The Dirt 2008

Emerald Earth Update
by Abeja

As the wildflowers and daffodils erupt from our wet soil, we are preparing for another exciting and busy year here at Emerald Earth! We plan to break ground on our new Sunnyside Common House soon, as we work hard to finish the design and budgeting. We’re excited by the beautiful and functional design that has emerged from our design team, a real testament to the power of effective group process!

In 2007, we began our first fundraising campaign, and exceeded our year’s goal of $10,000 by raising a grand total of almost $25,000! This puts us well on our way to our goal of $100,000 for our new Common House. Many thanks to all who have supported us! We have tremendous gratitude towards our friend Ann who propelled us forward with a $10,000 gift. She has never before donated so much to anything, but is thrilled and inspired by our project! With the help of Ann, you, and all of our larger community, we hope to fund a large portion of the cost of the new Common House over the next 3 years.

Great change is happening in our membership these days. 2007 saw the arrival of seven adults, one child, and two dogs. You read about Lisa, Sue, and Gracie the dog in last spring’s Dirt. The universe continued to answer our call with the arrival of Tom, Abeja, Garnet, Mika, Prana, Joey and Vox the dog! If you haven’t gotten to meet them yet (or even if you have!), you can read about them in this issue of The Dirt! This influx has brought our membership from a low of 5 adults to its current 11 adults (Sue has moved to Boonville).

Other big membership news is that Sara, Darryl, and Aria are leaving Emerald Earth this coming summer. For the last nine years, Sara and Darryl have been core visionaries and builders of this community, and the space they leave behind will not be easily filled. We are deeply grateful for all they’ve done and wish them joy, inspiration, and success in their new lives.
Last year saw another big jump in the “leap to the Sunnyside” with the construction of a home for the solar electricity system near the new Community House site. Thanks to Darryl for designing and overseeing the work and to all the apprentices who really put their heart and “soles” into the project. This spring we plan to upgrade and move the power system to the new power house.

Liz, Brent, and baby Esther Joy moved into their home, “Strawberry House,” in late October. They are thankful to have spent the winter on the Sunnyside in their hand-built home. Many thanks to all the loving hands that have helped along the way.
The second bedroom at Madrone house was also finished in time for winter, and we moved two giant, antique, HEAVY pieces of equipment in to create an office for Lisa’s hand bookbinding business. Next time you visit, check out the massive cast iron book press and the largest paper cutter you’ve ever seen—as well as the innovative solar hypocaust heating system in the floor.
Never has the value of quality over quantity been more evident than with last year’s work traders. Prana, Lisa M., Cassia, Willow, and Joey were such welcome additions to our summer crew that two even stayed on to enter the membership process! We’re currently accepting applications for this year’s work trade positions, so if you or anyone you know is interested, let us know soon.

This year has been an exceptional year for tasty local food here at Emerald Earth. Michael has led us in eating more local staple foods by harvesting and processing acorns as well as growing a beautiful crop of multi-colored corn for tortillas and tamales. Liz grew our third crop of wheat, in addition to lots of fruits and veggies in the sunny garden. Sara mothered the black bean crop and the shady garden, while Tom brought seaweed, sea salt, and abalone from the coast. We’ve collectively “harvested” many of our own roosters, older chickens, and ducks, as well as trapping some of the many wild turkeys that get into our gardens! Abeja led a gleaning project that brought the wealth of apples, pears, figs, mulberries, jujubes and other fruits from the Valley home and distributed them through the farmers’ market and as gifts and barter. We all reveled in the bounty of wild mushrooms this year, including a bumper crop of white and orange chantrelles, king and queen boletes, matsutakes, shrimp rusulas, pine spikes, and black trumpets. And we are still blessed with local, organic raw milk.

Getting ‘The Dirt’ Out

The Dirt is the annual newsletter of Emerald Earth. If you want to receive a paper copy, send us your mailing address. The Dirt is also available on our web site, www.emeraldearth.org/newsletter. Check the web site for photos, events, and other updates. If you want to take yourself off the paper mailing list, send an email or a post card to community@emeraldearth.org,or P.O. Box 764 Boonville CA 95415. If we have your email address, we’ll let you know when The Dirt is available online.

Hearing from you feeds the fires that keep our project going. Please drop us an email or post card to let us know that you enjoy The Dirt and our community. You can also phone us at (707) 972-3096. Last fall, we received a dream letter with a donation from Anasuya Batliner. “Though I have only visited Emerald Earth once in 2002… I read every word of your newsletter. Thank you for what you do and what you stand for. It means a lot to me to know you are there.” Thank you, too, for being part of our community and for staying in touch!

Deep Democracy in Action
by Mika Smith

Imagine all the decisions required to design and build a 2,500 square foot community house (with kitchen, dining room, lounge, meeting room, office, kids’ space, and guest room). Now imagine making these decisions with ten other people using consensus process. What would that look like?

For us it did not mean that anyone always got her or his way. It just meant that everyone was ok with the choices made by the whole group. It also meant that a subgroup of our community, the design team, had to hear the feedback from our larger community and integrate their suggestions into revised plans. Thus far the design team has reworked the floor plan over 30 times, continually refining details.

Some say consensus process is slow and frustrating. For most of us, at times, it has been. Practicing deep democracy has required many all day meetings full of discussion and debate. Consensus process has also rewarded us with an exceptionally well-thought-out design that meets our diversity of needs and values and reflects the beauty of our creative potential. We now have an elegant design that we are all inspired to start building this summer. This is what democracy looks like. Come see for yourself or help us build our most extensive structure to date.

As always, 2008 will be a busy year for us here at Emerald Earth, and we hope to see you at one or more of our public events. Scanning the schedule above, you will notice some familiar events that we’ve held many times in the past, and some new ones that we will be trying out for the first time.

Work parties have been one of our most dependable ways of making new friends, getting work done, and sharing what we’ve learned with the greater community. They run Saturday morning through Sunday afternoon with work projects including natural building, gardening, and land management. There’s a tour of our buildings, gardens and grounds, as well as a talk about our community structure and membership process. There’s also time for a sauna, a swim in the pond, a game, or a walk in the woods. Bring your family, friends and neighbors and show them a different way to live. Children are welcome. Please register 1-4 weeks in advance; we ask $10 per person per day to cover food costs.

This year we are adding a Friday evening concert series before our work parties in May, July and September. We will be inviting local artists to perform in the meadow near the common house to raise the energy for the work weekend and hopefully some funds for our new community house. We’re still looking for musicians to play; let us know if you have ideas. We’ll post the artists on our web site as we get them booked.

Another new addition to our schedule are Eco-tours on the first Sunday of most months. These events will begin at noon with a home-cooked organic lunch, followed by an afternoon tour of Emerald Earth. This is a good time to learn and ask questions about our gardens, orchards, natural buildings, composting toilets, graywater treatment and off-grid power systems. Please register in advance and bring a cash donation.

Last year’s Cob-a-Thon Fundraiser was a huge success. We got some cobbing done on our new power house, many bodies were massaged into bliss, we feasted on Sara’s wonderful food, danced and hula-hooped the night away, and we generated several thousand dollars to help kick off our community house construction. We’ll be repeating that event this year - hopefully bigger and even better. See our web site for details.

We’re also adding a Local Foods Fundraising Dinner in November, a time of year when our gardens, orchard and pantry are overflowing with yummy abundance. Come treat your taste buds to a novel array of sustainably grown or wildcrafted delicacies, while supporting Emerald Earth’s fundraising drive for our new community house.

Our lineup of hands-on workshops this year includes some popular stand-bys like our “Natural Building Intensive” (now in its 8th year) and a number of exciting new offerings in Pemaculture, building, and local foods. Please see our web site for more details (www.emeraldearth.org), tell your friends and family. Please help us get the word out by posting the enclosed flyer at your local natural food store or community bulletin board. Thanks!

After four years of successful Natural Building in Community Apprenticeship programs, we have decided to take a break in 2008 while we gear up for our Community House construction. Keep your eye on our web site for details of expanded apprenticeship opportunities in 2009.

New Member Magic by Abeja “We CAN manifest new members!” The Emerld Earthlings declared two winters ago, when the population had shrunk to 5 adults and 2 children. “We only need to clearly state the qualities we want!” With that, the spell was cast! As you surely remember from last year’s Dirt, Lisa and Sue arrived in February 2007, beginning the influx of new energy. Since then, 5 more adults and a child have magically appeared to carry forward the vision of Emerald Earth. Cozy in the Nest Tom and Abeja are long-time friends of Emerald Earth who left California a few years back to help develop an intentional community on the beach in Costa Rica. Their explorations of intentional community brought them full circle back to Northern California soon after the birth of their son, Garnet. The three of them have been settled for nearly a year in the cozy nest of “El Nido,” the strawbale house in the shady cluster. Tom is a carpenter, life-coach, pyrotechnic sculptor, and community organizer. His favorite spot on the land is “wherever the mushrooms grow in the winter and the flowers grow in the spring.” If he were an element of natural building he would be Borax— “keeping everything from getting moldy.” Tom was manifested into this community “to know this land and help other people deepen their relationship with the land.” Abeja is a bodyworker, singer, joker, and mom. Her favorite spot on the land is Beltane Hill, up above the labyrinth, under the ancient madrone. If she were an element of natural building she would be clay: “Healing, smooth, and of the earth.” She was called to this community to nurture and make music. Garnet is a toddler, tit-sucker, and joyously curious almost-two-year-old. His favorite spot on the land is watching the chickens in their yard. He was called to this community to make us all slow down and look at the worms and mushrooms. Will the real Mikhael Smith please stand up? Mika (aka Mikhael Smith), another long-time friend of Emerald Earth, moved here in September. For the last seven years he has blessed the town of Arcata with his music, dance, and body work. He lived, worked, played and studied at the Heartwood Community for 10 years and continues to teach movement and dance therapy there. He was manifested into this community because “I bring support for Emerald Earth’s vision of sustainability, consensus-based intentional community and reverence for the Earth!” Despite the name confusion (“Uh, which Michael/Mikhael Smith are you calling for?”) we are really excited to have him here!

The work traders who wouldn’t leave! Emerald Earth has always been blessed with wonderful work traders who we wish would never go. This year that wish came true not once, but twice! From March til September, Prana (aka Sarah—for a bit more name confusion) could be seen hanging from her aerial silk fabric like a beautiful spider weaving a web across our community. As a beloved work trader, she brought lots of light and life to our home, and worked hard! A “Bohemian wandering Jew” from Ohio who has spent recent years in Northern California doing forest activism and studying circus arts, Prana decided to anchor her web here in our little neck of the woods in December. Plaster is the element of natural building she would be— “versatile, moldable, artistic.” She was called to Emerald Earth to bring spontaneity and playfulness AND to make charts and organize. Oh, yeah, and there’s Vox the dog, who seems to hang around Prana while she hangs. Vox is pretty chill, and she keeps the rabbits and turkeys out of the shady side garden. As the heat and activity of August engulfed us, the beautiful and no-nonsense earth Mama Joey emerged from the trees to carry us through. She was only "supposed" to be work trade until October, but she stayed until she entered the membership process in January! After raising 5 kids in Oregon, Joey got lost in LA for a while before finding her way to us. Her favorite spot on the land is “The dead oak tree everyone wants to get rid of” over the jeep trail on the Sunnyside where our new driveway may go in. “You sit under it and WOW, what a view…it’s beautiful, stark, dramatic. Telling its old story. I love it.” If Joey were an element of natural building, she’d be “Michael’s living roof--it drapes, it droops, it flowers. It’s very happy. Or I might be a hearth. A hearth of the home.” Work Trade at Emerald Earth If you’d like to stay at Emerald Earth for longer than a weekend event or a week-long workshop, please consider our work trade program. Each year we invite a few self-motivated and hard-working people to join our community for the summer months. Work traders participate in every aspect of community life including work projects, workshops and events, cooking, cleaning and weekly meetings. It’s a great way to learn how it feels to be part of a rural intentional community and to pick up practical skills in gardening, building, and homesteading. We ask a 2-month minimum commitment between April and October. Please see our web site or call for more info.

Moving On
by Sara McCamant

We--Sara, Darryl and Aria--have decided to leave Emerald Earth. This summer will be our ninth one here and, in so many ways, Emerald Earth is our dream come true. But that dream is ten years old. We have changed and it no longer fits us. A rural, land-based, intimate community is not meeting our needs anymore. The reasons are both complex and simple. Some have been emerging over the years and some have always been there. The simplest and easiest to describe are: Aria is going into Junior High and more than ever does not wanting to be up a long dirt road far from other kids her age. Darryl is ready to live in a less intimate community and Sara has burned out on the constant comings and goings of new people.

We sometimes question if this is the best decision. We believe so strongly in everything EE stands for and know well what we will lose in leaving. But for now it feels like time to try something new in the greater world, to take our skills and interests to new projects and to explore other possibilities. We do not yet know where we are moving to. We’re still deciding between Sebastopol and Boonville. We hope our incredible network of friends will help us look for a new home and work. We will stay involved with Emerald Earth as off-site Land Council members and maybe even move back someday. We want to thank everyone in the larger EE community for making the last nine years such a magical and incredible journey.

Adoption Connection

Hi! I am looking to adopt a child of any ethnicity. I have always wanted to be a parent and am actively trying to connect with an expectant (or recent) mother looking for a home for her child. Many times these connections are made through somebody like yourself learning about a child that needs a home and helping put them in touch with somebody like myself. (I know many people are unfamiliar with this process, but about 20,000 adoptions within the US take place in this way each year. This is a voluntary process on the part of the parents, not a forced removal from the home.) Please find out more by going to my web site: www.KristenInBerkeley.com or calling me toll free at 888-665-7362. Thanks for you help!

~Kristen Gardner, Land Council Member