Community Service: Solar Test Field & Garden

Join a team of workers for 12 days of annual maintenance in the kitchen and garden, and learn about community building.

Overview

Help us prepare our Solar Test Field for a shiny season!

In the mornings, we’ll be doing practical work. Tasks could include:

• refurbishing the secondary mirror of the big Scheffler reflector (metal and painting)
• fixing the sun trap of the Scheffler oven
• painting the little walls with lime
• plant and prepare beds in our community garden
• and many other details that make a place functional, beautiful and homely. By doing this, you’ll also get to know the solar cooking possibilities and the basic idea of the Test Field in more detail.

In the afternoons, we’ll have group time, guided by one of our community’s most experienced group leaders and elders. You’ll experience Forum, an essential social technology for creating trust and intimacy in a group, and learn about our philosophy, the Healing Biotopes Plan and our work towards energy autonomy.

Together, we’ll explore questions like:

• How can people live together in truth and trust?
• What is peace work?
• How can regenerative communities make a difference to a world in crisis?”

Who is the course for?

• People who are happy and physically able to clean, repair things and do garden work
• People with interest in community-building
• People with an interest in regenerative autonomy and complicity-free living
• People with maintenance skills.

What you’ll learn

• The idea and work of the Solar Test Field
• Our experiences in working towards regenerative autonomy
• The collaboration between our garden and the Solar Kitchen
• How restoring autonomy and choice within us helps us create sustainable autonomous systems on the outer
• How the Solar Test Field and communal gardens contribute to the Healing Biotopes Plan
• Basic principles of building community and trust among people, including Forum.

“This is an emerging Healing Biotope where we work to reconnect and restore the wholeness of life. Courses are focused on topics, but all of our research exists in an interconnected web, so your learning will likely expand on other areas.

As a learner, you can join our morning offers, which can include things like Yoga and Qi Gong. You’ll also be able to join in whole community events, like our Sunday matinee, the Ring of Power and Political Cafes.”

What you will do

• Practical work in the garden and Solar Test Field
• Introduction to Tamera’s foundational thoughts with a particular focus on the area of autonomy
• Daily Forum
• Spiritual morning attunements at our Political Ashram

Testimonials

“It was actually quite fun, having working time in the mornings and grouptime in the afternoons, with Forum where we could directly address issues which have come up while working together.”
– Alex