Smoke Trails #6 Twin Oaks Twin Oaks is the largest American income-sharing community, and their labour system seems to have been working well for forty years now. Everyone is expected to perform a certain number of hours of work every week, but there's a lot of flexibility for the individual to determine what kind of work they want to do, when they want to do it, and who they want to do it with. Most people move around a lot so that they don't get too bored with any one particular set of tasks. Impressively, the farm grows at least 50% of the food calories that its members eat on site. In addition to their vegetable gardens, they have a tofu, tempeh, and TVP processing plant that provides a high-protein diet and a stable source of income to Twin Oaks. They also process their own emotional baggage, so tensions between members aren't left to fester under the rug, they're debated and mediated publicly. Unlike the kibbutz model, Twin Oaks is not state-supported: no one paid for roads, electricity, plumbing or any other infrastructure to be installed. As a result, it doesn't look like a subdivision, every building was designed by consensus and built by members with sweat equity. But over the decades, the structures have started to weather and show wear and tear, and since it's not government-subsidized, items aren't replaced immediately. It doesn't matter too much if your clothes have holes in them, but you can't continually patch up a kitchen when it starts to show its age. Instead of autonomous units or one gargantuan boarding house, Twin Oakers live in SLG's -- Small Living Groups. The population of the farm is divided up in to smaller sub-groups of around a dozen people that occupy a single building. Every pod also has its own bathroom, living room, and kitchen, and each person has their own bedroom or roughly equal size, regardless of seniority or marital status. Every SLG has a particular flavour and its own set of norms that are decided on democratically. This system is excellent for ecological reasons because all of the expensive systems that are parcelled out in a typical nuclear family home for four people are used by three times that number of inhabitants. There's always someone to hang out with, and there's usually something cooking on the stove. There's less space to clean, and you can always retreat back into your bedroom if you want some quiet time to be by yourself. But there is one area where Twin Oaks does not receive a passing grade: sewage. Since the bathrooms are shared by many people, there is an open-door policy; meaning that one person could be showering while another is brushing their teeth at the sink, while a third is taking a dump, separated only by a flimsy translucent curtain. This is even the case in the dining hall, where the toilet is separated only by salloon-style swinging half-doors. The shitty situation is further complicated by the fact that the sewage system is plugged up in several places, so the shit doesn't always go down. And what's worse is that people leave their pee in the toilet to smell up the whole residence. ÊI respect the fact that they're not flushing in order to conserve water, but in that case they should either install a unisex urinal, or else just pee outside in the bushes, watering the garden. There's no logical reason to let it ferment amonious resentment. Coming from the Middle East, I've also found some core cultural differences around fecal matters. For example, sometimes you want to wipe your bum with water after a particularly problematic poop. Now it's bad enough that everyone's going to hear the obscene sounds coming out of your anus. And it's one thing for people to see my naked body when I elegantly step out of the shower, glistening in all its glory. But its another thing entirely to be leaning over the sink, wiping your ass with your hand, and then have someone walk in on you halfway through. Nuh-uh, not happening. Although I did put in a shift at the Sewage Treatment Plant shoveling shit, I don't mean to put too much emphasis on the community's bowel movements. Ultimately, I quite enjoyed my time at Twin Oaks, it features all of the positive aspects of a traditional kibbutz, without any of the nationalist overtones. It's a relief to be able to plug into an egalitarian system, do my duties, and have the rest of the day off to contemplate the mysteries of the universe in the last of the hippie communes.