Day 3 - Orientation and Community Building

Our third day at the farm we did two main things as a group. In the morning we got our first orientation to the garden, and in the afternoon we became more oriented to the farm community and did some community building exercises. Before beginning the day, we had our morning check-in and laid out our schedule scheme for our time here, which is the following:

7:00-7:30 Wake up, yoga, stretching, meditation
7:30-8:00 Morning chores
8:00-9:00 Breakfast
9:00-12:30 Morning session
12:30-2:00 Lunch/free time
2:00-5:00 Afternoon session
5:00-6:00 Chores
6:00 Dinner

In addition, Sunday nights are the farm's community meetings which we are welcome to observe, other nights have optional other activities, Fridays are days off and Mondays are generally field trip days.


Before the morning activities began Chloe and I learned how to milk the goats. Huckleberry was a little feisty and stepped in the bucket, but Sal was pretty easygoing with us newbies. It's ok though, we purified the milk that was stepped in by boiling it and used it to make delicious warm honey-cinnamon milk, mmmmm. Milking the goats is one of the intern chores that we're keeping up on to help out the larger community while we're here.



Matt showed us what we can eat for our meals. One thing that some of us learned, some of us knew, is that there are many edible flowers out there. They can be very nutritious and satisfying to us in a way that other foods are not, with their super-light, bright qualities. Squash flowers in particular were super-yummy to taste.





While on our tour we harvested alot of veggies for our lunch. We decided to just put it all out on the table as a spread and everyone made themselves a nice little raw veggie wrap, with broccoli leaves, kale, flowers, peanut sauce and more. There were some pretty nice wraps that certainly could've gone for at least $10 at some fancy raw-food restaurant... In these pictures are, from the top, intern Mike, community member Bonsai, and intern Emi.


For the afternoon session we did some games like this human-knot game to have fun together and get to know each other some more. This knot game involved us unravelling from a seemingly impossible situation, but with Em's leadership and weaving skills and the group's determination we did it.

Before that exercise we did a circle game where everyone basically took turns stepping into the center of the circle, sharing something about themselves and seeing who else shared that thing as well. Some things got pretty deep, and our bonds as a group were strengthened.

We also talked about underlying group dynamics and how those things can affect the outcome of group efforts. We got some examples from the farm and how they deal with things. We also talked about "social permaculture," meaning permaculture principles applied in a social setting. After some discussion, we realized that indeed, giving our own belonging in the natural world, it does make sense to apply permaculture principles to ourselves as well. For example, some things are pretty obvious: permaculture is fundamentally about observing the environment and working with the connections between things. Those two things definitely strike an intuitive chord when thinking about social interaction. Other principles seemed a slight stretch at first but also made sense. For example, a permaculture principle is to work with the natural succession or growth of things, rather than against it. Applied in a human setting, we talked about how social change takes time, and we should take account of people's natural inclination to change rather than forcing unnatural or untimely change. Thinking in a broad sense about this, we talked about how modern U.S. society can be seen as being in a very young stage of development in relation to the natural world, while indigenous societies around the world can be seen as more fully developed and mature.

We also learned about how Cedar Moon works as an intentional community. A big piece of that is that there are weekly meetings on Sunday evenings for the whole community to come together and address community issues. The overall tone of the meetings alternates between minds and hearts, meaning, I think, that one week people will discuss more intellectual sorts of ideas and decisions that must be made, and the next week will be for things which are more personal and emotional.

The meetings are run by consensus, meaning that everyone must accept a decision in order for it to stand. This doesn't mean that everyone must approve of a given decision, but that at least if some people don't approve, consensus can be reached if those who disapprove agree to stand aside and let the decision be made.

In order to make the consensus process work, there are a number of tools that Cedar Moon uses. Overall, members strive to use non-violent communication, which is something that takes practice to perfect. "Check-ins" and "check-outs" are used at meetings for people to have their current state of mind acknowledged, so that any personal issues unrelated to the meeting agenda have less of a way to interfere. A buddy system is used in general in order to assist with conflict when it comes up. Each person has a buddy who can act as that person's go-to person for issues. For example, if someone is irritated with a community member, his or her buddy can be approached in order to solicit advice on how best to deal with the issue. At least this is how I think it works from the intro that we got.

We'll be learning more about consensus later during this program, so for now I'll hold off on a more detailed description. One other thing to add, though, is that there is a "social ecology working group" amongst the community's various working groups whose focus is on maintaining the balance of the group's relationships and patterns.

To wrap up the day's activities, we each were assigned randomly chosen buddies for our time here. We took some time to get to know how our buddies tend to act within groups, and then shared what we learned with the larger group. Lastly, we took some time in the group to discuss and decide our intentions/guidelines/shared visions for our group communication. Generally, our emphasis was on creating an open, honest and supportive environment, which has so far manifested itself in some pretty amazing ways. Oh, and during the day, we learned that through some coincidental accident in spelling or something, some of the community members have affectionately dubbed us the "inter-beings" rather than interns. Perhaps a more fitting title, in a metaphysical sense... :)

-Nick