Acorn Community

day of the dead altar

sixer and i organized a low-key celebration for day of the dead just after halloween. we turned the piano into an altar complete with marigolds, other flowers, painted skull masks, candles, personal offerings, and lots of skull cookies. here are a few photos.

skull cookies

for those of you unfamiliar (we were pretty unfamiliar too!), day of the dead is a celebration of loved ones who have passed on. it is often a multi-day celebration, during which families honor those who have passed with flowers, favorite foods, drink, and other things the dead might miss from life on earth.  there is typically a parade to the related cemetery, where festivities continue, altars are created, and offerings are made. stories of dead loved ones are shared amidst traditional sweet bread and sugar skulls. there are also often dolls made to look like the deceased.

day of the dead altar

we had a fun time with the cookies – i made vaguely skull-shaped sugar cookies and then filled a few henna cones with chocolate icing for decorating. we ended up with cookies decorated as famous folks, bugs, spaceships, and all manner of crazy things.

acorners around the bonfire

in anticipation of the rains that came today, jason lit up our massive burn pile last night and we gathered round for an evening of fire worship. some sang, some just sat and pondered, others convened in the smoke shack (that’s most nights, though). there were swapped massages, poi spinning, and offerings released into the fire to be cleansed.

though sometimes our fires are a big event involving food and friends and frenzied activity, last night was much more calm, and with the number of people at acorn now, it’s starting to feel like we have a nice big cozy family to celebrate with. these are the good times.

mousetrap (my cat of 18 years, a venerable old lady) joined me around the fire, enjoying various laps and much tall grass for late night stalking. that’s us in the picture, with various acorners in the background (and the fire, of course).

you can see a nice picture of the fire itself on the “culture and recreation” page under “about us”.

just a few nights ago odilia and i set out on a mission to create herbal massage oils. a lot of massage exchanges happen here, what with garden work as a daily chore, and the re-organizing of heavy boxes of seed catalogs, huge bags of seed – you get the idea. we end up with a lot of sore backs and people looking to loosen up.

i’ve been reading about various ways to infuse oils with fresh herbs, and finally settled on a method. so we went into the herb garden, kindly asked a few of the herbs to let us take some of their leaves to help nourish our sore muscles, and then harvested away. we chose four different herbs – lavender, sage, rosemary, and lemon balm. luckily our patches of these herbs are healthy and overflowing, even after our first frost.

lemon balm oil

into the kitchen we went, where we chopped and poured into sterilized and dried jars. we chopped, and waited. heated water (to sterilize jars), and waited. dried jars in the toaster oven, and waited. and finally, filled the jars with herb and oil, capped them, and

waited. the oils have to infuse for six weeks. we’ll have worked up some serious knots by december second! while those cure we’ve created two other little jars of oil that we mixed together with some essential oils, so our massage nights aren’t so lackluster (if there is such a thing!).

herb infused oils

i found the process of pouring oil over the fresh herbs surprisingly beautiful. the pictures aren’t top notch, but they will hopefully convey a bit of the magic that went into that evening of creation.

have you created herbal infusions of any sort? what did you make, and for what purpose? thanks for reading!

recently i asked what you wanted me to write about here. i got one response from a reader named franklin asking for “reasons why folks move into acorn community… and what keeps them there.”

well, this is for you, franklin.

rainbow with onlookers

it is, of course, easiest for me to speak from my own experience, so i’ll do that first. i was drawn to acorn at the wee age of 19, when i had finished my ‘general ed’ courses in college and was required to choose a major to continue studying. i was paying my own way (and working three jobs while taking out loans – it still wasn’t enough), and couldn’t see any sense in paying for some degree that i couldn’t even afford unless i was sure i wanted it. and so, one spring day as i sat at my computer, my subconscious spoke up. a buzzword that i had heard but not noticed popped into my head. “intentional community” it said. i did a web search, and found ic.org and thefec.org. from there i realized that there were two intentional communities near my home – acorn and twin oaks.

acorn appealed to me because of the seed business – looking for something important to focus on in my life had led me away from college and out into adventure, and growing and preserving healthy organic seeds seemed pretty darn important. so i wrote my visitor letter and came for two weeks at the end of spring in 2007.

the healthiest meal of my life, up to that point

by the end of the two weeks i had

• felt the exhileration of not needing an alarm clock
• successfully eaten more healthy vegetables than i ever had in my life (no, seriously.)
• enjoyed physical work in the outdoors with people who were fun and open-hearted
• been in awe of the tolerance and understanding i found (e.g. not being yelled at for mistakes)
• enjoyed a high number of quick friendships with mature, open, and honest adults
• fell in love with the beautiful land, climate, and wildlife

so those were my initial reasons. there are ups and downs, of course. every community is different. i have been through two big personality clashes, cried at meetings, howled at the moon, thrown a surprise 60th birthday party for a dear friend, and enjoyed countless moments of wonder and awe with others here at the farm. there have been double rainbows, cool bugs, exciting projects successfully completed, delicious food tended from seed to seed, lots of silly moments, and many evenings of movie-watching and video games (don’t forget delicious homemade popcorn!). i’ve been supported in efforts to become a healthier person, but have also had the space to go within myself and grow. i have struggled through community process that didn’t always turn out how i wanted.

chocolate heart homecoming cake with a platypus sweet potato.

i suppose what it comes down to is this: i love this land, and i love many of the people here. they bring laughter and joy into my life much more often than sadness, and i am enriched by sharing a home with them. there is meaningful work to be done here, and the space and flexibility for me to pursue the type of lifestyle that i crave (mostly focused on sustainability and self-sufficiency). and that’s about all a creature can ask for, isn’t it?

i’ll post a poll in heartwood and see if i can get responses from other acorners. feel free to comment and ask more questions!

several days ago myself and several other acorners volunteered at the first ever day of workshops presented jointly by master gardeners and master naturalists. the theme was ‘moving toward sustainability’. we learned about supporting butterflies throughout their lifecycles, creating habitat for wildlife along the edges of fields, replacing invasive plants with natives, and thereby supporting local pollinators, and maintaining your harvest into fall and through winter. i learned about a few plants that might do well around our farmhouse – it’s an area full of dry shade, which makes landscaping tricky. and, perhaps best of all (as i now sit listening to the rain splashing on the leaves outside), the weather was beautiful.

here at acorn we’re working toward sustainability as well. bathrooms are not often thought of as places to start ‘going green’, but circumstances have prodded me to do so over the last year, and so i’ve made some changes.

cloth toilet wipe

in the bathrooms at acorn, we have low-flow toilets to conserve water. we have a normal trash can, and then a box or bag for paper waste – mostly cardboard toilet paper rolls and their wrappers. this waste is either fed to the furnace as kindling, burnt on our ‘burn pile’ as kindling during potlucks and gatherings, or recycled.

i take it a step further. after living at red earth in northeastern missouri, i learned to live without running water or conventional toilets. since it is generally inadvisable to leave much urine in a composting toilet, i started to pee outside – anywhere off our few main paths was fine. though i did seek out shorter grasses, as ticks are a problem some of the year!

cloth toilet wipe

to facilitate my outdoor pee adventures, i made cloth toilet wipes out of old flannel shirts. it was incredibly easy, and takes about 12 minutes to make one. all i do is cut out two squares of fabric (about 4-5″ per side), sew up three sides, flip it inside out, and sew around the outside edges to further protect the inside seams during machine washing. of course, at red earth, i washed them by hand, with dr. bronner’s soap and rainwater.

some of you may wonder how it works – it’s simple! you keep a clean wipe in your pocket for whenever the moment arises. when it does, take the wipe out, wipe yourself clean with soft flannel goodness, and then – depending on your comfort levels with such things – either consider the wipe ‘dirty’ and put it in the wash pile, or fold it up and put it back in your pocket to be used again later.

this is a great way to save money on toilet paper, and very helpful if you live on a lot of land and a toilet isn’t always handy. also great for camping trips!

so what do you think? would you ever make or buy toilet wipes? what would your concerns be? how would you see it working in your home?

autumn has settled in at acorn, and i’ve just moved back in after almost an entire year away. my name’s joan – and i’ll be doing my best to give you some beautiful pictures and exciting stories to check out here at acorn’s web site.

if there’s anything in particular you’d like me to cover about life at acorn, feel free to comment!

in the meantime, here’s a recent picture – our watermelon harvest. a resident dog, moonbeam, guards them from squirrels during the day (by which i mean he lays around out front, where the watermelons happen to be, and also likes to chase squirrels).

i’m also working on making this site look a bit more snazzy – adding photos, more and newer information, and (as you may have noticed) nice, crisp, and seasonally themed photos to the top of the site. i hope you enjoy those! i had a lot of fun picking them out. it’s a treat to have photographers come through as visitors or interns and take nice photographs for us.

here’s another nice one – a rose growing along the northern edge of the herb garden, which is surprisingly free of weeds right now, thanks to lots of helping hands throughout spring and summer.

On September 12th,  Acorn’s seed business, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, will once again present the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello on Montalto, the “High Mountain” over-looking Thomas Jefferson’s historic gardens. In conjunction with the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants, the day long festival will offer food tastings, a seed swap, and hands-on workshops and demonstrations.

PRESENTERS include:
Dr. Amy Goldman – Author of “The Heirloom Tomato” and Seed Savers Exchange Board President
William Woys Weaver – Food historian, author, contributing editor for Mother Earth News and curator of the Roughwood Seed Collection
Peter J. Hatch – Author of “The Fruits and Fruit Trees of Monticello,” “Thomas Jefferson and the Origins of American Horticulture,” and Monticello Director of Gardens and Grounds
Barbara Pleasant – Author of “The Complete Compost Gardening Guide,” and contributing editor for Mother Earth News
Dr. David Bradshaw – Naturalist, professor emeritus of horticulture at Clemson University, and collector of heirloom seeds and their stories
Dr. Jeanine Davis – Author, “Growing and Marketing Ginseng, Goldenseal and other Woodland Medicinals”
Peggy Cornett – Director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants
Kathleen Maier – Director of Sacred Plant Traditions and Co-founder of Virginia Plant Savers

For updates on the program, news and presenters click here.

We hope to swap seeds with you there!

Happy Birthdays went out to Ben, Gpaul and Emma Goldman (the lady not the commune) on Saturday. We feted these towering revolutionaries by sampling a variety of bourgie craft beers- though Puck lamented that we didn’t serve any of Ben’s homemade Mint Chocolate Stout.

Lots of Twin Oakers and friends- including Robert, Thea, Jonah and Gwen from Charlottesville and Cricket and Guido from Dixie Hollow Road. Afterwards, dancing at Twin Oaks. No one told us it was Shiloh’s birthday, too. Happy Birthday, Shiloh!

Last night we had a discussion of feminism at Acorn- it’s a complicated topic for us, for everybody. We call ourselves feminist in our propaganda, and we commit as members of the Federation of Egalitarian Communities to actively fight against oppression in all its forms. Do we do that? Are we feminist?

This took place in our Thursday night meeting- which is dedicated to weekly discussions of the larger issues, policies, and directions we want to take living at Acorn- in these meetings we discuss development, conflict, egalitarianism, the future of the business- one topic a week.

No one said in the meeting they were opposed to being feminist. But, as usual when you explore concepts, deviations arose between us concerning aims and means. What small, practical steps should we take? To what larger understandings should we commit?

One big question is our gender imbalance. We have more men than women members- though, in terms of interns, guests, visitors, and associates we’re pretty even in the number of men and women on the farm at any given time. This is a relatively new phenomenon at Acorn. Any group of small numbers can experience large statistical shifts because two or three people in a single demographic decide to leave- which is what happened here last year.

This is a big question for most communities- theories as to why abound. But, in general the working rule is men join communities much more quickly and in higher numbers than women. Nature, nurture, philosophical, political and social arguments can be made to explain, dispute or verify all of this. That’s not the point of this post.

The point is that we are talking about it. One participant in the discussion kept track of how many times men spoke and how many times women spoke in the meeting and found it proportional- men and women making room for each other, men differing with men, women differing with women, and topics ambling from gender politics to occupational opportunities, and from communication strategies to structural problems and recruitment realities.

Moving forward, we want to look at norms and policies changes, as well as to go deeper into the subject so we can come to a consensus on the main issue- that we are an actively feminist community, dedicated to listening to each other, seeing in ourselves our failings as others see them, and learning together ways out of old and destructive patterns.

We need to keep bringing this subject up- in our meetings, in our meal-time discussions, in the smoke shack, whenever someone feels shunted aside, or shut up by someone else. That’s the commitment we made last night.

Villages in the Sky, a festival in development, is using Acorn as a testbed for treehouse designs. According to the design blog, “The vision is to create a village of treehouses, in age appropriate loops- one for the adults and one for kids- to be enjoyed and played in by all.”  The Acorn project will work out the  kinks for a larger scale project for the week-long Villages in the Sky festival planned for the end of August 2010.

As described to us, Villages in the Sky seems to have three major goals- to be an “air” festival analogous to Burning Man (fire) and the Rainbow Gathering (earth); to promote wind energy as an alternative to nuclear and carbon fuel; and to move beyond the “leave no trace” ethic of those festivals by having a concrete impact- namely, leaving behind fun, attractive energy-generating wind structures.

Pilgrim, formerly of Twin Oaks and East Wind, has been directing a crew  clearing out debris from some old, fallen down trees and preparing the site in the woods behind Heartwood. Meanwhile, Gpaul, Ginger, Shal, and others are working up designs. We expect a lot of bustle this summer building the treehouses and getting ready for the Natural Building Workshop in October. And then a new seed office for SESE in 2010?