Rainy tractors 'n more

What's been happening?

Well, yesterday morning Della arrived earlier than I've ever seen her and announced (in her very quiet way) that Aunty Bev, Grandma and someone, somehow related to Della named Scott were coming up to the block and bringing a tractor.

What does this mean?

It means the potato patch will finally get plowed!

In about an hour, Scott, tractor-driver extraordinaire, zipped up and down around the few rows Tyler had managed to get done before various things went wrong with the tractor, and plowed the whole field, pausing only to strip off extra layers and taking no note of the peanut gallery standing by. It was plain to see his years of experience in the way he handled the old Massey-Ferguson 35 (a newer model than ours, an M-F 28) and I was very touched by his kindness in driving up to our block to work in the rain before he tended to his own garden on what is most people's weekend. And he acted like it was nothing!

This is the day after I'd sat down and set my intention for things to go smoothly for Abeo. More and more I hear about this community, and what I see is different than what I envisioned. What I'm seeing is the beginning, the very seed of Abeo Intentional Community. I see quite plainly the manifestation; that seems very clear. It's just getting there.

This morning I asked Tyler what Abeo needed more; people or money. He said, “Della's very concerned with money right now, but what Abeo needs is people. It's only people who can build this property up and help create the Abeo vision.”

(He didn't say it quite like that. But that’s the gist.)

What I'm hearing is that it's time for people to take that step and participate in the change, whatever it is for you. If Abeo's the right place, then now is the right time. If your dream is something else, what's stopping you?

**

Solomon spent the night at Grandma's, getting a bath and a week's fill of sweet treats, which meant Tyler and I had the shed to ourselves for the evening. I asked him about using his intention to create an easy path for Abeo, but the only answer I got was that he and Della are overwhelmed with what there is to do, and with bringing up two kids, and it's been left by the wayside.

Tyler's been creating Intentional Communities for years; his first he called “Delta Infinity,” which means the same thing as Abeo – eternal change. He's never created a ‘successful’ community; I don't know if he's ever created what you would call a community. He has great ideas, but the manifestation is something else. I'm not saying he hasn't tried. The whole reason he began Delta Infinity was because after he carefully studied the first edition of the Intentional Communities Directory, he hadn't found any that interested him. So, he created it and no one came. He decided to visit other intentional communities to see how they worked and more importantly to him, how they didn't. The community he chose is EastWind, one of the Egalitarian communities that Kat Kincade (of Twin Oaks and Acorn) helped create, based on a book called Walden Two. He said he chose East Wind because they looked too good to be true, and he wasn't interested in finding a perfect intentional community, he wanted one with problems, so he could study them, learn what he didn't want and perhaps how to fix it. Even now, Tyler describes his on-again, off-again three years at EW as easy and dysfunctional, a 'sick' community. There is no commitment for people who want to live there; they can just show up. This was another reason Tyler decided to go to East Wind.

Along the way, he visited Sandhill Farm and Dancing Rabbit, both intentional communities nearby, and found them to be unhealthy and closed-off, uncommunicative and not open to new ideas. They also required more of a time and money commitment to join. It seems the website shows one thing and the reality is quite another.

Looking back in my case, the website is pretty accurate and it was my mind that created the rest. I'm not sure what I expected, but I think this is probably the best experience I could have. Starting a community from scratch, learning what it takes on every level to put something together, from where we get our water (rainwater collected from the roof of the shed) to how we'll get electricity (wind turbine up on the hill; power collected by battery bank, inverter used to turn it into AC power we can plug in. Just waiting for the excavator so we can dig something in – I don't know or remember what - and start it up), what it'll take to put a phone line in (more digging for the line and putting up a structure to house it – Telstra orders), to dealing with possums jumping the electric fence at night and munching on Elly's rose bush. There's heaps more things I'm learning; I had the choice today to watch a documentary or a movie and since I'm so overloaded with information to process, I watched the first season's episode of LEXX.

Ha!

I dig it. I'm still smiling at the twists and turns of The Shadow and the motley crew of misfits who escaped. Tee hee!

I'll leave you with that. I hear I'm missing a beautiful sunset!