Community

We typically have about 50 residents on site.

While we all have our own spaces, we get together in community in various ways.

For example, we meet our neighbors coming and going, in the mail room, doing laundry, gardening our individual plots, or other special activities.

Additionally, we have regular get togethers in work parties (e.g., compost processing every 2 weeks), while group gardening (every three weeks or so, almost year-round), or at community nights (for crafts, sewing, or games), as well as potlucks and events, such as movie nights (as scheduled by residents).

Residents Potluck 06-20-2021

The community is organized as teams for special purposes and as interested by different residents.

Garden Team: probably the most consistently active team, meets every month year round to discuss all gardening issues, including the individual plot community gardens, the ornamental areas such as the butterfly, hummingbird, native plant, and rain gardens, wildlife habitat areas, food forest, orchard, and grape and berry patches.

Group Gardens Team: This group, mainly composed of residents but also including neighbors, manages the communal cultivation of large gardens and divides the harvest among members. It chooses what to plant and organizes regular work and harvest parties.

Fruit Care Team: manages the berry patches, fruit orchard, and vineyard areas, dividing the harvest among members and the greater community.

Compost and Recycling: meets as necessary to discuss composting and recycling issues. Has held audits of the dumpsters to study ways of decreasing landfill waste. Also, organizes pickups of items being donated for charity.

Library Team: Started by a retired librarian, this team has cataloged our community media collection located in the community room.

Sustainable projects team: meets monthly to review the progress of on-going sustainable projects.

Bike Team: meets as necessary to manage the bike parking and bike tools.

Web team: meets and works as needed to maintain the ecovillage web site.

Residents are also interested in developing community with our Portland neighbors. Several neighbors have plots in our community garden or participate in our group gardens program. Our community room is regularly used by community groups for various events. Our wood chip depot is open to any neighbors to help themselves to wood chips for their own gardening projects. We have developed a neighborhood interface area with bulletin board and public gardens and a street painting. In fact, the development of these projects were part of City Repair projects which allowed us to introduce ourselves to many neighbors we had not yet met. One workshop participant actually lived here in 1962!