Intercommunal Support, Season Extension, Green Eggs, Denver, and Alliums

by Raven

Unfortunately, this week last month, was the beginning of a slide in Facebook ratings for us. I’m not sure what is going on but we didn’t get a lot of viewers on Facebook, not even reaching my one hundred mark once this week.

I thought the posts were interesting, though. The first was a clear case of the Louisa communities relying on each other.

While this post didn’t do great on Facebook (it didn’t even nearly reach the hundred mark), it did the best of any of our reposts of this particular week, with three likes, a love, and eighty-eight views.

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange wrote what I thought was an interesting article of ways of extending the growing season.

Here’s a link to the full article.

As I said, I thought it was interesting. Apparently Facebook didn’t. It got no likes, loves, or comments and only a dreadful twenty-nine views, making it the worst performer in a bad week.

We haven’t posted anything about the Baltimore Free Farm in a while and I noted that they have had some changes. The article is from April but it does reflect some of what’s going on there.

(I guess by “Olive-Egger” they meant a hen that lays olive colored eggs.)

For such a low viewing week, this didn’t do too, too badly, with two likes and eighty-three views.

East Wind’s nutbutter business travels to trade shows around the country, and this post was about them going to Colorado.

While this post didn’t do well by any means, it landed in the middle of a bad week for viewers with four likes and fifty-nine viewers.

And last, but not quite least, I reposted another piece from Southern Exposure about their allium shipments, an important part of their season.

And this wound up with just two likes and fifty-two views.

I would like to tell you that things went uphill on Facebook from here, and they did, but not incredibly well, for the most part. More about this next year.

Tree Hugger, River Ride, Ex-Prisoner, Piggies, and Networking

by Raven

This was a week on Facebook, toward the end of September, where we did very well over all, and posted (and reposted) a lot of interesting stuff, although I think one of the most interesting things didn’t do very well at all.

East Wind posted pictures of a member who really likes trees.

This post did okay, with four likes, a love, and a hundred and five views.

Twin Oaks had a guest that decided to make a video of his canoe ride down the river that flows through the community.

If you want to go along for the ride, the video is on YouTube.

I guess some folks did want to go since this post got five likes, three loves, a comment, and a hundred and forty-three views.

Ericka is an activist who I admire very much and really cares about people. I posted this from the Serenity Solidarity website.

I was very touched by this but apparently not very many people were. This post did the worst of the week, with one ‘care’ and only fifty-four views.

East Wind, like a lot of rural communities, raises animals. Here they are showing off their little piggies.

Lots of other folks must have thought they were cute as well because this post got four likes, four loves, a comment, and a hundred and thirty-four views.

Finally, I’ve learned that if I want to pull in viewers, there’s nothing like a good, perhaps controversial question. Here’s what I asked this time.

And, yes, folks had thoughts. Here’s the comments we got.

And, yes, it certainly brought in folks. It got fifteen likes, one love, seven comments (above), and two hundred and twenty-three views. As I said, a good question.

Serenity Solidarity Work Party, Part Three

A bunch of us went out to help Serenity Solidarity with work needed on their new place and, while a bunch of work needed to be done on the beams and kitchen indoors, some of us also helped with outside work, including spreading gravel on the driveway so tires wouldn’t get stuck in the mud. The first picture is of the house and the drive, the second is of Erin and Jess shoveling out the gravel, and the third is of an area that was patched with the gravel. There was also a small pond that needed work and a hoop house that had gotten overgrown (before and after). Finally, there’s a picture of Ethan from the Possibility Alliance in Maine with Ericka from Serenity Solidarity and baby Kiwi.

Expanding Commune Life

by Raven

For the past eight years I have managed Commune Life with a fairly strict definition of ‘Communes’ as income sharing communities.  I’ve occasionally gone beyond that to talk about  where or how income sharing communities fit into the larger communities movement, the process of creating communities in general, or even sharing in general.

Now with the FEC dormant and income sharing communities seemingly less visible (other than the big three of Twin Oaks, East Wind, and Acorn), if not far fewer, I’m going to expand the scope of Commune Life just a little.  I still want to focus on income sharing communities (and Commune Life will still have lots of posts from and about Twin Oaks, East Wind, and Acorn), but I am going to include other experiments in sharing, like partial income sharing, and other communal experiments, looking at stuff on the leading edge of the communities movement.  I’m also going to start looking at what I will call scrappy little communities–small communities with some type of special mission, some of which might not be income sharing (more about that next week).  I also want to explore more the phenomenon of ‘clusters of communities’, perhaps as well as regional networks of communities which seem to be forming, and various examples of extending sharing through mutual aid and interdependence that have some community involvement, and maybe even looking at communities with a mission (income sharing or not) that are changing and growing in interesting ways.

What I’m not interested in is general stuff about communities, especially plain old co-ops, cohousing groups, or ecovillages, or big networks of them (national or global).  There are lots of other spaces for that: the Foundation for Intentional Community, NASCO, CohoUS, the Global Ecovillage Network, etc. 

Don’t get me wrong; these are great. They’re just not my area of interest and as I said, they are already covered.

But I’m ready to expand what we do here, covering communities and communal experiments even if they are not strictly income sharing.  I’m interested in things that are, at least, edgy–the new, the small, the experimental, the radically different–as long as they are still promoting some type of sharing.

I hope you will join me as we continue to explore where communes and communities are going in the third decade of the twenty-first century.  My belief is that we need these kinds of alternatives more than ever.

Convergence, Garlic & Shallots, and Acorn & Ira

by Raven

This is the last stuff from the month of July. It was a slow week on the commune front and I only posted three new things on Facebook–and two of them were from Acorn.

The one that wasn’t was about the Convergence of Intentional Communities.

This post, unfortunately, didn’t do so well, with just two likes, one comment, and only seventy-three views.

Acorn’s first post was about the garlics and shallots that their business was offering.

This did just a bit better with five likes and ninety-three views.

Finally, Acorn also posted a video with Ira opening it.

This is, of course, a still from the video. Here’s a link to the Instagram video.

And this did the best of the bunch–maybe because of Ira (who is often a draw). It got eleven likes, four loves, five comments, three shares, and a hundred and eighty-five views. We definitely had a lot more posts with a lot more views but this was by far the most viewed of the new ones this week.

The First Convergence of Intentional Communities

by Raven

I will have to admit that I did not attend much of the Convergence, other than the opening.  Two reasons:  first, I thought it was a one day, Monday event and had scheduled my departure for Tuesday.  More to what I needed, I realized that it was focused on national and global organizing and especially around ecovillages and larger communities, and right now my focus is on local organizing and, of course, income-sharing communities, especially small new ones.

The opening was impressive.  The three organizers of this event all spoke, one at a time, beginning with Paxus Calta who said that he thought this first meeting would be historic and compared it to the First International, where anarchists debated socialists, and many streams of radical organizing followed.  He said that one of his lovers said that he was egotistical to believe that, but then he heard Daniel Greenberg compare it to the first moonshot.

Paxus

Daniel Greenberg was, as you can imagine from that introduction, very enthusiastic about this Convergence, talking about his work with the Global Ecovillage Network and the Foundation for Intentional Community, and how the next step is to strengthen the networks and build, not just nationally, but internationally.

Daniel

Sky Blue said that they were the skeptic of the group.  They certainly wanted the things that Paxus and Daniel wanted, but they weren’t sure that it was achievable at this event.  They said that they told Paxus and Daniel that but Paxus and Daniel asked them to come and lead anyway, feeling that it would be good to have a skeptic in the group.

Sky

What followed was indeed an intensive two day program. As far as I could see, before I left early Tuesday afternoon, there was a lot of work being done–and flipcharts full of notes everywhere.

One of the many flipcharts

In some ways, I’m sorry that I missed most of the Convergence, but at this point I think my energies are better off going into helping to create communities, and helping to create local and regional community networks.  It’s not that I don’t think that there is a need for national and global networks, it’s just that it’s not where my passion is. So instead, I took care of myself and I also helped out a bunch behind the scenes, especially around the food.  (We had the same overworked cook as we did for the Communities Conference.)

I asked Sky what they thought was accomplished at the Convergence, and this is what they wrote: “I’m happy with how it went. I’m also aware of how much more we could have done if we had funding. But it was wonderful to see people from so many different communities connecting and building relationships. That was enough. And I’m sure this was an important learning experience for people in this movement about this kind of organizing. Beyond that, it’s all about the follow up. We’ll see what happens. Yes, I’m skeptical, because we’ve been here before. But this was a better organized and more ambitious effort, and no matter what, we have to keep trying. Giving up isn’t an option.“

The Leaves of Twin Oaks: Summer 2024

News of the Oaks by Valerie
Fire Recovery by Jason
Common Wealth Seed Growers by Zoe
Conference Announcements

News of the Oaks by Valerie

Our biggest news is that after a few years of low population, we are about to hit Pop Cap (our maximum population). If/when that happens, we’ll still be hosting our Visitor Program as per usual, but it may take a little longer for accepted Visitors to return.

Celebrations Our two big events recently were our annual Anniversary, with ex-members returning to help us celebrate Twin Oaks’ 57th year of existence; and also we hosted the wedding of community friends Ken and Irena, with a gathering including “Ken and Irena Jeopardy” and Ken’s brother who is an Episcopal priest officiating. ‍

Sustainability: We’ve been busy with various projects. Our “eco-residence” that has 10 bedrooms, 2 living rooms and 1 bathroom off-grid, got an upgrade of new solar panels. Ex-member Debbie, now living at neighboring community Living Energy Farm helped install them.‍  
We had several members take a literal field trip, to help harvest sweet potato slips at a farm we are connected with a couple of hours away. They were working with our sister community Acorn’s business Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and Ujamaa, a BIPOC-led organization that works to bridge the gap between prospective BIPOC seed growers and seed companies.

Summer Activities for Kids and their Kid-like friends: The “Twin Oaks Swim Team” is a group of kids and adults here who are dedicated to swimming in the pond every day! It’s a rotating cast of characters but has included Finley, Jessie, Nick, Indigo and Dave. Go team! Also a number of Twin Oaks kids are attending Shiloh Quaker Summer Camp an hour or two away from us. This year, several adults will also be participating in the camp as staff/support. 

Second Edition: our member Pam Dawling, who has written two definitive books on farming/garden, has been hard at work on the second edition of her first book “Sustainable Market Farming”.

 

Fire Recovery by Jason

This March, a wildfire swept through parts of the community and destroyed our conference site, warehouse, sawmill, machinery, hammocks inventory and many other items vital to the economic self-sufficiency of the community. In the aftermath of the fire, we made the call to shut down the Hammocks business. With margins already thin in order to compete with overseas producers, and the loss of specialized equipment, making significant investments towards rebuilding seemed unlikely. We’ll finish up some hammocks using supplies which were off-site before the shop is converted into space for our Seed Racks business. 
This is a blow to the community in both an economic and emotional sense. While the days of hammocks being our main source of income are long gone, the business sustained the community for many years, providing work and creating a much loved product that made a name for ourselves. While it is hard to say goodbye to this era of Twin Oaks, we are also looking at our community economy going forward. The Process Team kickstarted a “CommEcon” process, in which members submit proposals for new business ideas that the community could use to generate income. We will spend the summer deliberating proposals, and decisions about where to allocate resources will likely happen towards the end of the year. 
Proposals include a pottery business, renewing our hammock-chair production, (but not regular hammocks), sewing textile goods, online teaching, tech support for local businesses, video game creation, building an eco AirBnB, and the expanding of the relationship between Twin Oaks and Common Wealth Seed Growers, a seed company run by one of our members with a focus on plant breeding and resilience in our seed systems. (see other article for more info on Common Wealth Seed Growers)  
While we have not been able to start the cleanup efforts at EC yet due to the need for fire investigations, we have been able to start the cleanup and rebuilding of our conference site. A group of communards from our sister communities in Missouri will come to help, and we are hopeful that this work can progress quickly. We are planning on hosting a full slate of conferences this year, including the Communities Conference, Women’s Gathering, and Queer Gathering. (See links elsewhere in this issue for more info.)

Clean up at conference site.The forest is likewise beginning its process of recovery. The fire was quick burning, passing through areas quickly and consuming leaf litter, but not catching the trees. Many large trees show some charring around their base, but it appears that they will survive. Many of the smaller saplings did not leaf out, leaving an empty and brown understory, which contrasts with the untouched canopy, and the forest floor which is vigorously sprouting new life.‍

Ex-member Alexis-LEF was a firefighter and has been helping us prepare for another disaster. He installed the fire hose hookups near our residences some 30 years ago, which were instrumental in saving Tupelo. Since the fire, he has hosted a tour of our firefighting infrastructure, gotten us more firehose to place around the community, transformed our old tofu wastewater truck into a firetruck, and is advising us on forming our own fire brigade that can respond to fires on the property and direct the local firefighters on how to assist us.

Common Wealth Seed Growers by Zoe

While Edmund is one of the more renowned farmers at Twin Oaks, he rarely works in the main food garden. Rather, he manages several fields off the farm. He is part of Common Wealth Seed Growers, a cooperative project that produces and sells regionally-adapted, open-pollinated seeds. They only sell what grows well on their farms in Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina. Common Wealth Seed Growers also use an open source seed promise for some of the seed varieties they’ve developed and their derivatives which promise to not restrict others’ use of the seeds they’ve developed or any of their derivatives to help combat corporate monopolization of seed varieties.

Edmund began breeding new produce variations back in 2011. Only three years later, Common Wealth Seed Growers received a Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education grant to identify downy mildew resistant strains in cucumber, melon and winter squash. They also received grants from the Organic Farming Research Foundation in 2018 and 2019 for similar research.  
Edmund manages seed production as an income area for Twin Oaks. He sells seeds produced by Common Wealth Seed Growers, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and other seed companies. Edmund envisions Common Wealth Seed Growers expanding in the future, and employing many more Twin Oaks members. As it is, Edmund does enlist a few Oakers in the process. Seed saving includes planting, nurturing, harvesting, cleaning, packing, and shipping – all of which are labor intensive. Thankfully, many here enjoy such work. Arguably, the most notable of these tasks is harvesting seed from squash and gourds – something that is best done by hand, and is always messy. Common Wealth Seed Growers pays Twin Oaks by the hour as ‘outside work’ for tasks done by members that aren’t directly agricultural such as marketing, website, and inventory management. In addition to providing money, seed production and research, the work provides an abundance of organic food for the community including cucumbers, bell peppers, cantaloupe and winter squash. This has allowed the community to dine on varieties we have never had before, such as the Guatemalan Green Ayote squash that has forest green innards and a sweet flavor. Visit commonwealthseeds.com to view or request their 2024 product catalog by mail and find out more information about their mission. 

Conference Announcements‍

Twin Oaks Queer Gathering Friday August 2 – Sunday August 4
A weekend of queertranstastic fun, learning, workshops, networking, revelry, and more! twinoaksqueergathering.org

Twin Oaks Women’s Gathering Friday August 16 – Sunday August 18
An inclusive gathering of women celebrating ourselves in the woods.
womensgathering.org

Twin Oaks Communities Conference Friday August 30 – Monday September 2 (Labor Day Weekend) communitiesconference.org‍
If you live or want to live according to the values of cooperation and sustainability, this conference is for you. The conference focuses on intentional communities and on the larger cooperative movement.

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.

Capitalism, Planting, New Members, Sandals, and Coming Together

by Raven

This is from our Facebook feed the week after the Twin Oaks fire. Some of these posts were originally scheduled for the previous week but delayed to fit in all the posts about the fire and one of these is from Twin Oaks talking about the aftermath of the fire.

This first post is a link to what I think is a very interesting analysis of how communities deal with the realities of capitalism, an essay by Sky Blue which I knew we had to repost here as soon as I saw it. It was already posted on the Federation of Egalitarian Communities Facebook page, which is where I got Sky’s quote about the effect of their life at Twin Oaks and with the FEC.

Here’s a link to the original article.

Unfortunately, it didn’t do that well on our Facebook feed, with six likes, one share, and only eighty-four views.

Acorn Community and their business, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, are all about the seeds–and the planting of them.

Here’s a link to the Southern Exposure website.

This post did okay with seven likes, a share, and a hundred and twenty-four views.

One of the posts that got bumped was from Twin Oaks talking about getting new members. I assume that as they are rebuilding from the fire, they will still be looking for new members.

This did pretty well, with six likes, one love, one care, and a hundred and sixty views.

Although the main business at East Wind is nut butters, they also make sandals, using the same rope that Twin Oaks used for their hammocks (now only a memory in the wake of the fire).

Here’s the website for Utopian Rope Sandals.

Maybe people didn’t know that East Wind made sandals. This post did very well, with seven likes, a love, a share, and just over two hundred views.

Finally, a post fire post from Twin Oaks about support, care, and gratitude in the wake of this disaster.

This post did very, very well (best of the week) with six likes, six cares, one love, and two hundred and eighteen views.

A Network of Clusters

by Raven

Okay.  Now for something completely different.

The FEC (Federation of Egalitarian Communities) is in trouble.  The FIC (Foundation for Intentional Communities) seems to be doing well but is busy trying to be all things for all kinds of communities.  There are certain people craving something bigger than the FEC but smaller than the FIC.  I’ve heard that there is at least one plan for a new organization in the works.

One of the things I’ve found most interesting that’s developed over the last twenty, thirty years is local groupings of communities, what I once referred to as “Communities of Communities” and more recently as “Clusters”.  The large and ever-changing ecosystem of communities in Louisa County, Virginia is one example.  The tri-communities of Rutledge, Missouri, Sandhill Farm, Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, and Red Earth Farms (which also might include other communities in Northeast Missouri–sometimes referred to as the NEMO communities) would be another.  A third are the queer communities in Tennessee, a bit publicity shy, but I think there are at least three of them near each other.  I also wouldn’t be surprised to find out that there is a small network of communities in the Bay Area of California–or that there may be other groupings emerging elsewhere out of the post-pandemic mutual aid networks.

I am starting to think about something that probably wouldn’t really be a viable option for maybe a decade but might be interesting to build toward now.  If these community clusters could become more solid, I’m wondering about the possibility of creating an organization that could connect the clusters.  This would be a whole ‘nother level up from the FEC, FIC, and various organizations of co-ops, cohousing, and ecovillages.  It would be a network of clusters of communities of people. This would be nested, the way that cities and towns are nested in counties and counties are nested in states.  It could be quite large while still being able to be very decentralized.

And talk about sharing.  First of all, this could include a bunch of income-sharing communities.  The Louisa cluster already has a lot, including Twin Oaks, Acorn, and Living Energy Farm.  Sandhill, in Rutledge, used to be income-sharing and my understanding is that Red Earth Farms there might include some income-sharing homesteads.  Also, I have heard that some of the Tennessee queer communities practice some things that are similar to income-sharing.

But also, each of these clusters practices sharing between communities–and I have been intrigued by learning about different intercommunal sharing practices.  And this could bump it up another level.  One of the main things that the FEC did was to facilitate intercommunal travel and labor exchange (“LEXing”).  A network of clusters could figure out how to travel and share between clusters.

While this idea is not exactly about income-sharing communities, it’s really about how to practice sharing and mutual aid on a larger scale.  Again, while I don’t see a network like this appearing anytime soon, I’m hoping that this is something that community activists will think about and put on their radar screen.  I think this is an important intermediate step between community building and larger societal change.  Although it very well may not ever happen, I think that it’s definitely worth considering.