Sunday, June 21, 2015

Talent Show!

This past weekend we held a talent show.  As you may know if you read the history of Elderberry, we are adjacent to Potluck Community Farm - a 25 year old intentional community.  Potluck Farm has been having talent shows annually for about 20 years and this year we combined with Elderberry and had the event in our new (shared) common house.  We had music, dancing, drumming, poetry, body movement, story-telling, hair braiding, beautiful food creation, and more.  Afterwards we had a tasty potluck meal and ate the beautiful food!











Sunday, June 14, 2015

Lovely Day at Elderberry

We had a productive workday at Elderberry today and a delicious meal made for us by Vonda and Kelly.  I'm finally learning how to add a few images to this blog!!











Saturday, June 13, 2015

New Projects

With the summer in full force, we are tackling a number of fun projects.  This week the Art Committee began working on possible designs for our large central circle.  From the parking lot, a path leads to this circle, and from there to the common house or on to the homes in the community.  The circle also sits beside a 100+ year old white oak tree (which gives lovely shade) and a similarly old hand hewn log farmhouse, which we will one day restore.  It's a lovely spot - always with a breeze - and the art committee is playing around with mosaic designs that will make it an even more beautiful feature of the community.

Also this week we have a group of people starting construction on a metal-working shop.  The shop is being planned and built by one of our members, Pat, who is a blacksmith.  Pat has already created many beautiful and useful things for the community, including new hinges for one of the barns, hinges and latches for the chicken pen, and lovely supports for the long bar that is part of the kitchen island in the common house.  Pat is keen to teach others this craft and for the shop to be used to support building many of the things we need for the community.

Rosemarie, who is already a resident of Elderberry (living with her 99 year old mother in one of the first 4 homes built and occupied), has been on her own beautification campaign, putting mulch in the landscape circle and weeding the paths (great gift, little glory!).  She has also this week been collecting eggs daily from two broody hens and trying to shoo them off the nests with little success.  She, along with residents Meg and Kelly are also fostering an abandoned beagle named Willy and working to find him a good home.  He is adorable and loving, so if anyone reading this wants a very sweet, young dog who loves kids and other dogs, write to us!!

Friday, June 5, 2015

June!

The national co-housing conference was so great!  We had a bus load of folks at Elderberry for a tour - mostly people who are also starting their own communities and wanting to learn.  Our members worked long and hard to make the common house beautiful and inviting (including sewing new tablecloths!).  Several of us attended the conference sessions and learned a lot.... more ideas for aging in community, ideas for common house meals, financing, improving decision-making and sociocracy.  We'll be exploring all these new ideas to see what we want to apply to our own community.

Our gardens are looking great and our chickens have become free range!  Progress continues on the 4 newest homes, including a lovely timber frame house that is going up as I write.  We will be building the last few homes and selling them (rather than selling lots) so for those of you who may have been unwilling to go through the process of buying a lot, designing a house, choosing a builder and getting a construction loan, check in with us to see what the new houses for sale will be like.  The homes we are building this year will be available for occupancy around mid 2016.  Come and check us out!