Okay! Yes! Finally! Here’s the youtube version of the film that was taken of the presentation we made at the local library of the Evolution of Green Acres Village. That was back in January! I hope all the technical problems we encountered have been worked out. If someone would watch it in full and let me know if there are any obvious glitches, I’d would sure appreciate it. It’s unedited, and gets going strong about two minutes in.
Hopefully, it will be the first of many videos of various types and lengths on our new Green Acres Village youtube channel. And hopefully, we’ll learn more as we go!
Please be advised that since that time, evolution has continued! Of course! That’s the nature of this small but mighty! local experiment that seeks to ground us humans in an old/new way on planet Earth. Two residents, Ari and Briana, both featured in the film, have moved on, and another new resident, Evan, has come and gone — though all three remainl more or less connected; another person, Sam, has moved in and Logan has decided to stay rather than leave in August (his original intention); all this movement leaves one room that we’re not sure whether or not to fill. Maybe not. Maybe save as the guest room, for now. Unless the absolutely perfect candidate shows up.
Meanwhile, the new third house will fill starting in August, with three doctoral students in music at Indiana University. They say they want to join us, for community life. Well, they’ll sure get it!
Our “problem” now is the opposite of several years ago: all men, and only two women, both of them old! So, that perfect candidate, if one appears, had better be female!
And of course, the place itself is continuously evolving. Right now, there’s a reconstruction project going on in the garage and in back of the new third house.
High contrast to the back yard of the Overhill house and its patio area — which we made sure we cleaned up before the local permaculture guild meeting/potluck here last Tuesday evening.
Meanwhile, a wonderful young IU intern, Grant, helped immensely during the planting season for six weeks. And at this point the gardens themselves are so full to overflowing, that ruthlessly pruning and removing some otherwise okay “weeds” is imperative.
This morning I connected with a man on craigslist who’s going to sell us his fully functional dishwasher for the third house for $100. We’ll go pick it up this afternoon, after dropping off the second load of brush from the pile that was near the patio, as shown in the trailer in this photo:
This summer, Rebecca was gone two weeks to visit family in California; as soon as she returned, I was gone three weeks to Siberia/Mongolia, and plan another week in Alaska for a family wedding/reunion August 3-9. Shortly after I return, Logan and Dan embark on a long-dreamed of, nearly three week, cross-country road trip to the west coast and back, busking with guitar and banjo along the way.
So with all our comings and goings, we are managing to keep up with the workload — barely! Meanwhile, we’re only beginning to chip away at this beautiful pile of wood chips.
Rebecca has started another lovely little garden:
The front garden at the DeKist house is flourishing, with lots of vines to still pull out on the eastern side — and we still haven’t gotten around to finishing our planned bamboo lattice fence.
The elderberries are totally gorgeous! (BTW: I gifted a bag of our dried elderberry flowers from two months ago to one of the shamans on the trip.)
And tell me please, what was I thinking when I planted a Garden Tower with amaranth on top?
Talk about top-heavy! Amaranth would look much better planted in the garden, though it’s flourishing in the Tower. Also planted chard back at the same time, which was doing fine until I left town and then wilted. Why. Not enough water? Dan thinks the the amaranth hogged the water. In any case I replanted bottom rows a few days ago with basil; the holy basil on the top two rows survived. Making lots of pesto.
