TerraSante: First Impressions and Correcting Them
My first impression of TerraSante was a perfect illustration of the risk of making assumptions.
TerraSante is technically in Tucson as far as the U. S. Postal Service is concerned, but it's a long, looong way out from town, on a dirt road that washes out in heavy rains, leaving the community stranded for maybe half a day at a time. This only happens occasionally, but one of those occasions is right now. Hurricane Michael has long arms; it was bucketing down for most of the morning.
Visually, this is past College Town Culture and into High Hippiedom. I mean, look:
Bathroom behind the main building. (I strongly encourage you to look through all five shots.)
https://instagram.com/p/Bo4g754HZd2
Carpet tipi.
https://instagram.com/p/Bo4iDlwnRCn
Drum circle. (Yes, those are pieces of an old satellite dish.)
Random goddess with weather damage.
Hot tub.
So the first assumption I made, based on previous hippie experience, was that the main kitchen would be the heart of the community and that it would be there that the community's true character would be most visible. TerraSante calls itself an ecovillage and claims to be dedicated to sustainable living, but that kitchen was pretty conventional, in a cobbled-together sort of way. There are three full-sized refrigerators humming along on grid power. The sinks drain into a septic tank (except for the leaks from one sink drainpipe that drip into a kibble of rocks installed in the dirt floor to catch it). There aren't even any signs up asking people to conserve water. It also lacks certain basics such as an adequate supply of hot pads and oven mitts, or any rubber spatulas at all. There is one small solar oven, not even as big as mine although better built. There are all the same electrical appliances that we had in the Worcester, Massachusetts, apartment that I just vacated. It seemed like TerraSante was more about the style, less about the substance.
But I was wrong. The true heart of TerraSante is the Boneyard. When I first heard the name, I figured it was the place where broken things went until someone got around to fixing them. It is that, but in addition, the Boneyard is the workshop, and it is a fine one. Tools and equipment are plentiful and well maintained, supplies are organized, and hazardous materials are behind locked doors because there are small children here. Most of it was not much to look at, just an ordinary workshop, though there was this desk:
Check out the sign on the rafter above it:
TerraSante is basically a Makerspace with an attached campground. Because the people who come here tend to be creative and skillful, this campground has many beauties, but it's an afterthought. It exists because the people who use the Boneyard need someplace to live while they work on their projects.
Some examples of projects:
The Windmill.
Earth bag building construction.
https://instagram.com/p/Bo4lt-qHMw8
Funnel gardens. Hey, gardening for people who can't crouch down easily!
Regular gardens.
Solar shower.(An order of magnitude improvement over your average black-rubber-bag solar shower.)
As soon as I understood this, I began to get ideas for projects.
For starters, it would be valuable to reduce electricity use in that kitchen, starting with refrigeration. I googled around a bit and found that non-electrical refrigeration is a poorly organized and chaotic field, in which high tech solar ice makers and vaccine fridges come up next to decades-old articles from Home Power Magazine and Mother Earth News, videos of DIY coolers made from two clay pots and a pound of sand with an old towel for the lid, and lots and lots of ads for conventional fridges that happen to run on DC power, which is what a solar panel puts out, so it counts as alternative energy. Clearly it will take a little more digging to find out what's really been done in this field. In the meantime, when I broached this idea to one of the founders, who jokingly asked me to refer to him in this blog as Prickle, he was eagar to take me out to the Boneyard and show me the raw materials with which I might build an experimental evaporative cooling chamber the size of one of those little refrigerators that you find in motel rooms. Both he and the other founder I've talked to about this are positive if not downright encouraging.
I cannot tell you how happy this makes me.
So for my next step, I'm going to be developing a plan and pricing thermometers, appliance monitors (to monitor electricity consumption), and other equipment for measuring my results. I have work to do and I feel good about it.