Chuck Durrett Workshop "Designing the Common House"

Please note the date change!  (We've decided not to compete with (in) the Olympics.)

This workshop will take place on the weekend of March 13 - 14.  More details to come soon regarding location, precise dates, and price.  (Expect regular workshop prices such as those charged by UFV Continuing Education or by Hollyhock.)

Questions about the Duplex 9/10

I have been getting a lot of questions about the duplex we are building. So I thought I would post a mini faq on the duplex 9/10 as we lovingly call it.

We are starting construction on Feb 10, and aim to have the home completed by the end of June.


What I am up to is trying to get the financing to build the home so that we have a home on the site that is ready.

We are also building a large number of green features into the home, which I can post about as well.

Unit 9...
is a 970 square foot home with two bedrooms upstairs and kitchen/dining/living downstairs. There is one bathroom on either floor. We designed the home to trace the setback from the creek area, so it has an interesting shape and a nice connection with what I hope will be a wonderful private side of the home.


We are reviewing our budget one final time, but we expect the home to cost $265,000. We are starting construction on Feb 10, 2010 and aim to have the home completed in June.

I am getting the financing to build the home, but we are looking to sell it. The reason why I am financing it is so that we can have a home that is ready for someone to just move into. I want some more neighbors down here at the EcoVillage.

Unit 10... is what we calling a "pod house." It is designed so that up to 3-4 adults can share the home where each adult gets his or her own private bathroom, bedroom and sitting room.

We are selling a share of the ownership in the home for in the range of $130,000 to $165,000 and will rent some of the rooms as well.

This was inspired partially by the "quads" at UBC and by a situation where I saw my mother really bloom in a shared living situation. (Maybe I will post that story another day).

If you are interested in either of these options, you can ask our membership team about life here at the EcoVillage and how to get here.

Here are the plans, if you are interested:

Site (click to zoom)
(Also note that the proposed duplexes are not actually our site plan, since after the Chuck Durett workshop).



Main Floor (click to zoom)


Upper Floor (click to zoom)

January Picnic and Jumpoff

Ask a Question

What is Cohousing?
Answer: Take a look at a one minute clip you 'll find on our 'Related Links' section on the left-hand side of this page. It's clear and concise. You'll like it!

Room for Rent

Hi, I am a young professional and also an ecovillager. I am looking for a housemate to share my 2 bedroom home (rental). You would become part of the ecovillage community and live in lovely Yarrow. If interested to learn more please email me at jongkind@gmail.com .

More details can be found on my craigslist post - http://abbotsford.craigslist.ca/roo/1572600867.html

Working at the Ecovillage

The partners in the Yarrow Deli Cooperative would love to entertain resumes or other interesting methods of introducing yourself for working with us in creating a wonderful place to eat and work in Yarrow.
Ideal candidates would consider training toward management over the next 2-4 years and potentially becoming a partner in the cooperative.

Interested parties can email Cher at cakingscobie at gmail dot com.

Day Four: Workshop Conclusion

We ended Tuesday night decisively: this is the site plan that will make our village sing! Chuck headed back to California to draw up the site plan and produce a book of all the decisions made and visions expressed over our four days together.

The clarity achieved this weekend is grounding and invigorating. Good decisions have been made: we will continue taking one step forward after another until we are living a day-to-day life in this wonderful new place.

We should have official plans to share with prospective members in about a month with more information about the 26 homes, organic farm, and retail space. Watch this space for details about an open house.

Here's a picture of our team looking pleased with the results:

Today's Poem: "A Riddle"

A Riddle

On this afternoon,

with the black dog
in the back pasture and
the winter day warm enough
that you know the worms are at work
beneath your feet,

smell the growing.


The dog pushes her nose,
and snuffles the grass furrows and tunnels
into the scampering paths
of the furry creatures,
she would catch
if she could.

The old farmer,
the tender of the pasture,
watches without worry.
Her own harvest is secure.

A red-tailed hawk
on a branch of the tree
can afford to be amused
by the useless.

Ecovillage Dictionary

Hyggelig: From the Danish. Pronounced hew.ger.li
As quoted by Chuck Durrett at our January 2010 Site Planning Workshop
Meaning: Comfortable, snug, cosy, welcoming, accommodating
As in: Our front porches will be hyggelig.

Michael's Photos of Chuck Durrett Planning (January 15 - 19)

A Bedtime Story

I'm happy to share this story written by Liz as a bedtime story for her small granddaughter. Liz is a newcomer who (is dreaming? was thinking? could be now planning?) to live here with her little one. She spent Saturday at Windsong with us, so her magical story includes many of the activities and places which the group decided to include during that day's process.

Once upon a future time there was a little girl named Karen. She had big blue eyes, glossy dark hair, and enough energy to dance her friends a merry chase from sun-up to sun-down.

Karen lived in a magical place brimming with splashy pink flowers and chirpy flitting birds and golden gentle butterflies and brilliant red berries and crunchy fruit and sweet and juicy and spicy scents and all manner of creatures from teeny weeny tadpoles to great big old sway-backed horses with swishy tails living their retirement years under the sprawling trees at the end of the road.

Karen had lots of friends big and tall short and small and every day was a new adventure.

Out the door, round the corner stopping to smell a rose with Ann. Hip-hopping along playing leap frog with Jason and Mary and Iris. Down into the underground cave and round the edge of Volcano Mountain. Climbing the mountain and rolling down, up and down up and down with the little kids and the bigger kids and even the big kids with beards and real jobs. A new treat today laughing at Beverly zipping the line and letting Beverly lift her up, up, up, until her whole body hung from her little fat fingers tingling and swaying as she flew down the line and dropped like a ballerina onto her flexy little toes. Up the hill, higher still to linger in the fort and peek out the windows to see who might be out to have a chat or sand some wood or dig in the flower bed. Out of the fort and down the slide racing along the path to find the hose that offers a cooling gush of thirst quenching water. A little spray over Gerry’s feet and off again to splash at the water park with the babies and join the art society to paint a bevy of royal dragon flies on the back of the climbing wall. Veggie dogs and juice at the fire-pit. Slowly she tip-toed down the quiet path to the secret place to slide through the leaves, into the comfy hammock to swing and rest and contemplate her next adventure. Wheels are turning and kids are laughing. Its time to race down the farm road and back until hearts can’t beat any faster, the adults and dogs are lying on the grass gasping and the kids are feasting on juicy, dusty, purpleicious plums.

The gong sounds and Karen’s community drifts towards the smokey smells of veggies and fish on the barbie and pizza and pies in the cob oven. Dusk falls, folks cozy up on comfy bancos with gentle music wafting overhead to thank the earth and the farmers and the cooks for this bounteous feast.

A fire, a song, gooey marshmallows on a fork then good night, good night. The moon is out. Scrub a dub in the tub finds clean fingernails, brown knees and sweet smells behind the ears. A story, a song, a cushy bed and an open window. Karen drifts to sleep with the stars in her eyes and only the sound of crickets in her ears. The gentle voices from the hottub and the firepit drift through the trees surrounding her with peace and security.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow will be a new adventure.

Thank you for this story, Liz. In the middle of all this planning, it is grounding and pleasurable to read this story and think of the day-to-day life which we will be living. :-)

Planning With Chuck, Day Three

I had to teach last night, so I missed most of the fun. (Well, teaching is always lots of fun: I suppose what happened is I missed the ecovillage fun while enjoying the Socratic seminar fun at UFV.) I'll see if I can recruit another blogger to give you an insider's view of last night's experience. Anyhow, when I got home, everybody was peering over tablescapes like this:

The groups developed two different scenarios; tonight we are to make some final decisions about the final plan.

(These pictures are not of scenario A or B. Julia and I both missed the fun, so we played with the items afterwards and made this one. However, I think we were subconsciously copying the others.)

It will be exciting to see where this all goes tonight!

Today's Poem
A Bit of Better Butter

Compared to life on Salt Spring Island,
which I would characterise as
French Onion soup-

with about half the onions left whole,
and some freshly baked
flax seed bread with
organic butter,
(if you could get it on the island,
which you can't.)

(compared)

Life in the tangled
kaleidoscope of
knitting-ball basket
of an ecovillage,
is,
I would say,
as delicious.

Today's Poem

Draft Poem
from Robert Martens, one of our longtime members

the terrorist, seat belt in
place, attempts to light
the fuse. he fumbles. "oh
shit," he says, as he goes up
in flames. the airline
passengers, somewhat annoyed,
toss him from the plane, and
he runs, flailing, in all
directions. the president,

advisers in place, attempts
to declare war. he fumbles.

"oh shit," he says, as he
goes up in flames. the
advisers, somewhat impatient,
heave him through the gates
of his mansion, and he
runs, flailing, in more
than all directions. the

terrorist and the president
collide somewhere near
the equator. together, they
have set the globe on
fire. the rest of us,
yawning, frazzled, are just
stepping out of bed. we
raise the blinds, we
see the flames, the apocalypse
of stupidity, and the notion that
this may be the end
of the world aggravates
our morning grumpiness.

then came the rains.
she was merciful, her people
wouldn't die today. she
kissed the clouds, water fell
in torrents, her silver hair
rippled and shimmered, she
returned to beautiful sleep.
and came the rains. ceaseless.
the fires long out, and her
compassion limitless, and
the floods began. the
continents drowned. she woke
with a feeling of unease,
was there something she hadn't
turned off, she glanced down
at planet earth, "oh shit,"
she said, and stroked the
clouds, and the rain stopped.

it's too late. we've already
weighed anchor, all of us,
in an ark for a new
time, spiffy, fresh paint,
scrubbed decks, complete with
casino, lounge, and cabin
service. we're drunk
with pleasure. at the
equator we celebrate, toast
the era of flameless
poststupidity. the terrorist
and the president drift
starboard on a raft
of sodden matchsticks.

Site Planning With Chuck Durrett: Day Two

We returned to Windsong this morning to continue articulating how we wish to make our village sing. Yesterday we chose the goals, activities, and places we wish to build our ecovillage from: today we hashed out the details of these places. The hot tub, sauna, barbecue, and children's play areas sound fantastic! For our outdoor eating terrace, we spoke of our desire to create a space that is very easy for serving food, but also beautiful and intimate, with interesting edges and nooks.

We had a pretty strong discussion about pathways: we want this village to be welcoming and accommodating for people in wheelchairs (and with scooters, bicycles, baby carriages, wheelbarrows, carts, etc...!), but we don't want to pave everything. The picture above is what the path looks like at Chuck's cohousing home. (Picture taken from his blog, which is a very interesting read.)
We came to consensus that major pathways, such as as our current firelane, could be a five-foot wide paved surface meandering along a code-width engineered surface such as Golpla or grasscrete (probably with something more similar to creeping thyme than to grass).

Imagine it replacing the gravel in the picture to the right:

The conversations about inviting gathering nodes and beautiful places are also very exciting. I already love living here, but wow...the future is going to be amazing!

We left Windsong at 2 and returned to Yarrow to walk about the site with Chuck, and we ended the evening with sushi in Britta's place and a conversation about seniors' cohousing.

Tomorrow night is the big night: we will move little pieces of paper around on the site plan, seeing how we can fit all of our dreams in and how we can make them work in relationship to each other.

Expect even more concrete details soon!

Sunset

January 15, from the south porch of duplex six, overlooking neighbouring properties to the west.

Site Planning With Chuck Durrett: Day One

Y A W N ! ! ! It is 7:20 p.m., and I am exhausted: Chuck Durrett is one tough task master, but he sure knows his stuff. I think we all left Windsong today feeling extremely confident that we are in good hands: we look forward to being his 51st highly successful cohousing development.

We listed A L L of the activities we'd like to do outside between the buildings in our ecovillage: by all, I mean a list including clothesdrying, soccer-playing, music-making, gardening, reading, baking, eating, barbecuing, cooking, and more eating... Food seems very important to us. We worked through which activities will require special places (hot tubs, outdoor wood-fired pizza ovens) and which do not (reading, eating, napping, flying kites). I think tomorrow we figure out where all of these pieces could go and where all the new houses will go.

We are going to have some very exciting, solid, and concrete plans to share when this week of hard work is through.

More work tomorrow, including paying special attention to the retail part of our project out on Yarrow Central Road. (I'll take better pictures tomorrow.)

Listen to recent radio interviews

Our blog is eventually moving back to the yarrowecovillage.ca site; we're just a little busy right now with site planning, housebuilding, and so many wonderful new people expressing interest and coming around. In the meantime, do keep looking at both the website and this blog. For example, Andrew has posted this link to yesterday's Mark Forsysth CBC interview at the main website. This morning's Bill Good interview can be heard here (the Chuck Durrett bit starts 6 min 42 sec into the clip and ends at 27 min). I'll add Rick Cluff's as soon as possible.

See you tonight at Chuck's presentation in Abbotsford!

"Cohousing, a new, old way of living"

The Abbotsford Times published this article on January 12. The newspaper did not have room for all of Tom's pictures, so I've added them here:

Another great article was published in the Chilliwack Progress on January 12 as well. Read it here.

Teatime for Cambodia

I’m having a hard time choosing between cappuccino and butter. So much so, that I think I’m going to have to stir a little of some, into the other. I’m choosing paint, in case you didn’t guess. I select paint colours with edible names ...(that’s what an ecovillage is about ...it’s co-housing obsessed with food ... planting it, growing it, cooking it, eating it, painting it).


And don’t knock fatty beverages. Think ‘Yak Tea’.
Yak butter tea ... from wikipedia Drinking butter tea is a regular part of Tibetan life. Before work, a Tibetan will typically down several bowlfuls of this tangy beverage, and it is always served to guests. Nomads are said to often drink up to 40 cups of it a day. Since butter is the main ingredient, butter tea is a very warming drink, providing lots of energy and is particularly suited to high altitudes. The butter also helps prevent chapped lips.
According to the Tibetan custom, butter tea is drunk in separate sips, and after each sip the host refills the bowl to the brim. Thus, the guest never drains his bowl; rather, it is constantly topped up. If the visitor does not wish to drink, the best thing to do is leave the tea untouched until the time comes to leave and then drain the bowl. In this way etiquette is observed and the host will not be offended.

Lately, I’ve been lying in bed, looking at the walls and musing over colours. I’m ready to make myself a nest. I want my bedroom to be irresistible at bedtime ... luxurious in squishy, downy pillows, redolent in red, purposeful in purple ( porpoiseful in the bathroom) ... with billowing quilts and wooly throws. I want to be pulled into bed and coerced into sleep by colour, comfort, warmth and abundance. I plan to learn how to sleep completely through the night (but that’s another subject).

This is a house worth investing my heart in. My walls are a canvas waiting to be filled. I run my hands over the timbers; I can feel the forest in them. The cordwood walls have all the pointillist colours of the mountain-side that the window frames in the view beyond. There’s blueberry winter-cane-red in my Persian carpet. The Korean garden’s shapes are lurking in there, too.

The colours and shapes outside, are the colours and shapes inside. It’s beautiful there, and it’s beautiful here. The joy of it! My heart jumps. And so, I have to take the black dog out, and down the lane to the pasture at the back ...as I always do, when my heart is bursting.
The colour of the Timothy hay is what I want for the walls of my bedroom. Creamy, tawny, beigey, tan/yellow. The Timothy is in pasture on the far side of the bank of blackberries that run along the stream. It’s not irrigated out there, but it could be later, when we have farmers planting and growing.
One of our young fathers was talking about irrigation last night at dinner. (We have village dinners in the common room on Tuesday nights now ... you’re invited, too ... 5:30pm) We have dinner and kids and lots of conversation. He’s a project manager at Hope International http://www.hope-international.com/index.php and oversees the installation of water wells in little villages in places like Cambodia. A single well in a village can make the difference between the children being healthy, and able to go to school, and not.

We have water. We have mains that come from the city and we have irrigation wells with a pump in a pumphouse and a system of pipes to get it to the nearer fields.

They don’t.

I’m standing in the field of hay, thinking about colour and water and Cambodia. And then it hits me with a wallop. Cambodia is no farther away than Cultus Lake ... on the other side of Vedder Mountain. As I stand still in the field, both Cultus and Cambodia are equally out of sight ... equally far away ... and equally close.
That means there’s a village on the other side of our beautiful pointillist mountain that doesn’t have what we have --- water, schools, and vegetable gardens.

I’ve been reading Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
That’s where I learned about drinking Yak tea. And pennies for children. http://www.penniesforpeace.org/ and what gives me the idea to collect coins for Cambodia in a pickle jar ... it’s now in the common room. Next time you’re there, a little loose change would be greatly appreciated.

I’m brewing some tea while I think about how to raise more money ... and I’m popping in a dap of butter into the cup for my chapped lips.
And do come for dinner on a Tuesday night. You don’t have to bring anything ... but please let us know you’re coming.

Hi Ann -
Just a quick comment re yak butter tea. When I was in Nepal many years ago, there were large numbers of Tibetan refugees there, fleeing the Chinese take-over of the country. They continued to make their yak tea butter, but because of the lower altitude, the boiling point for the water used for the tea was a lot higher, consequently the Tibetans were continually burning their lips with the far too hot water, they had to learn to let it cool off a bit before drinking. I always think of this when I hear of Yak butter tea, and the need we all have to adapt to different environments.
Love,
Jacqui Lehto

Chuck Durrett to Appear on Local Radio This Week

Listen to Mark Forsythe Thursday or probably Friday noon for a CBC radio interview, or listen to Bill Good on CKNW for a 11:00 to 11:30 interveiw on Friday morning. (Look here from some notes on the CBC Ideas show done on cohousing in April 2002.)

Recent Press

Here is a nice article about our project at Senior Living magazine. You can find a copy of the magazine at local libraries. There's also a reference to Chuck Durrett's presentations this weekend in this current Common Ground article. (Back a few months, you didn't miss the Vancouver Sun article, did you?)

Village Tale -Wind

We can’t pretend that there isn’t a significant amount of wind around here on the farm. The vastly inflated continent of North America has a slow leak out the Fraser Valley, and Yarrow is right where it whistles by.


My neighbour’s Adirondack chairs have been lifted off her porch several times now, and sent tumbling across the yard - sometimes northward, sometime south. Are they being abducted by malevolent forces against their will or .... jumping like rats from a sinking ship?
I had to write that in a much smaller font, because though it may be a theoretical possibility, it definitely isn’t true.



I suppose another explanation could be that the chairs are reacting like the black dog, who hates the wind ruffling up her fur, messing with her ears and honing her nose to a sharper point. She can react in a maniacal panic sometimes, taking out her fear, first by chasing the barn cats, and then the black pick-up trucks which barrel down the main street. The dog blames the trucks for being in a grand collusion with the gale, and can’t let them go by unchallenged.

On second thought, scratch that explanation as any kind of possibility for the chairs. They were hand-crafted by a gentle soul: his chairs wouldn’t want to chase trucks simply because it was too breezy.
(And rest assured... the black dog is now constrained by a leash, and the love of her owner, not to go feckless in a wind anymore. Fear is another powerful force ... this time, a fear in loss of life)

When I look out my upper storey windows across the gardens, fields and meadows, the shifting patterns of wind-tousled grass are an unalloyed delight.
When I’m having anxious thoughts, I can calm myself by gazing out. My eye glides like a seabird, skimming over the tops of waves and currents of subtle, but constant movement.
Birds can fly effortlessly, using the very energy that would buffet us, to their own advantage. Do you think we can learn that too?

The same wind that is so very beautiful in the tall grass, is relentless too, in how it pokes and worries at anything loose.

We want to keep our piles of wood, soil and sawdust dry over the winter...taking care of them to keep their value. We cover them with what we have handy ... plastic tarps. And then the wind softens, tears, shreds and spews the plastic into tiny, flying, tangling wisps which insinuate into cracks and soil clots, and onto twigs, grass stalks and sticky places.
On a single day, I can spend an equal amount of time collecting up long, blue, plastic threads from the garden and re-positioning a blue tarp over my pile of mulch. (Please don’t think that we here in the ecovillage are without our inconsistencies.)

And the Xmas lights outside my door, in a tasteful tree shape, are often at a jaunty, but un-tasteful angle in the morning after a stormy night ... or even lying completely flat on their noses ... which is hardly fair, is it, as the wire tree is mostly air itself? Why is the wind so inconsistent in how it presents? Beguiling one minute, destructive the next.

Our Village has a wind of a different kind, too ... the wind of change.
I can only begin to imagine, how it must be for those of our visionary members who’ve been here a long time, working with such dedication and perseverance to manifest their dream into a practical reality.
They invite us newcomers to come in, holding their doors open wide. And the gales blow in with us too, unasked.

I can see how the wind that I am, niggles at the loose places. How my noise rattles the corrugated panels on the roof of the barn sheds and then throws them onto the ground. My wind whips and dries the clothes hanging on the line. It pushes loose leaves into piles. And it shoves some doors open, and others shut.

When I feel that I am only a wind as I am here, then I worry that there is not enough space for me. Then I worry about the swinging, slamming doors; the niggling, teasing apart and the pushing at walls.

And then I am not alright.

I take the black dog down the lane and out into the pasture of sodden, heaving clumps of Timothy hay. This is the middle of winter; the lengthening days are not really yet apparent to me.

I stoop and see the green sprouts pushing up beside the old brown straw stalks. I watch the fog clouds rolling across the face of Vedder Mountain, dampening and obscuring some of the firs and then highlighting and featuring others, in a lively dark and light theatre of forest and tree.
I follow the black dog to see that the small animal who lives by the stream has left droppings filled with fish bones outside its hole.

What if I am not just the wind, but the stream too, and the mountain? And I’m the black dog who challenges, the pickup truck which roars, the chairs that fly, the old barn with the new roof and broken windows and the white tarp covering the pile of wood, no-one owns. What if I’m the stream in flood, and the bridge over it, the mountain hugged in fog, the rolling hay with spring in its roots, the fish-guzzling mink ( And if they weren’t mink droppings, but heron and there are no mink? Then I would be the heron and the mink) and the ducks rising up in squawking flocks.
And the houses with families and the weedy patch in the yard where the common house will be.

Then I would be the everything that’s here. I would be the right person, in the right place, at the right time.

I would be.

And we all would be.

Google Maps Streetview

The Google truck seems to have driven down Yarrow Central Road sometime last spring: you can't see the new driveway, Ann's sign, the painting on the barn, or the beautiful new houses out back, but you can sure take a nice look at our street.  Start here;
if you walk west, you'll see the deli, local park, MCC thrift shop, post office, and pizza place; across the street you can see Hank's barber shop, Rick's antique shop, and Community Street which runs 600 metres to the community hall, library, the dyke trail system, the Vedder River, the shortcut to Yarrow Community School, etc...

The Google truck didn't drive up Community Street, unfortunately, but I'll see what I can do about posting some of my favourite walks and bike rides around here.

(If you don't know how to turn around to see the other side of the street, this will get you started.)

New Year's Day

January 1 is always the first day of a new year, but 2010 feels like an especially new year full of exciting times ahead.  We are working out the details to formally record our community contributions: we'll decide how best to start this at our residents' meeting this week (I'll report back).

We are full of excitement for our planning sessions with Chuck Durrett from January 16 - 20: I can't wait to see where we decide to put the common house and whether Matthew's dream of a natural swimming pond fits somewhere.  For now, we've made the summer kitchen in the big farm house our temporary common house: we squeezed 23 people in for our New Year's day supper, and plan to hold weekly common meals starting with Britta's soup on Tuesday.  Ann posted our guidelines for success on the walls: may they bring us wisdom and harmony as we make the many decisions ahead of us this year.

Hot Dreams

Here's an idea of the sauna I'd like to see and create...

[Source: Ecovillage at Ithaca]

Sustainable surroundings

Chilliwack District, (including Yarrow), is one of the few cities in Canada that does not chlorinate its drinking water.
The Sardis Vedder Aquifer, which is located underground in the Sardis area ( Sardis is south of Hwy#1 from Chilliwack) supports its entire community for its water needs.

While many municipalities transport their waste to other locations, Chilliwack does not. The Bailey Landfill has been in operation for over 15 years and with preventative measures, such as recycling, we have been able to extend its life far beyond original expectations.

Great Blue Heron Nature Reserve is a 130-hectare site (325 acre) located on the un-dyked floodplain of the Vedder River directly across from Yarrow. Managed by the Great Blue Heron Nature Reserve Society, the site is known for the breeding colony of Great Blue Herons as well as a wide variety of wildlife and vegetation.

The Fraser River is one of Canada's longest and is also one of the most productive in North America for Salmon, Steelhead, Chinook and Sturgeon. During summer, lower river levels expose numerous gravel bars where anglers gather to drop in a line for the day. Chinook and Sockeye Salmon run through until the fall. Steelhead and Coho begin to enter the river in early September.