Communal Living

We share just about everything at East Wind. We are communally responsible for the needs of all our members, including adequate food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education, and other needs and amenities considered desirable, insofar as the community is able to provide them. With the exception of personal possessions kept in members’ rooms, everything we have is held in common (including our land, our business, and other assets). Members receive a small monthly stipend to spend on travel and personal needs.

Assuming we are not at full population capacity, new provisional members are able to choose from available rooms. Most rooms are small and not glamorous, but occupants are welcome to decorate and personalize their rooms as they please. There are nearly sixty rooms in dorms and nine personal shelters currently.

Rooms and personal shelters become available when members leave or move elsewhere within community. When a desirable space becomes available, interested members roll dice to claim the spot (the space goes to the highest roller). With the exception of occupied bedrooms, all indoor and outdoor spaces are accessible to all members.

We share a fleet of community vehicles, which members are able to sign out for personal, group, and community-related trips. Town trips are arranged several per week. Members and visitors who want goods from town can submit a simple written request and have their items purchased and brought back to community by a town tripper.

Shared Living Spaces

Residences

There are currently four main residences and nine personal shelters available to members. Fanshen and Anarres are the two largest dorms. Fanshen, built in 1975, is a twenty-one room residence, while Anarres houses ten. Anarres includes a shared downstairs area with a kitchen, shower, living room, and an extensive community library. Rooms in dorms all have electricity and use electric heat (some rooms in Anarres have baseboard heat as well).

There are currently three Small Living Groups: Greyhaven, Sunnyside, and Lilliput. Members who desire to live in one of these buildings must obtain permission from all current residents of the group minus one. Greyhaven is a small living group for those who prefer quiet and calm and houses five; Sunnyside is a ten room residence for those who enjoy noise, excitement, and frequent parties.

Lilliput, built in 1977, is a residence established for children and families. Lilliput houses a dozen people and includes a kitchen, living room, play space, and home schooling room. Lilliputians also enjoy a nice backyard with a garden, sandbox, kids’ pool, and small playground. There are two other playgrounds elsewhere in community.

Personal Shelters & The Lighthouse

The nine personal shelters include five single residences (Northwatch, the Yurt, Anarchia, the Aviary, and Further) and four double shelters (the Dome, the Arc, Gitchigumi, and Rivendale). Personal shelters are small abodes located in the woods surrounding community proper; most are simple living and sleeping spaces with outhouses, though some include extremely basic kitchen set ups. Some personal shelters have electricity while others operate on solar panels or without electricity completely. All use wood stoves for heat.

The Lighthouse, a beautiful little cabin in the woods bordering our Golden Valley, acts as a guesthouse and a retreat for members. Members are able to sign out the Lighthouse for visiting friends and family on an as available basis. The Lighthouse is a short walk from our central building, Rock Bottom.

Shared Recreation and Work Spaces

Kitchen

Rock Bottom (RB), built in 1976, houses East Wind’s main kitchen and dining facilities. Community meals are prepared here. RB includes a wide range of cooking appliances and kitchenware, and a large outdoor walk-in fridge amply stocked with produce and dairy. RB is also home to most of our community message boards and a popular hangout spot; it is very likely the most frequented building in community.

Laundry & Showerhouse

In 2004, we completed construction on a large showerhouse, which encompassed showers, a laundry room, a sewing room, a massage room, and an extensive communal wardrobe called Commie Clothes (Commie Clothes functions somewhat like a free thrift store). On December 16, 2011, our Showerhouse caught fire and burned to the ground (fortunately, no one was harmed in the fire). We are currently cleaning up after the destruction and working on temporary solutions. It may be some time before we are able to create something that can truly replace our beautiful Showerhouse.

Though we lost all of our communal clothing and shoes, bedding, medical supplies, toiletries, towels, sewing equipment, etc. in the fire, community has pulled together to make sure that everyone is taken care of and that no one is going without. We have already received many generous donations, and our new Commie Clothes includes clothes of all sizes and types.

Community provides visitors and members with all necessary toiletries, including soaps, shampoos, conditioners, deodorant, feminine products, cotton swabs, laundry detergent, etc. Medical supplies, including a wide variety of vitamins, herbal and natural medicines including tinctures, teas, and salves, conventional medicines, first aid kits, etc. are also made available.

Reim, Exercise Room, & The Chickenshack

One of the few buildings standing when the land was purchased in 1974, Reim is the original farmhouse used for sleeping, cooking, dining, and office space by East Wind’s first members. Reim now encompasses our music room (a popular hangout spot for many East Winders), our food processing area (Foopin), and a small laundry room. Gatherings and parties are frequently held at the music room and on the Reim lawn.

What we call the “music room” (part of Reim) functions as a hangout spot where people can listen to the radio, CDs, or records, or play acoustic music. The building that we call the exercise room houses most of our electronic music equipment, in addition to exercise equipment (treadmill, weights, mats, punching bag, etc.). Many of our acoustic instruments reside in an old chicken shack that is now a beloved spot for partying and jamming, and a few guitars can usually be found lying around RB and other communal spaces.

The Business Area (Enterprise, The Nuthouse, and Siberia)

Our nut butter and sandals businesses are centralized within the northern portion of the community, and encompass the Nuthouse (our factory), Siberia (our refrigerated warehouse), and Enterprise (which includes our offices, shipping area, and old Hammocks shop). The Hammocks shop (HMX) is where we hold our community meetings and Board meetings. These buildings were completed in the late 1970s and early 80s, but have undergone some extensive renovations in recent years.

Auto Shop, General Shop, Machine Shop

We work on community vehicles in our auto shop, which possesses a hydraulic lift, welding equipment, pneumatic tools, and various other tools and equipment. The general shop is where we store our woodworking tools and building maintenance equipment. This equipment includes a table saw, drill press, and miter saw, among various other tools. The general shop is accessible to members at all times. The machine shop includes a lathe, drill press, among many other tools and machines. These machines are available to members with the specialized knowledge to operate them.

Sawmill

We own and operate our own sawmill on which we mill lumber from our land. We are presently working on relocating the sawmill to a nearby location on our property where we intend to build a wood drying shed alongside it. Our sawmill currently runs on gasoline.