and fifty-six views.

East Wind Nutbutters (East Wind’s main business) posted about their partnership with a local chocolate maker.

This did pretty well also, with seven loves (including one from EW Nut Butters), five likes, and a hundred and seventy-six views.

Finally, emboldened by the success of the pop quiz, as well as the commune crossword doing okay, and needing to fill a couple of days of content, I created a word scramble featuring the names of ten communities that at least had done some income-sharing and had been featured on Commune Life in the past six months.

Could you do this? Don’t cheat. If you want to figure it out now, the answers are below.

The comments we got were telling:

I thought that Mary’s idea was so good that I plan to do it in the future, as I responded.

And this post did very, very well, with five likes, one love, and a very solid two hundred and ninety-nine views.

I know, this puzzle wasn’t easy by any means . Give yourself a metaphorical pat on the back if you even tried it and more if you got some right.

Okay, here’s the answers:

Strangely enough (to me at least) the answer post was not anywhere near as popular as the original puzzle. Maybe a lot of folks couldn’t do it and didn’t want to know the answers. Only two likes and barely over a hundred views.

Haircut, Tiny House, Culty, The Trail, and The Internet

by Raven

This is the week the pictures went back on Facebook–not because Facebook brought them back, but because I realized that I could put them there. I did and I think that our statistics improved.

They certainly did well for a simple post about a haircut at Twin Oaks.

This post did very, very well on Facebook, with five likes, two loves, two comments, and nearly three hundred views.

Cambia’s a small community that hasn’t been doing well and I haven’t mentioned in a while, but then Paxus wrote an article about it, so I reposted it here.

You can read the original post Paxus wrote for more details.

This post did okay with two loves and a like, and a hundred and thirty-nine views.

Stephan from Twin Oaks wrote a post about how you can tell if a community is a cult, or as he put it, “culty”.

You might want to read the whole article which looks at each of the questions and then Stephan talks about how Twin Oaks does in relation to being culty.

This did good, with five likes, a love, a wow, and a hundred and seventy-three views.

Meanwhile, East Wind posted about going to the Appalachian Trail with their nut butters.

This also did very, very well (probably not surprising with some lovely pictures) and got five loves (including one from East Wind Nut Butters), thirteen likes, and two hundred and seventy-six views.

Finally, Twin Oaks is still in fire recovery mode–but they have the internet back.

This post did okay with four likes, two loves, and a hundred and thirteen views. Not super great but at least we got over a hundred views on every post this week. I guess having pictures makes some difference.