Rhiannon Commune-ity - 9/4/09

My first few days at the Rhiannon Community have been lovely. When you´re driving through the country roads and towering mountains, all you can smell is the eucalyptus trees. Never mind the fact that they are completely sucking the life out of the soil, they smell damn good. The house is pretty huge and so beautiful, including a yoga studio, wood floors, and killer views. They´ve only been here a year, but they´ve managed to get some changes done with a giant chicken tractor/vegetable garden, a greenhouse, composting toilet and shower house, greywater system, and a laguna for some inexplicable reason... literally nobody gives me an answer as to why it is there. There´s also a tipi, a sweatlodge, and a yurt that are pretty cool. We do four hours of work a day and our afternoons our free. We also have extra chores outside of work and mine are putting out the goats and donkeys in the morning and evening which is quite strenuous compared to taking one bag of trash to a trashcan 30 paces away, but the animals are pretty awesome, and bags of trash are not. So I guess it´s a pretty good job. We have no electricity and alll vegetarian meals. It´s at about the same elevation as Quito, right near the equator, usually sunny, and obscenely windy. So far I really enjoy the work. The people who own the place, Helen and Nicky, don´t really know any better what they are doing so you basically get to do whatever you think might work for situations like worm composting and wind fencing, which clearly I am no expert on but it´s awesome to have a place to experiment. I also love the word burning stove that we use every night and bake cakes in, delish!