Garden Volunteer Day at OAEC

Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, Occidental, Sonoma County, CA
Wednesday January 24th, 2008

Margaritte and I have had our eye on this place for at least a year because of its unique organizational structure and its apparent functionality as a combo education center business and residential intentional community. After finishing our two-week permaculture training, we take advantage of our close proximity to the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (OAEC) to show up for garden volunteer day to pull weeds and pick the brains of any community member who will talk to us.

We arrive in the morning from the wild concrete mess of San Francisco, where I drove back and forth across the tangled, crowded city streets early that morning in search of lost items, and the night before, a quiet place to sleep. Tanoaks and madrone, not yet affected by Sudden Oak Death**, line the short driveway and hand-painted colorful signs bid us to slow down and warn unwanted visitors to not drop by unexpected. The rich green gardens cascade in terraces down the hill, vegetables interspersed with fruit trees, winding trails and quaint natural wood buildings. It is obvious upon looking around that this land has been lived on with love and attention for a long time. It shows up in the care of design and detailed art weaved into things functional: a dragon shaped cob bench, a shed with a metal sculpture of a face with lightning bolts on it's side, a wooden stage set into the backdrop of the creekside forest, carved intentionally for flow and beauty. I think of how my dad would love the buildings here, how his eyes would light up with fire and dreamy ambition to create spaces such as these for the development and nurturing of community spirit.

In the garden our first task is weeding and mulching the garlic. Doug and Michelle are the two main gardeners whose full time job is managing this lush system of food- and beauty-producing gardens that provide year round for community and guests to the center. The kitchen feeds community members, which number around twenty, and whoever else is present for workshops or events, such as our workparty crew. We squat in the rich built-up beds with a small crowd of other volunteers, delightedly chatting and pulling the tiny weeds away from the maturing garlic leaves. I am struck by the feeling of peace and communal ease on the this land, and I mention this to Michelle, a short middle aged woman with long curly brown hair and a round amiable face. She reveals that, in all the time the land has functioned in its current legal entity (since the early nineties), no one has left the community permanently. No one has left!!! Turn over = zero. This is incredible! Longevity is the main problem I see in the intentional communities I have been a part of and it is the key issue I have set out to understand on my personal journey of creating a land based intentional community. To me, this land looks like a model utopia. I am aware of my naivety, and ask her to define what she thinks creates longevity in community. How do you create this sense of family? What makes people want to stay? Is is possible to define? Much to my delight, she busts out with a simple three point program. It's as if she has been asked this question countless times by young idealistic community-seekers, thus developing the perfect answer to feed their hopeful idealism; her answer is exactly in line with my own thinking, and I feel a surge of creative energy within me as my wildest hopes are confirmed with her clear, experience-informed wisdom.

Michelle's Magical 3-Point Program for Community Longevity (unauthorized).
1) Begin with prior relationships with the people you wish to live with. At the very least, have an extended trial period before accepting new people into the community.
2) Have an established structure for emotional process that the community has agreed upon and is employed regularly. This foundation is invaluable for avoiding emotional build-ups of resentment and miscommunication. Michelle prefers Naka Ima as a model.
3) Create a land-based culture that is a built-in bonding system for people to feel connected to the place where they live and the natural rhythms of the ecosystem. Many community-seekers were raised in the city, or in the mindset of the city, and living with natural rhythms is not ingrained; it must be harbored and developed through regular activities that connect our life cycles with the land, i.e. growing food and eating it. We must re-create the need for local knowledge by linking our needs to those of the land.

At OAEC people also get to do their own thing; the structure is set up to allow people to follow their own inspired life's work, not restrict it. "Why would they leave?" Michelle says matter-of-factly. She herself has come back and forth several times, and no longer lives on the land but is employed by the center as the gardener and is very connected to the place.

After weeding we move on preparing a bed to plant some late-season garlic. We spread compost and manure on the dark earth; then Michelle teaches us the wonders of Tai Chi Gardening. It seems that every system in this place is designed to prevent burn-out, including the use of your body as a valued, irreplaceable, lovable tool. She instructs: your strong hand goes in the middle of the fork handle, your non-dominant hand on end (just for support-don't use the muscle on that hand). Take a wide, low stance; knees bent, one foot in front of the other with your pelvis tucked in to protect your lower back. As you turn the top layer of soil backwards you rock your body by shifting the weight from front leg to back leg; don't use your back to pull and don't exert your arm muscles. The movement is all in your legs, not your upper body or back at all.

As I practiced this extremely awkward new way of moving I noticed my chronic feelings of disregard for my body, how I use it like a cheap tool able withstand a lot of abuse for the sake of production. (For a self identified anti-capitalist, how capitalist is my own mind-frame about my own body?!) Michelle is adamant about garden workers respecting their health and bodies and not burning out in farming as we age. New radical concept! Farming (or, working in general) as a practice in body mindfulness meditation!

I left the day at OAEC with an increased sense of possibility about my own dreams, and an ambition to pursue a possible internship there. Something about the way the structure functions by keeping the legal entities of community (a Limited Liability Company) and business (a non-profit) separate from each other yet linked through the people and the land seems to create a flexible and clear situation that leaves room for community bonding and functional business like I have never seen. Could the community I want to create function like that, I wonder?




**Sudden Oak Death. Once a staple food for the indigenous peoples of this land, and still a foundational species to the wildlife of the area, the tanoaks of northern California are dying at an extreme rate due to sudden oak death. Michelle tells us that it is caused by an algae that spreads through mud and waterways. It constricts the vascular system of the trees, stressing them to the point where they are vulnerable to beetle invasion, which moves in to finish them off. Humans haven't found a way to stop it. The forests in this area are visibly affected: crispy brown tanoak leaves, which normally remain on the tree year-round, are littered thick on the forest floor. Looking across a valley, large brown patches in the hillside vegetation point to the extremity of the loss.
Once, salmon returning to spawn in the clear waters left their dead bodies as offerings of nutrients to this ecosystem. Now they are mostly gone, and their missing presence is one possible link to the cause of sudden oak death. According to a Native friend of Starhawk's, the tanoaks need the humans to tend the land just as the humans need the tanoaks for food. The loss of the human interaction with this species through food foraging and fire management could be creating its mass extinction.