Culture & Government
The Leaves Newsletter
Twin Oaks E-Newsletter:
The Leaves of Twin Oaks is the community's newsletter. It chronicles the joys, trials, absurdities, etc. of life in our commune.
We discontinued printing a paper edition, and now send the Leaves out electronically. We have archived in PDF format and offer on this website quite a few of the issues that came out in print. See the link below to that archive.
Sign up below to receive our Leaves of Twin Oaks e-newsletter. Find out the latest happenings here at Twin Oaks, including community social and cultural events, our joys and challenges, lightly spiced with some communal politics.
The newsletter will appear in your inbox when you least expect it (ie. it's produced as inspiration strikes, and isn't published on a regular schedule).
Ecovillage
An ecovillage is a human scale, full-featured settlement which integrates human activities harmlessly into the natural environment, supports healthy human development, and can be continued into the indefinite future.
After 30 years of development, Twin Oaks Community in Central Virginia is well on its way toward achieving this ideal. Join us in our endeavor to lighten our impact on nature, evolve sustainable systems, and model a better way of life.
Twin Oaks as Ecovillage
Twin Oaks fits the contemporary definition of ecovillage in numerous ways. In many ways past and present we have tried to consider what might be sustainable for the long term. Photos here show some of the ways this manifests in the physical realm: examples shown include food, fuel, recycling, transportation, etc.
Energy Conservation
Conservation aka resource/energy efficiency takes many forms. In some ways how we live is inherently more resource efficient than the way most people live--shared vehicle fleet, shared equipment, shared living space, etc.
We do a lot of recycling and reducing. We also reuse and salvage a lot of stuff including through dumpster diving.
Alternative Energy
We heat most of our buildings with locally harvested firewood.
Besides passive solar heat for some of our buildings, we also have a number of solar water heating installations and some photovoltaic (electricity) developments.
Agriculture
Since the early years of Twin Oaks we have grown and raised much of the food we eat, naturally (in fact organically) though we're not certified as organic, except for our tofu business.
Clubs & Organizations
Most of the items in this list are no longer current but are presented here since they represent a selection of various interests and activities of members of Twin Oaks at the time this list was created.
Over the years countless groups have been formed for specific purposes, some by invitation, some open to all commune members. Here are examples that come to mind beyond linked articles presented in this category:
- Re-evaluation co-counseling
- Scrabble
- Non-violent communication
- Language learning groups: examples include Esperanto class and French table at dinner
- Bridge card game
- Knitting
- "Transparency" personal growth
Holidays
Twin Oaks has a few of it's own holidays, alternative takes on some traditional holidays, and some of us some of the time observe traditional mainstream holidays.
Policies
Some Policies of Twin Oaks Intentional Community. Many of the policies presented here were last edited 10 or more years ago, and as such may not be current in all respects. See the last article in this series for a recently recently released (2010) collection of policies.
Walden Two
Twin Oaks Intentional Community was founded in 1967 based on the behaviorist principles of BF Skinner's book Walden Two. We are no longer a behaviorist community, but it is here that our roots lie, and so we are including this information on our website.