Recommended Readings

Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves (1988, 1994) by Kathryn McCamant & Charles Durrett

Creating a life together : practical tools to grow ecovillages and intentional communities (2003) by Diana Leafe Christian ; foreword by Patch Adams.

The Senior Cohousing Handbook (2009) by Charles Durrett

Guidelines for Success

With the excellent assistance of our professional facilitator, Peggy Jessome of Idea Gardens, the following members:

Cher King-Scobie, Alan Carpenter, Alan Dobbs, Tom Hoy, Ann Clement, Britta Jongkind Julia Jongking, Yonas Jongkind, Lois White, Matthew Redekop, Gerry Kilgannon

collaborated to bring together the following results:

We each chose a lived experience which represented how we want Yarrow Ecovillage to be; an experience when things came together, or when we had a sense that we were on to something. After sharing those experiences and the insights that came from them, we crafted the following guidelines that we think will keep us on course to develop the community we desire.

GUIDELINES FOR SUCCESS

1. Communicate to build community.

                        Work on mutual trust; It's the ground for collaboration.

                        Listen to others' experience and concerns

                        Address conflicts early

                        Make sure people feel heard

                        Honesty and openness in neighbours

                        Communicate important information

                        Promoter to “sound out” the group

                        Accept help

                        We manage expectations well

             

2. Agree on plans and strategies.

                        Teamwork furthers common goals

                        Define goals and timeline

                        Alignment and focus

                        Seek agreement on goals and purpose

                        Shared vision = Positive action

                        Plan with goal in mind

                        Trust in our process

                        Work collaboratively

                        Group inform and empower the “doer”

                        Never lose sight of the future

                        We are tidy; it shows caring

3. Be present

                        Share life now;ust in the future

                        Never lose sight of NOW

                        Commit to participate

                        Strengthen relationships through PARTICIPATION

                        Think of others

                        Take time for each other

    

4. Balance doing and being; head and heart.

                        Balance business and social

                        Balance pleasure with business

5. Accept and appreciate each other

                        Appreciate efforts of members

                        Provide/show appreciation        

                        Understand and accept one another

                        Look for the positive in actions

                        Allow mistakes; respond with generosity

                        Contribute your talent

                        Allow creativity

                        Find humour in events

                                                    

6.  Make space for joy and fun.

               Working hands-on together brings joy

                Get to know your neighbours

                Only give willingly, not begrudgingly

                 Make time for social events

                 Share meals often (at least once per week)

                 Have fun

WHAT WILL SUCCESS LOOK LIKE?

1.             A thriving community of all ages

2.            A vibrant local economy

3.            Living lightly on the la nd

4.            Land sustainable

5.            Successful part of Yarrow

Ecovillage Heading South – in a good way!

I’m not hearing the high traveling skeins of migrating geese anymore.  They must be well past us now, in their journey to their wintering grounds.  It is amazing to hear their indistinct high-up honking, even through the clouds, and then to catch glimpses of them in ‘V’s so large, that there are smaller ‘v’s branching out from the bigger one.  Many connected small dots in a thinner atmosphere.

There are lower flying geese and swans too, but invariably they’re headed the wrong way.  Making quite a flap, but going north.  (This is not a scientific observation, but I swear it’s a consistent one.)

Honking has become part of the vernacular around here.  It started when one of us was complimenting another for good leadership.  “HONK” she emailed ...HONK, HONK!  ... with an accompanying explanation that geese flying in formation and following a leader, honk as they go, holding the group together while backing up the leader.

Now, quite frequently, I’m getting and sending email ‘honks’.  And I’ve painted HONK on the side of my wheelbarrow so I can barrow and honk, at any time, in any direction. 

Wild poultry are inspiring for an Ecovillage, I reckon.

From the internet; http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/geese.html
Scientists have determined that the V-shaped formation that geese use when migrating serves two important purposes:
 First, it conserves their energy. Each bird flies slightly above the bird in front of him, resulting in a reduction of wind resistance. The birds take turns being in the front, falling back when they get tired. In this way, the geese can fly for a long time before they must stop for rest.
The second benefit to the V formation is that it is easy to keep track of every bird in the group. Fighter pilots often use this formation for the same reason.

There are a couple of ideas I like in there.

‘Taking turns being in front, falling back when tired’, is one.

 That’s what I call “dynamic leadership” I see that at work around here. And a good thing, too!  Creating an ecovillage is tiring. But there’s lots of honking around here on Clean-up Tuesdays organised by our carpenter...  and the barn is looking much more tidy and useable. 

When we take turns coming up with energy for initiatives, we can contribute our best, and then fall back later and allow another in our group to do the same. 

That strategy speaks to an imperative for each person to know where their own strengths are, and to offer only those.  If I fly in front, and not because I want to, but because I feel I should and that I’m afraid that if I don’t, no-one else will ... then I’m exhausting myself and not serving the group.  And I may be denying the strengths of others, too.

And those swans going north?  I’ve figured them out ... they’re Trumpeter Swans ...a considerable number of them winter in the Fraser Valley at Agassiz. (They were endangered, but their numbers are improving.)  I guess they do the Circle Farm Tour in a counterclockwise direction. http://circlefarmtour.com/index.php?page_id=13

The other idea that strikes me as fine, is that ‘it is easy to keep track of every bird in the group’.  This is another appropriate Ecovillage principle. And when Chuck Durrett comes in January to help us plan our village site plan, I’m going to be sure to contribute a lot around this one. Let’s plan our homes so the living room windows face each other and we can keep a close eye on our neighbours’ doings.

Just kidding! 

This is where Ecovillagers are different from geese, who have no sense of humour!

HONK!

Learning

I’ve made an error in writing in my latest Tale ...Three Seeds.  

In it, among other things,   I talked about how I was learning more about vegetable gardening from watching and listening to the gardeners around me, here in the Ecovillage.  (How wise and generous they all are!)  My Tales are my very personal observations.  But at the end of the last story...’Three Seeds’, I switched  to a ‘we’ in writing about how we would garden next year, instead of how “I’ will ... (avoiding so much soil disturbance with digging, contributing carbon to the atmosphere ...  etc) 

I’d like to take the ‘we’s back and substitute “I”s, please. I made a mistake. I apologise to my fellows.

I’m writing this, because of a reaction from a reader, who noted with concern, that he wouldn’t want to be in an Ecovillager and have to garden by consensus.

(And here I thought I was writing about cougars, and burning vs not-burning!)

At this Ecovillage, we may aim to make decisions for the group by consensus, but we don’t garden that way ...  at least I don't think we do.  Heaven forbid!

I couldn’t live here myself, if that were the case.  If I couldn’t make my own private nest in my house either,  if I couldn’t decline to lend my favourite digging fork, if I thought other villagers were peeking in my recycling bags to make sure I hadn’t put in Number 5-6 plastic or who would insist that I till or not till, burn or not burn, plant or not plant ground cover.

Consensus decision making in our village isn’t about that for me.  But it is about a whole lot of experiences that make this a truly remarkable, expanding, stretching, growing, hurting, and healing place to be.

As I learn more, would you like me to share  with you with more Tales?  They won’t be accurate or right.  You’ll have to figure them out.

CKNW Interview

Today, Michael was interviewed on CKNW by Anna Gebauer about the history and some of the latest developments at the Ecovillage. Listen here to the interview.

Three Seeds

I look out of my sunroom (soon-to-be art studio) windows southward, to Vedder Mountain.  There’s snow on dem thar hills.  If I were to stand on tiptoe, I’m sure I could reach up and touch it, but I don’t want to.

From my vantage place on the second floor, I look down and see my neighbour has rototilled a second patch of the Community Garden.  I’m glad to see his enthusiasm carrying on. 

We new residents have been dying to stake a claim in the garden so we can begin imagining what we’ll plant when  a) we have time b) it’s spring c) we’ve selected seeds from the catalogues.

I had already spread fall rye seed onto the first area he’d dug up.  I’ve not ever been a full-scale veggie grower before, but I have learned with other kinds of gardening, not to leave the soil naked and exposed.

After the fact, I asked our experienced Korean gardener what we should have done to get the soil ready for next year’s growing.  The soil is only this deep, he gestures with his hands, it needs protecting, not chewing up.  He tells me that if we’d burned the grass, instead of tilling,  we wouldn’t have disturbed the soil’s microbial system so much, and we’ve have added needed ‘charcoal’ as well. 

But not every farmer here agrees with him.  Another, says that burning contributes more carbon dioxide to the over-burdened atmosphere.  And someone else shakes her head and says the ground was much too wet for tilling.

Ah, well! We do our best with what we have at hand.

I’m thinking that opinions have always varied a lot around growing techniques.  Some gardeners use only native species,  plant according to the phases of the moon,  the Farmer’s Almanac, or how their Dad used to do it.  Others use a soil thermometer, intuition, or science.  It seems to me, many methods can have success. 

The Korean gardener looks at the second lot of cover-crop seeds I’ve spread ... fall rye, winter wheat and peas.  ‘All for the birds, this late in the year’, he laughs.  There is an old tradition, he tells me.  Plant three seeds in each hole ... one for the soil, one for the birds, one for you. 

After he’s gone, I look closely at the ground in the garden.  The birds haven’t taken more than their share of the scattered seeds (yet).  Even though we’ve had some frost and some sleety rain, the peas as well as the grains are germinating. 

Can you imagine how a seed wants to grow when it’s so cold? 

Nature’s imperative.

We think we know, and we don’t. It’s humbling. 

Humbling, like knowing a cougar has been spotted behind the gas station today.  And he came this way, through the park next-door and into our back field. There might even have been two, in the far pasture. And if they had cared to, they could have taken one of our children with them.  But they didn’t.

How can a cougar come here like that, so brazenly, when all this is ours, and he doesn’t belong?

One of our well-read villagers gives me a fragment of Systems Theory to hold for a moment.  Big organisations are like discreet organisms, they have self–protective mechanisms for their own survival, she reports. Like the Big Banks in a financial crisis.  Like companies that sell us on a ‘green solution’ of less packaging, but then use advertising to impel us to buy more products, more frequently.

Like Nature, who lets us garden and live in villages, but sends a cougar through on a whim, on the same day the peas are sprouting in cold earth.

So, in the spring, we won’t till when the soil is wet.  We’ll burn the grass to add potash.  And mulch and deepen the soil so our digging doesn’t disturb the micro-systems. We’ll save on carbon in the atmosphere by not driving to the store to buy vegetables.

We’ll laugh when the birds eat our seeds and feel blessed when a cougar passes through our garden, unnoticed. 

Fall in Leaves

We've been enjoying Ann's village tales this fall: here is one from November 8, 2009.  May we enjoy reading many more of her village tales on our Community Street South blog!

My house is nearing completion and it seems that the smallest things can cause the most trouble. Like a thingey adaptor attachment for the end of the track lighting in the living room. It’s the one I don’t have, that the electrician needs immediately, from the store that’s closed indefinitely for renovations. I’ve been into town (Chilliwack), back and forth now, four separate times in search of the thingey device and other necessary whingummies. As I’m a creature of habit, I take the same road each time ... I’m in a hurry and I’m imagining it’s the shortest route.


I travel along the skirt edge of Vedder Mountain, with farms and houses on one side and forested slopes on the other. I still can’t get over how the flat land on which the road lies, angles up sharply on the outside of the right-hand ditch and instantly becomes Mountain. I know that eons ago, the (mighty) Fraser was a torrent in a deep gully between two mountain ranges and has silted up year after year so that we, and all the farms in valley, are ‘floating’ upwards on the rising soil level. It’s still an astounding phenomenon, even when I understand it.

And the colours that the trees turn each year, are no less astounding for happening the same way, every year. The section of road between Yarrow and the Chilliwack River bridge is a favourite of mine ... with small, neat farms, modest but charming homesteads and paddocks with horses and/or ducks.

The mountain side is mostly big-leaf maple, cedar, fir, and hemlock with undergrowth of snowberry, oregon grape and ferns. The farm gardens on the other side of the road have an abundance of all sorts of species of trees and shrubs with more decorative leaves and forms and in many more hues. (We humans like variety, and the unusual, don’t we?)

I notice an escapee from civilized cultivation has hopped over the road and into freedom ... hops! ... it’s shinnying the telephone poles on the wild side. The Fraser Valley used to have many acres of hops in tidy rows. What happened? Do we drink less beer now?

(I don’t think so) Where do they grow hops now? China?

This time of year has always felt more like a brand new beginning, than January 1st. In long past years, it used to feel that way because I was either going to off to a fresh experience of school myself, or sending my offspring.

Now I feel the freshness of the season in a different way ... from the energy emanating from the extravagance of colour in the trees around me ... from the forest getting ready for winter

The colours change in first subtle ways, allowing a mellowing of their green and then they let loose with splendid colours. Each kind of bush, shrub and tree reveals its separate character by its different shades. Nature doesn’t hold back; she’s showy, joyous and exuberant.

I have always known I would enjoy having a handmade house, but I never imagined just how I would have it. And I’ve always dreamed of living in community, but didn’t know how that would come, either. And now, I’m finding a new beginning, in my new house, in a new village in the same way as a forest in fall. In joyous, mature, living colour.

And there are other new beginnings all around me ... construction zones are becoming homes, weedy fields tilled into rectangles and strangers turning into friends. I look out my window at night and see lighted windows where there were none only weeks ago. The routes through the farm are been trod by many feet into pathways.

Our village’s new beginning is like mine. Not freshly new-born, but from the energy of experience, change, consolidation and maturity. Long worked for, long yearned for.

Makes me want to paint the village red.

A Sign of the ...

We’ve had a storm front moving through and up the Fraser Valley.... it’s the Pineapple Express, bringing unexpectedly warm air, but with a wicked velocity that whips our dream-Hawaiian smiles off our faces, before we even have them. And last night, in the howling gale, the forces that be, neatly excised our Yarrow Ecovillage sign from its frame. 

And it’s totally vanished.  I’m guessing it’s stuck in a fir tree halfway up Majuba Hill.  Or ...   it could be on the freeway, battling rush-hour traffic.

Lois and I had been deliberate in our building methods when we put the sign up a month or so back.  We used a shoe-maker’s hammer and tacks to put the thing up (ie. We ‘cobbled’ it together).... only intending it to be temporary, meaning it to give us a sense of how big, within which sight-lines, how high, and what style a permanent sign should be.

“The ‘temporary’ becomes the ‘permanent’ in a quick snooze, doesn’t it?” we mused.  Let’s do a really bad job, we said, so that we can still have a nice, permanent, a better sign in the foreseeable future. 

I had been hoping that the terrible construction (I refused to use a level, for example, even though I have one)   would grate on the nerves of the really good carpenters who frequent our premises, and then inspire them.   No such luck, but then, a good wind!

I’ve been working up a little heat recently ... and it isn’t only from raking leaves ... and there are a lot of leaves!   As I’m not yet in my house, and there’s been delay after delay, (through no-one’s fault, I hasten to add ... an ecovillage is a complicated beast, let’s face it!) I’m getting a little warm under the collar.  I can see a little blush of heat on other people’s faces too.

It’s not surprising.  We have a lot on our plates. 

But what I notice in myself and others, too, are the stories we tell about ourselves.  About how YES is confused and disorganized ... has made a series of mistakes...has meetings that go around in unproductive circles ...  is bad at conflict resolution or holding individuals to account ... and isn’t good at being a landlord.  (I’m only hitting the highlights, aren’t I?  There’s a lot more, isn’t here?  But you get my drift.)

Of course, we make mistakes.  And have done many things badly. 

Of course.   

Get over it.

We’re humans, doing our best.  I don’t want us to believe that stories are the ‘truth’ about us.

There are a great many things we do well. The greatest, in my view, is that we care for one another. 

  I’m taking the loss of the sign as a Sign.

Let the wind blow away those tired old stories we tell.  Let’s construct a bright, new, permanent sign with new stories attached. 

And I’m not saying that we forget the past.  I saying we make our stories tell of what we have learned from the past.  And we tell stories of the future that are about what we are building.  Our Shared Dream.   

The festive holidays are coming soon ... let’s fill them with glowing lights and yummy food and special treats and invite our friends, new and old, to join us.  We have many accomplishments this year.  Let’s collect those stories and share them, and then let’s celebrate our being together.

Ah! women,

Amen

FAQs

FAQ’s ready for website --- Dec 29

Buying a house

 Q: When I want to buy at YES, will I be able to get a conventional mortgage?

A: Yes.  Current owners have mortgages with our local credit union, Envision, and with Royal Bank 

Q: Does YES provide financing help for house purchases?

A.      We’d don’t offer formalized help at this time. However, some members of YES have indicated that they would be willing to offer second mortgages in some cases, to help incoming members purchase homes.

Q: How is owning a house at YES different than owning a house in a more conventional setting?  Is it like a strata development?

A: Owning a house at YES is very similar to owning a home in a regular strata. Owning involves attending monthly meetings to manage the property, paying monthly fees and access to the common properties. One significant way that we are different, is that we are creating a sense of community, and our expectation is that all members will contribute to social well-being and maintenance of the village.

Q: Can I form a legal entity such as a company or co-op to buy a property at YES?

A: Yes. 

Q. Are there commercial properties for sale?

A. We have commercial zoning at the front of the property on the main street of Yarrow.  We have older buildings for sale and there are opportunities for constructing new ones.

Building

 Q. May I build my own house?  Do I have to? Can I hire my own contractor?

A. Yes, you may build your own house, hire an outside contractor or use some of the talented and experienced builders we have here in the village.  At times, there will be houses, already planned, in process, or completed ready for you to purchase.  You may wish to be involved with the building of your own house, but should understand it won’t necessarily save time or money. 

Q. May I design my own house? Are there design restrictions?

A. There’s a qualified yes for a new design, if it falls within the guidelines provided by the Development team.

In most cases, you will choose your house from a pre-approved selection of floor plans and configurations, and if you’re early enough in the process, you may make adaptations and contribute to choosing your own finishing details.   

.

Q. What are financial steps I go through from choosing a lot, to moving in?

A. Upon being accepted as a Member, you will then make an investment of about $25,000 to secure a lot (it will be applied as a credit to the final house price).  The next stage is construction financing... you may finance that with your own cash, or a loan secured by your own assets from outside YES, or YES will apply for a construction loan with Vancity (or alternative).  Vancity offers construction loans to YES based on member’s ability to qualify for conventional (’take-out’) mortgage from another lender.  RBC and Envision are possible mortgage lenders.  

 Q. What ‘green’ features will my house have? 

A.  So far the builders are using an energy efficient building, smaller home sizes and longer lasting materials as the main green features. We are always open to more ideas.

Selling

Q: When I decide to sell my property, can I decide the sale price myself or will YES have restrictions on resale price?

A: The seller sets the price. There are no restrictions on resale price.

Q: When I sell, can I use a realtor, sell it myself or is there a process provided by YES?

A: As long as you sell to a person approved by the Membership Team, you may find your own buyer, sell using a realtor, or sell to incoming members on a waiting list.

Renting

Q. May I rent out my house?

A. Yes.  You may rent to anyone approved by the Membership Team.

Q: Providing I choose someone suitable, may I decide myself how much I may charge tenants for rent, or will YES determine the rate?

A: The owner decides on the rent. 

Q: What rights and responsibilities will tenants have?

A: Rights include use of common areas and responsibilities include participation in the social maintenance of YES. Tenants will also have rights to participate and make decisions in meetings with "living here" issues. When in doubt, and if not covered in YES agreements, we will refer to the BC Tenancy Act

Q: If I own property at YES, and live off site, what restrictions rights, responsibilities and expectations are there for me?

A: The rights and responsibilities are the same for all owners. 

Leaving my house in my will

Q: May I leave my house in my will to my estate?

A: Yes you can. 

How shall we live?

A friend of mine asked if I had a poem on the theme of “How shall we live?” suitable to submit for possible publication in a little book of poems by Unitarians.  I looked in my brain cabinet and found this about life here at the ecovillage.  

How Shall We Live?       October 10 09

Husband the sun.

Dig the ground

long and hard 

through the soil and into the clay,

for burdock plants to search

deep

for blood-cleansing minerals.

Stroke the soil off the roots with your thumbs.

Marry the rain.

Plant  cucumbers 

with their growing tips pegged carefully to long stretched strings,

and a coyote will

slip between the rows

unseen,

(almost)

from this garden,

into the next.

Collect the wind in trees.

Build a shed for tools

with old barn boards

and make the courses not straight,

but perfect,

and a barn owl may rest on the roof

and eye the voles.

When night falls, draw in close around a fire.

Use your foot to push the log a little further into the flames.

Move the kettle over on the grill.

Make tea.

Sing to the child resting in your arms,

so that her gaze can no longer keep the glow

and she grows heavy with sleep.

Hold the moon gently in your cupped hands,

release it to rise

over handmade houses

and let the murmuring voices around the fire

spark upwards

in wiggly orange streaks to the night sky.

Grow old

with the young.

Fruit Fly Jelly Recipe

This recipe makes a single jar and may be doubled to make three jars, tripled to make twenty.  ( Fruit flies reproduce every twelve hours)

This jelly is an excellent protein supplement for small children, invalids and those with no sense of humour.

It’s easy, quick and economical

Place a single layer of strips of banana peel carefully on the bottom of a large heavy-bottomed cooking pot. Cover*.  Leave 24 hours... 36 hours for a thicker product.  (One procrastinating jam-maker waited 48 hours and had an extraordinary yield of jam from breeding fruit flies.  He did, however, have to evacuate the house for two weeks after a single over-flowing batch.) 

Meanwhile, sterilise a jar.  Care must be taken in the process to ensure that the jar isn’t contaminated from those ubiquitous, unauthorized, domestic, terrorist-type plum-loving fruit flies.  Have your vacuum cleaner handy.

In a smaller pot, boil a solution of four parts sugar to one part water.  Bring to the soft rubber ball stage on your candy thermometer.

Quickly and carefully lift the large pot’s lid and pour the sugar syrup over the flies, dispatching them quickly and humanely.  When cool, strain the fly syrup through cheese cloth to remove the banana peel and the cheese (Note: It doesn't remove the flies... nothing does,)   Pour directly into the hot, sterilized jar, sealing quickly.  Let cool completely.

 Helpful tips:

---If, as you’re pouring the jelly into the hot jar, more fruit flies jump in too, then simply re-label the jelly as jam.

--- Don't store this product in the house, it attracts fruit flies.

--- If you have extra flies, try them in your home-made scented candles and bath oils.

*Covering the pot keeps wasps out. But don’t be concerned that the lid will prevent fruit flies from entering the pot.  They can do it.

 PS ... I discovered the genius of this recipe while I was actually supposed to be transcribing the minutes of the previous Director’s meeting.

Plum Wasp Crumble ....Nick Jackson ... Sept 26 09

Not being one for one-upmanship  I hesitate to share my plum wasp crumble recipe with you, but what the heck here goes ( after all Thanksgiving is just around the corner and I know that you will really want to pull out  all the stops for your fellow villagers:

Acquire 24 large over ripe windfall plums which will already be festooned with yellow jackets - professionals harvest the product using tongs, the ignorant and/or foolhardy use their bare hands.

Pit the plums, taking great care not to disturb the wasp feeding frenzy, thus creating a greater surface area for ever more wasps to gorge on (pitting is optional but beware of being sued for the dental costs that go with cracked teeth)

Place the fruit/insect melange in a suitable buttered oven proof container, add a sprinkle of cinnamon and drizzle with Aunt Jemima pancake syrup.

Select well ventilated hot sunny window ledge and allow the insect mass to double in size (23~26 minutes before noon, 4 minutes less after 2pm).

While the dish is naturally leavening pre-heat the oven to 475 degrees and mix 1/2 cup sifted flour, 1/2 cup naturally stone rolled oats, 1/2 cup low trans fat omega rich shortening until it forms coarse clumps. (no added salt is required as the wasps are naturally tangy).

This next step requires a deft hand and lightning fast reflexes and should not be attempted by persons with known heart or vision issues.

Carry the now seething wasp/fruit dish carefully to the kitchen, open the oven door in a manner as not to alarm the bio mass, then in a single uninterrupted move dump the topping over the mix, whip the dish into the oven and slam the door shut. If you fail to complete this step successfully you should exit the premises by the fastest method possible and call a paramedic and an exterminator.

On the assumption that the last step was entirely successful the heat should be turned down to 375 degrees. Now all you have to do is wait 36~42 minutes until the topping is golden and the wasps smell cooked, before removing the dish and setting it aside to cool and rest uncovered for 32 minutes to allow a light dusting garnish of fresh wasps to alight before serving.

Due to the extreme risk of multiple facial, lip and tongue stings from the garnish a trip to Costco for a bulk buy of epi-pens is strongly recommended.

Give thanks and enjoy this protein enriched crumble with friends and those whom you wish to leave a lasting impression with.

Fruit Fly Village

I suppose by now, if you’ve been reading my recent string of tales, you know that every morning, I take the black dog on an unvarying route down the lane, past the farms and towards the pastures and mountains at the back of our property.

By taking this very same walk each day, I’m tuning myself into the tiny, incremental daily changes that happen, as the seasons roll, from one into the next. Every day, there is a shift.

It’s cooler this morning as I meander. The sun is still lingering behind the mountain and mists lie low over the fields. Each leaf and petal has drip hanging on its tip. The air is cool and moist; the birds are squeaking in loosely-flying flocks and the grass makes juicy squishes underfoot. Dandelions ... their fluff heads looking wet and clumpy ... have had their morning dew-shower and are not yet blown dry. Cheeky Stellar’s Jays are stealing nuts and shrieking their nut-news to their accomplices in the other hazelnuts trees. ( Jays are always ‘cheeky’ regardless of what they’re doing)

... It’s Fall! .... I’m thinking.

And then, all of a sudden, the sun heaves itself over the mountain top and flings its strength widely down, and through, the valley. The mists gather up their skirts in haste and run for the hills. Instant warmth promises later heat. It’s summer, back again.

Yesterday had turned into a hot day, too. I noticed a hot-day buzzing noise as I was tiling in my new house. I’m working on laying out a pattern of river pebbles and stone tiles on the expanse of kitchen floor, ready to transfer onto the walls around my bathtub. An inordinate number of houseflies had made it into my living room ... and why wouldn’t they want to come into my beautiful space when I leave all the doors and windows wide open? They’re making a big racket against the glass. I open the window and they evaporate.

(Speaking of flies evaporating ... Have you noticed how fruit flies do the opposite? They expand into huge realms by spontaneous generation. Half a dozen flew out of my fridge this morning. I have fruit flies in my cutlery drawer.)

As I’m letting the flies out the window, I can see one of our farmers, from my lofty height. He’s in his field down below, gently tossing rye seed in a wide-sided basket and letting the wind blow the chaff off. I’m imagining that the sound is taking a little longer to reach me.

The whole farm is spread out around me and the folks are busy ant-people ... each, oblivious to the others. A gardener has her summer sun hat on and is bending over tending her vegetables in her community garden patch.

One of the workmen is barrowing construction supplies past the silo building and the dirt mountain the children play on.

Now, the farmer is doing something else ... pulling out some squash plants?

We have people here now, getting on and doing the things people do.

Living.

I take a tour through the farm to see who’s here. Our elder is heading over to the office with a sheaf of papers and books tucked under her arm and the key dangling from her fingers.

She doesn’t see me.

There’s some hammering.

One of our hands-on people is putting an extra window into the shed where he’s setting up his cabinet-making business.

Around the other side, a mum is tucking her kids into their van to take one of them to soccer practice.

A couple of the men are splitting wood at the front where we’d had some trees taken down, to make way for power lines. I can see their sweat from here ... I can almost smell how hard they’re chopping.

And just as I can’t be sure whether it’s fall or summer, I can’t tell you whether our Ecovillage is still in its forming, pioneering stage, or it’s made it over the mountain ridge and is shining as a settling, consolidating village. Are we there yet, I wonder?

The seasons are a certainty in how they come. Always fall after winter. Fruit flies come with bananas and stay with plums. Wasps hover around the edge of the roof where their nests are, and cruise in through open windows. The sunshine turns golden and softer.

Humans in villages aren’t so certain.

The Chinese have a special season they insert at this time of the year, that is about ripening fruit, consolidating plenty and sharing abundance. I would call it “Fruit Fly” season, if I didn’t think they’d mind ... the Chinese, I mean. Fruit flies are about all those things, but are too busy being fruit flies, to care what I call their season. And maybe our villagers are too busy too, to be pondering what our village will be in the future.

They just are. And the village just is.

And that’s perfect.

YES featured in the Vancouver Sun

We are featured in the Vancouver Sun this weekend. The mosaic that makes up our community is well represented as a large number of our members are quoted or pictured in the article. Congrats to all involved!

Swallows’ Flight

Does anyone know if the swallows have left on their migration yet? I saw several only the other day ... and I noted their presence. I recall from my big city days, that the swallows were always gone before the end of August. And so I remarked particularly to myself, that they stay longer out here, in the Fraser Valley. But they’re here one day, and gone the next, apparently. I miss them already.

And while I’m asking, when do the turkey vultures leave? Is it soon? And how will I know that my last sighting, is indeed my last? I’ve missed any number of ‘last’ occasions in my life. The last time I wiped drool from my babies’ faces, the last occasion I walked them to school, or stayed up waiting and wondering when they’d be safely home after an evening of partying. I didn’t know at the time. The ‘lasts’ passed without comment.

If I had known that those were the last, I would have wiped more tenderly, walked more slowly, and waited and wondered with more concern and patience. Would that I could go back, to see my children as babies, just one more time! I miss them.

And as I consider which will be the last apple to fall and which the last hazelnut ( I’m still obsessed with picking them) I come to wondering when will be my last time to climb a ladder onto the roof, when I won’t consider it would be fun to try snow-boarding, or when I won’t drive at night any more. Will I note the passing?

But I’m distracted by looking at the mountainside near here ... the maple trees are standing out from the firs now, as they go more orange and brown, and the firs stay green. The vine maples along the road towards town too, are showing off their first red leaves. (I do like vine maples, and hope to have some near my house ... or where I can see them from my windows.) As the deciduous trees head towards winter they flare up briefly with colour before fading back into the forest to remain unnoticed ‘til the first flush of spring.

I can let go of the maple leaves, I know they will be back. I have let my children go too, there are always children in my life and my daughters are always my daughters.

But what about the salmon? The cod stocks on the east coast? And humpback whales. Can you begin to imagine what it would be like, if they were never to come again?

Can you even begin?

.

Hoarding, Hoarding Nuts

This has been a terrific fruiting, producing summer, and the hazelnuts are no exception.

The trees in the front lawn are raining the little plonkers constantly.  I’m not alone in relishing the harvest.  I can often look out of my upper floor window and simultaneously see two kinds of gleaners down below ...the fuzzy, fat-tailed collectors racing along on the power lines with treasures stuffed in their mouths,  and a hand-and-knees, bum-in-the-air  human scavenger dragging a basket along the ground and  throwing in nut after nut ... plink, plink, plink.

I find myself out there too, picking up nuts, when actually I had thought I was meant to be hanging up the wash, or making lunch.  The allure of fallen nuts is powerful.  I fill my pockets until they prevent me bending over and then I waddle into the house to dump my load.   I wish my cheeks were more capacious, to save me trips. 

A basket full of nuts is like a cupboard full of gleaming, full jelly jars.  And a freezer loaded to the gills with bags of the summer’s beans and blueberries.  Like a shelf full of books, a box full of tools.   Like my collection of sewing thread ... every colour is represented there ... every notion of sewing project is  possible, every eventuality predicted.    Bags of nuts in the larder bring peace of mind.  They are abundance and plenty and having reserves.  

And here I am again ... out on the lawn, under the trees, my rapier gaze glancing this way and that through the grass,  for yet one more, one last, nut.  It’s become an obsession.  And how can I not be fascinated by them?   Each nut has come from a perfectly-fitting swaddling blanket that’s frilled to perfection.  They are either ready to be popped out with a gentle finger-thumb squeeze, or, instead, have launched themselves from the tree for an Olympian dive, splashless into the turf.  Either way, I spot them and collect them into my bucket. 

This has been going on for several days now.  Plentiful nuts.  And I can feel I haven’t finished, though I’ve got my own sufficient supply, spread out on newspapers on my spare bed.  Have I picked too many?  More than my share? I’ve filled several buckets and given them away. 

The trees are still loaded and other people have been filling buckets, too. If I tell you I’m hoarding nuts, do you then think I have gone too far?  Hoarding...is that bad?

I look in the Oxford dictionary to check.  Hoard ... it’s an old noun from 1663 meaning a treasury, a repository, a cache.  Or it’s a verb meaning to put away and preserve for future use (squirrels are mentioned).  

Gerry says that it’s built into us ...we’re a northern folk and need to store food for the winter.

I’m feeling somewhat reassured.  What will complete my peace of mind is for me to invite you to come and share and pick nuts too.  But hurry!  Winter is coming!

Water, Unconscious

Michael Greenstein is making a newsletter for Intentional Communities that I want to support and luckily, he’s asked me to write an article from the Yarrow Ecovillage point-of-view.

Michael tells me the theme for this month is ‘water’.

Water! We, here in our ecovillage, are in the midst of the confustication of moving houses, of finishing up construction, planning landscaping, restructuring governance, buying a new tractor, and hiring a ecovillage planner. Water! ... Water is last thing I’m thinking of! I’m still hanging onto summer. Water means rain at this point, and I’m in denial.

And besides, I’m not confident in writing on command about a single topic... I still feel new at this writing business and haven’t tried an exercise like this before.

I have a small friend visiting, who wants to walk my black dog as a diversionary tactic to stall her bedtime. Venturing out with her, allows me to procrastinate with the writing, too. The sunset is drawing in closer and earlier, this end-of-summer evening, as we head down our lane, hand in hand, and hand on leash, towards our far pasture, to pick some late blackberries. She’s an observant child and she spots some sheep on the distant hillside.

“Listen!” I say to her, “Can you hear them bleating?” We stop, and hold our attention. Nope! ... too far ...and wind in the wrong direction. We hear dripping instead. The rows of blueberries on the farm next door, run close and parallel with our lane. They are bushes confined by wires stretched between posts and there’s a black plastic pipe running along the top that has regular holes and a regular drip, drip, drip.

The rows are constrained, straight, uniform and tidy. Our neighbour keeps weeds in control, the birds out, and uses a mechanical picker to harvest what, presumably, is a profitable crop. I’m not tempted at all to taste a sample of his berries, even as they are close to hand and a beautiful blue. When the weeds are standing dead, the berries don’t look alive, either.

There are noises, too, on our side of the lane that aren’t sheep baaaing. Soban, our own ecovillage farmer, is irrigating his cucumbers with the nozzle on his hose gushing into a long trough between the rows, making a long, blue stripe of reflected sky and a lively sound. His cucumber plants are carefully tied to strings that hang from long wire rows. When they sway in the wind, they remind me of passengers on a bus hanging onto the upper hand rail, jostling cheerfully along ... not going anywhere at all.

I’m enjoying myself, but still, I have more thinking to do before I write about water. I’m glad there’s some staining to do on the boards for the new cordwood-masonry house.

Staining is a good activity for the kind of musing meditation that precedes my writing. I’d like to use the big brush with the soft bristles, but it’s lost. I didn’t lose it ... Can’t have been me ... I haven’t been staining for awhile. Someone else lost it. There are so other people to choose from to blame ... many of us are taking a turn at this job, as it’s rather a pleasant one ... satisfying, not too difficult, and helpful.

We’re standing in a circle, wondering ... Is each one of us looking to the others as a person who could have lost a brush, even though we’d rather not go that blaming way? Nevertheless, it’s an easy direction for humans.

Shawn plunges his hand into the cleaning bucket that’s been standing at our feet ... and brings out the brush. It’s been submerged and hidden all along, right there in front of us... in the water.

Ah! I think. Water. There all along. Dripping, gushing, standing still. Now I know what I’ll write for Michael’s theme ... About water, unconscious.

I hold in my long ago memory and imagination, a particular way of water, that still inspires me, as I live in this intentional community.

Have you heard of chesil? ... and/or Chesil Beach in the south of England?

Chesil is a kind of gravel and Chesil Beach, the place, is remarkable in that it has a stream that flows completely through the gravel ... through, not on top. You can sense as you stand there, rather than see or feel, the water moving beneath your feet. Water that seeks the cracks and spaces. Flows around.

Patient.

Soft.

Persistent.

And at its end, reunited with the sea.

Chesil would be in the Permaculture principles, wouldn’t it? ( Permaculture being about finding better ways for humans to live in nature.)

I can see it in ... Creatively use and respond to change. Use small and slow solutions.

Where can you see it?

Holmgren's 12 design principles from Wikipedia.

These restatements of the principles of permaculture appear in David Holmgren's Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability ^[5]; also see permacultureprinciples.com ^[6];

1. Observe and interact - By taking the time to engage with nature we can design solutions that suit our particular situation.
2. Catch and store energy - By developing systems that collect resources when they are abundant, we can use them in times of need.
3. Obtain a yield - Ensure that you are getting truly useful rewards as part of the work that you are doing.
4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback - We need to discourage inappropriate activity to ensure that systems can continue to function well.
5. Use and value renewable resources and services - Make the best use of nature's abundance to reduce our consumptive behaviour and dependence on non-renewable resources.
6. Produce no waste - By valuing and making use of all the resources that are available to us, nothing goes to waste.
7. Design from patterns to details - By stepping back, we can observe patterns in nature and society. These can form the backbone of our designs, with the details filled in as we go.
8. Integrate rather than segregate - By putting the right things in the right place, relationships develop between those things and they work together to support each other.
9. Use small and slow solutions - Small and slow systems are easier to maintain than big ones, making better use of local resources and producing more sustainable outcomes.
10. Use and value diversity - Diversity reduces vulnerability to a variety of threats and takes advantage of the unique nature of the environment in which it resides.
11. Use edges and value the marginal - The interface between things is where the most interesting events take place. These are often the most valuable, diverse and productive elements in the system.
12. Creatively use and respond to change - We can have a positive impact on inevitable change by carefully observing, and then intervening at the right time.