So you want to volunteer with us?

Here is out June 2012 WWOOFusa.org entry:



Howdy! Where were we? Well...here at CRIChouse we are Communal (we love to share); We are Intellectual (don’t believe everything that we think (including that)); We are Anarchistic (no rules only agreements). We are Family (we are committed (we prioritize getting along together, our functionality is our living agreeably together (we don’t give up on each other when it’s hard)). We are putting the home back in economics. We are a homestead Not a farm (we are gardeners but not farmers). And best of all, we are whatever you are interested in that you are (self)motivated to do, create, build and be.

 CRIChouse is one of the many houses of the wider Green Valley Village Intentional Community. The land of GVV IC is 330 acres total with valley meadows and lots of hilly forest and a 2 acre pond. GVV located at the convergence of the santa rosa plains, coastal redwood zone, fir-oak-madrone forest ecotones. There are so many different projects, goals, people and potentials here at this Intentional Community! This means we all at GVV have goats and chickens, and work parties, and dinners, and long meetings, and new members and old members, and lots of random "resource materials" lying around (a.k.a. Junque), consensus process, 30-45 members, and lots of houses, and lots and lots of forest.

 Here at the CRIChouse there are many ways to get involved, whether it be tending front yard garden beds, planting fruit trees (and caring and pruning there of), killing blackberries (i.e. restoring the riparian corridor to more than blackberries and willow (i.e. planting (more (native)) trees), urban foraging, hanging swings, processing dumpster food, feeding pigs, making another meal for everyone, milking goats, making dairy products, feeding chickens leftovers, weeding, fixing fencing, doing someone else’s dishes cuz someone else just did yours, finding someone who wants to card wool, hanging up laundry then finding out who’s it is, making paths, finding ways for space to be intuitively defined, transporting too large items on too small trailers, building solar showers, cooking in solar ovens, collecting damn azula fern outta the damn pond, thinning the fuel-load in the overgrown forest, cutting firewood, building "furniture" with branches instead of tape measures, teaching a free school, building the next best chicken tractor, making compost, fixing bikes, organizing the tool shoppe, trying to hug a llama, escorting chickens, sorting salvaged lumber, digging ponds, conceiving of the next best wood fired hot tub, doing herbal stuff, front yard gardening (food not (blackberry bush) lawns!), processing food (whether it be a sudden abundance of fava beans or red peppers or just good ol' canning or fermenting or fermenting things in cans), gleaning gathering wild crafting whatever's in season, cleaning up after ourselves, building another treehouse, composting our humanure, building soil, repairing old cars, repairing the forest (as we best know how, after 100yrs of logging), asking people all they know about forest health and management (wanna be our next forestry restoration Intern?), fixing plumbing that's older than me and you put together, getting rid of old highly inefficient fridges, creating more "housing", greywatering greywater, constantly organizing the freestore, putting windows in buildings that have none, "doing" "restoration" (i.e. a 100yr old industrial lumber mill), writing unreadably long lists of activities...These are all projects that we want, will and might do. Most of all, we are trying to figure our Cultural Norms and Values then reshape them towards more healthy and sustainable ways as we best know how.

 DETAILS: We can host people with children or pets on a case by case basis, let's talk about it. There are kids around. And numerous cats and dogs. We're Freegan. http://www.Freegan.info ...so daily jaunts into vegetarianism and holidays into carnivorous behavior....and hey so being part of an intentional community can make things very interesting (and fun) so come with that attitude and we'll all be fine. Now go read the the blogifesto http://CRIChouse.blogspot.com