Saturday August 22, 2009

Back to basics

Stories By LEONG SIOK HUI

A ‘village’ in upstate New York shows that you can nurture community values and tread lightly on the planet without forgoing modern living.

When American Celeste Froehlich first returned to the United States after living in Rwanda, she was hit by reverse culture shock. Though she and her husband, Aaron, settled in a nice neighbourhood in Central Phoenix, Arizona, she found it “so stark”. Hardly anyone strolled in the streets and people didn’t look her in the eye even at the grocery store.

Celeste and Aaron Froehlich with their sons.

The Froehlichs missed the close-knit community in Rwanda.

“We knew our neighbours. It was important to say ‘Hi’ or ask about each other’s families when we met on the streets,” says Froehlich, 31, who trained in clinical social work and works with refugees and migrants.

They started looking up intentional communities — planned residential communities that reflect residents’ shared values — to move into.

“We were looking for a sustainable lifestyle — somewhere where adults, children and the elderly can live and grow together. And where we’ll have connection to the forest,” says Celeste Froehlich who has two boys, aged five and seven.

Finding a ‘utopia’ of sorts

I met the Froehlichs at EcoVillage at Ithaca (EVI), in the scenic Finger Lakes region of New York. A quaint college town of 30,000 people, Ithaca is home to Ivy League Cornell University and Ithaca College, four state parks and boasts a vibrant art, music and theatre culture.

Tucked in West Hill overlooking Ithaca town, EVI sits on 175 acres (70ha) of land with rich soil and bucolic meadows. Minutes from downtown, the EcoVillage has two co-housing neighbourhoods, Frog and Song, with 30 houses each, and a third neighbourhood, Tree, in the planning stages. A nonprofit organisation with a board of directors that includes residents and outsiders owns the land and runs EVI. Residents own their homes and the community properties.

Originating in Denmark in 1968, the co-housing model combines the best of both worlds — the privacy of your own home and the sense of belonging in a close-knit community.

Founded in 1991, EVI neighbourhoods share a Common House (a community house that belongs to the residents), carport, community garden, pedestrian-friendly walkways and playground. The Common House has community-owned washing machines and dryers, playroom, TV and DVD player and a “reuse room” where you can swap your old clothes and books with your neighbours — a great way to recycle.

Residents gather at the Common House for meetings, parties and to share home-cooked meals several times a week. Onsite organic farms, West Haven and the Kestrel Perch Berry farm, supply fresh veggies and berries for the common meals which cost US$3 (RM10) a pop (for residents). EVI adults put in two to four hours of community work each week, from cooking the common meals to landscaping and housekeeping.

Unlike your hippie or religious communes, EVI is not bound by ideology or religion. Folks come from all walks of life — from professionals and artists to activists and farmers, with varying income levels.

What makes co-housing unique is that the 160 residents have an equal say in every decision involving the village — from building their homes to the paint colour at the Common House. In the US, there are 113 co-housing communities across the country, from urban areas like Los Angeles to rural Fairbanks in Alaska (The Co-housing Association of the US).

The Froehlichs love the fact that no more than 20% of the land will be developed in the long run.

One of the two straw-bale insulated homes in the Song neighbourhood.

“This place is a good balance: beautiful open spaces to be preserved forever and yet it takes less than an hour to walk downtown where you get your dose of culture, music and shopping,” says Froehlich who moved into EVI with her family more than a month ago.

The ‘eco’ in EVI

Instead of state-of-the-art (read pricey!) green technology, EVI adopts practical eco-friendly practices. Thick walls insulated with recycled newspaper and multi-paned fibreglass windows keep Ithaca’s nippy winters out (temperatures dip easily below 0°C). Frog’s houses have south-facing, floor-to-ceiling windows to absorb the sun’s heat in winter while vine-wrapped trellises shade the interiors during summer.

Some homes are equipped with rainwater collection, solar heaters, composting toilets and dual drain piping for future grey water recycling.

“Because the houses are small and clustered together, they utilise a shared heating system for greater energy efficiency,” explains Frog and Tree’s architect/builder, Jerry Weisburd.

“Green and affordable homes are achievable by limiting dwellings to a reasonable size and constructing a bunch of similar houses simultaneously.”

The average home size in the US is 2,330sq ft (216sq m), according to the National Association of Home Builders. EVI houses range from 922sq ft (86sq m) to 1,642 sq ft (152sq m). Not surprisingly, a house here uses about one third the energy of an average American home.

Resident Kurt Allen Pipa likes how EVI’s ecological practices are done collectively.

Kurt Pipa and wife, Chieko from Japan;

“We have a recycling and composting system set up for the village and every household just needs to do their part,” says Pipa, 43, who moved from Brooklyn, NY, with his Japanese wife, Chieko, a year ago.

“If you’re going to build a green house outside EVI, imagine the amount of time and money you’d spend on research and learning.”

The Village has a car-share system where you reserve a car and pay the hourly plus mileage rates. Residents also car-pool, cycle, walk or hop on public buses, which are less frequent. Using community funds, the residents built a root cellar to store the potatoes, turnips and onions for winter consumption.

The ‘Good Earth’

On my visit to EVI, farmer, poet and author Wendell Berry’s words — “The mere act of eating is an agricultural act” — kept ringing in my ears.

Fresh, scrumptious food, and tons of it, plays the starring role in EVI.

On a lovely Saturday morning with bright blue sky and dancing daffodils, most of the residents were out in the fields picking berries or weeding the veggie farm.

As CSA (community-supported agriculture) members for West Haven and the Berry Farm, residents pay a subscription fees at the beginning of the season. At West Haven, it costs about US$375 (RM1,329) to US$575 (RM2,028) to feed up to three in a family, and about US$72/RM255 (or less) for the Berry Farm.

For about 24 weeks, you get a weekly supply of organic veggies like beans, carrots, spinach, greens and punnets of strawberries, gooseberries and raspberries.

West Haven also sells its produce in Ithaca’s famous Farmers’ Market every weekend. The highly productive 10-acre (4ha) farm feeds about 1,000 people a week during growing season!

“As the season goes on, there’s a surplus of crops. In the last week or two you can pick as much chard, kale and snow peas (as you want),” says Elan Shapiro, a resident at EVI for 13 years. “There’s a big interest in food preservation here.”

Shapiro has just taken a fruit-canning class. He blanches and freezes the kale and chards and stocks them for winter months. Residents build solar dehydrators to dry their berries or make fruit jams.

Many like Shapiro signed up for the CSA work-share option. They put in a few hours of work each week at the veggie and berry farms in exchange for lower subscription fees. The farms run regular work-parties where members pick their own food, weed or mulch the soil beds.

Children happy in the playground.

“In this country, people live in the suburbs and they don’t know their neighbours. But having a work-party and a meal afterwards bring together a community who cares about food,” says Shapiro, 61.

“We know where our berries come from. It’s about having the connection to your food source,” says another volunteer.

Shapiro, a sustainability educator for colleges and community centres, thinks it’s important to make CSAs affordable for more low-income families.

“I do volunteer education on vegetable gardening and cooking with low-income kids,” says Shapiro, 61, who owns Frog’s Way Bed & Breakfast in EVI.

“People usually think of sustainability as energy and environment. But it’s all about creating a healthy society. And access to healthy, good food is for everybody. But without addressing poverty, education and empowerment, there’s no possibility of anything sustainable happening.”

Farms like West Haven don’t produce grain and protein crops hence members source for staples from the Farmers’ Market or the GreenStar Co-op market in downtown Ithaca.

“We’re trying to push people to eat more local, seasonal food,” says Shapiro who also grows veggies in the community garden. “People want to eat rice but it’s not local here so we to try to eat more barley, buckwheat or oats which have been grown here for a long time.”

Shapiro finds that EVI residents are supporting local suppliers more now than 15 years ago.

Says Shapiro, “We’re just showing an alternative to suburbia. Here, it’s about building relationships with local foresters, builders and farmers.”

Life in the community

With the vast open spaces and wilderness in their backyard, EVI kids will probably not suffer from “nature-deficit disorder”, a term coined by Last Child in the Woods author and child advocacy expert Richard Louv.

The pedestrian-friendly walkways make it safe for kids to run around. Families look out for each other’s children when they frolic in the playgrounds. Most kids hardly watch TV because they’re busy with activities.

“My seven-year-old came back from the kids’ activity this morning and said, ‘I love it here. This is so much fun!’,” says Froehlich smiling.

Harvesting red currants

With 60 kids in the village, the children learn how to resolve conflicts with their peers from an early age.

Since 1996 when the first group of residents moved in, about five kids have grown up in EVI and left, EVI co-founder Liz Walker said.

“I don’t think they’ll move back here but I think they’re taking the values we have and using them in their lives,” says Walker, 55. Her two sons, Jason, 27 and Daniel Katz, 23, grew up in EVI.

“They learn so much by seeing people work in teams, solve problems and work through conflicts together,” says Walker.

“My sons are interested in community-oriented things and want to do things for a better world.”

One big family

EVI residents feel like they are part of a big extended family.

“When I was a kid, I grew up in a family of seven and we had to eat dinner together and talked a lot,” says Pipa who grew up in Pennsylvannia and lived in Japan for a decade.

“Here, it’s like that. We know everyone, socialise and eat together sometimes. It’s a lot of fun.”

In her book, Ecovillage at Ithaca — Pioneering a Sustainable Culture, Walker wrote about how when a resident, the late Pamela Carson, was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer, everyone rallied to help.

Someone whipped up a tasty meal when Carson lost her appetite, another resident, a folk singer, sang to her when she was in pain during her chemo treatments. Many helped with transport or shopping. One week before Carson’s death, the whole community showed up for a memorial to celebrate her life.

“It doesn’t mean we are all best friends: that wouldn’t be realistic,” says Walker.

Conflicts do happen when people live so closely together. EVI has trained mediators to deal with individual and group conflicts.

“But it does mean there are strong relationship ties that develop over time.’’

The Froehlichs got a taste of community life when the residents held a work party to help them move into their new home.

“People were carrying our stuff in the rain. And we had a fun pizza party afterwards,” says Froehlich. “We were set up with families who had us over for dinner and helped us make connections to people.”

Not surprisingly, the couple wants to put down roots in EVI. As Froehlich says, “We plan to live here for a long, long time, hopefully.”

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