Glass Center for Sustainable Community

(with pictures to come)

Things have been moving and shaking here at the Glass Center. With the end of the summer quickly approaching, a lot of people have arrived and quite a few have left. I’ll start off with a sincere "Thank you" and "Goodbye" to those that have made the Center what it is up to this point. So, from everyone here, adios Hugh, Jeff, Laura, Geoff, Tyler, Will, Virginny, and Kevin. You'll all be missed greatly.

Even with the departure of so many fantastic friends, we're very blessed to have an incredible group here. As of right now, the community consists of Reed, Shaina, Andrew, Josh, Michelle (who'll be manning the fort in Tyler), myself (Hi.. I'm Aaron, if we haven't met), and, of course, the idea man himself, Duel.

This is the perfect opportunity to let everyone know about our current recruitment initiative. Reed and I have been blanketing the "interweb" with ads looking for enthusiastic people wanting to stay here long term and make the Glass Center into the sort of community we all know it can become. You can see one of our ads here. If you are interested in coming out and working with us, please write us as soon as possible. Living space is filling up quickly.

As a new group learning to live and work together, we had to organize all of the responsibilities. Initially, we tried creating a chore chart where each chore would be signed off on after completion, but this created a lot of confusion and unequal distribution. Then we decided to sign up for chores at the beginning of the week, rather than checking them off as we do them. Now, every week we sit down to see who will do what. Each chore is worth a certain number of “points,” based loosely on Dancing Rabbit’s model. There are still some kinks to be worked out, but we're all pretty happy with the concept and think the chore chart is going to be valuable asset around here.

Thankfully, a major clean-up and organization of the property has been spearheaded by the wonderful Shaina. With the help of Reed, she started by cleaning and "prettifying" the cabin home. From there, the ever-busy Shaina and I tackled the infamous workshop. This was sorely in need of some clean-up. It's fantastic to know what tools, materials, and supplies we have available, not to mention, being able to actually find them. She has also been continually mowing, edging, weeding, cleaning, and just making our home completely more bearable.

One of the greater recent accomplishments is our new giganto-garden. Reed has moved forward with planting for the fall season. Not wanting to do anything in small measure, we planted a wealth of tastiness. Hopefully, in a few months we'll be seeing... get ready for this... lettuce, broccoli, mesculine, tomatoes, beets, radishes, carrots, peas (two varieties), beans (three varieties), zucchini, sunflowers, cucumbers, and cabbage... whew. With Reed at the wheel, we'll be eating like vegetarian royalty and, if the fates smile on us, making a few dollars at market as well.

Speaking of the market, I should mention our wonderful experience with East Texas Fresh. It ended a few weeks ago and we can't say thanks enough to everyone involved. We learned quite a bit, made some reinvestment money, and made some friends along the way. Hopefully, we will be involved again this October, so come out and say hello! Of all the things that this market did for us, the top of the list would be allowing us to meet the great Moon Yah. He has been a fountain of knowledge and just a genuinely good friend.

Moon Yah has also been a boon to the Glass Center through his sale of thirty Plymouth Rock chickens to us. You may have seen the "Bear Tractor" in an earlier post. Well, now the tractor has ten residents happily weeding, debugging, and fertilizing our blackberries. The remaining twenty chickens are shacking up with our pet, Lone Chicken, in the pen.

We would love to move the all of our chickens out to garden, but we cannot seem to get the electric fencing working correctly. Once this obstacle is overcome, we’ll have a fleet of chicken workers in the field. Also regarding chickens, we have had no eggs in the past few days. I think the problem has been solved with purchase of the correct feed, but we’ll have to wait and see. Stay tuned for updates.

Unfortunately, these are not the only sad things to report. We have recently lost all of the fish in our second tank of the aquaculture project. Josh had, rather heroically, decided make the aquaculture and green house his personal mission. With his involvement in the zine, Little Brother, he was called away to Colorado to cover the Democratic National Convention. During his absence, things went downhill quickly. Some good can be taken from this, though. I have gotten over my personal fear of aquaculture and taken a genuine interest in the project; tank one is looking better than it has in a while, and Josh has chance to have a clean start with tank two when he returns.

…back to happiness: the goat milking stanchion is complete and training has commenced. We’ve actually milked Dorothy a bit, but she is not too happy about it. Training, breeding, and milking the goats will be a long term activity, and when all is said and done, we’ll have our own milk, cheese, scented soap and, possibly “cabrito.”

Yet another move toward the positive is the hot compost system, initiated by Shaina. We are going to layer, solarize, and flip our compost every four days. There will be eight piles rotating through a cycle that lasts 32 days total. Once the first cycle is complete, we’ll have a fresh pile of beautiful earth every four days.

Well, there you have it. Life at the Glass Center as it stands. Keep an eye out for more updates, and, please comment or email if you have any suggestions or questions.

Peace.

I was studying Spanish in Guatemala when I noticed an article in a local magazine about a biodiesel startup. Although I had 1 day left in the country, I sent an email to the email address on the article. 24 hours later I was getting the full tour from the head of the organization, while he prepared his last 80-gallon batch of the week.

Alejandro Del Valle's plant produces 500 gallons of biodiesel per week, to service 12 vehicles from the municipal government of Antigua, Guatemala. His starting ingredient (waste vegetable oil) comes from Antigua and Guatemala City, primarily from restaurants that had previously been pouring their used oil into the street gutters. Valle uses a processor that was manufactured in Holland, which can fully react 80 gallons of biodiesel in about 45 minutes.

The most empowering thing that I learned was the following: this organization existed for 6 months before they began collecting oil, and 12 more months until they started processing it.
For us at the Glass Center, this is important. Since our biodiesel production is still not off the ground, we are inspired by this profound first step: start collecting oil.

It makes complete sense, since biodiesel comes after oil... but so far we have been so focused on the actual product (the biodiesel) that we've lost sight of the process that gets us there. Collect oil now, process it later.

I have digressed.

It was a tremendous privilege to meet Alejandro, and I hope to maintain a solid tie with his Guatemalan alternative energy organization.