An Ill Wind for Louisiana

April 20, a-state-of-the-art BP oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. The uncapped well is located about 50 miles offshore and is estimated to be spewing around 5,000 barrels—more than 200,000 gallons—of crude oil into the gulf daily and the massive oil slick is just now reaching the shores of Louisiana, driven by a strong south wind. While there are massive efforts underway to stop the leak and to contain the spilled oil with booms, choppy seas are hampering the deployment.

The oil—so prized for the petroleum products we can manufacture from it when it arrives in tankers—is a deadly threat when it arrives as an amoeba-like blob, and the Gulf States are bracing themselves for hard times to come. It's bad news for birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish—locals are gearing up for a total loss of this season's newborn—and will make a mess of the beautiful beaches, seriously undercutting tourism.

Among other things, the spill threatens to smother the most productive oysters beds in the US (Louisiana serves up about 250 million pounds annually, about one-third of the US harvest), perhaps shutting them down for years. I was glad to have enjoyed some gulf oysters at a raw bar this week. Who knows when I'll be able to enjoy them next.

Stopping the leak is going to be very difficult. The well penetrates the seabed at a depth of more than a mile and the break in the pipe occurred at around 5000 feet down. In the end, this incident may become the largest oil spill in US history, surpassing that of the Exxon Valdez, which leaked around 11 million gallons of oil into Alaskan waters in 1989.

I'm visiting this weekend in Natchitoches LA (about 55 miles northwest of Alexandria) to gather with the other principals of the Green Eggs (a consortium offering business consulting to cooperative groups—see my blog of July 29, 2009, Incubating Green Eggs) to discuss our work. Our host is David Waskom, who runs an accounting firm in town and is well known locally. At lunch yesterday, state representative Rick Nowlin (who has an office in the building where David runs his business) stopped by for a few minutes and gave us a snapshot of how difficult this oil spill is going to be for state government. It's a triple whammy of a huge one-time need hitting while the state economy is still not recovered fully from the last one—Katrina in 2005—or from the national recession. Rick has a tough job.

• • •

Amidst this impending doom, I've had productive conversations with the Green Eggs group (as they say, it's an ill wind that blows no good). The warm and humid weather hints of the oppressive heat to come (I have no idea why anyone would visit Louisiana in July or August), yet it's on the upper end of pleasant right now, with temperatures well into the 80s. In contrast, Green Eggs participant Susan Short slogged through four inches of wet, heavy snow to get to the Denver airport Thursday to fly to these meetings, emphasizing that spring arrives discontinuously and not everywhere at the same time.

This is the third time the group has met face-to-face (first in Ann Arbor last July, and then in Denver last October), and one of the joys of our getting together for a few days is that there's enough time together to synchronize electron orbits and get into a creative groove. We mix up how we spend the time: listening to presentations, going out to eat, seeing the local sights, and focusing on aspects of cooperative business—defining our client base, identifying business ideas, and concocting marketing plans. At the end of a conversation we select the most promising ideas and test to see if there's energy in the room to develop them into full-blown proposals. Every session, like Christmas, something surprising and potentially remunerative pops out of the rapid-fire dialog. It's fun.

One of the most intriguing topics we explored is an age-old one for consultants: a) how can you identify those clients who are most available for making changes in their lives; and b) how can you deliver advice—advice that the client paid for, mind you—in such a way that it's most apt to be used?

Who's Ready to Change?
We figure that there's two parts to this. From our end, we need to put out the clearest message we can about what we think is our area of expertise and what our motivation is, so there's minimal ambiguity about what's to be gained by making a change. From the potential client's end, we need to be firm about limiting our work to those clients who seem to most accurately understand what we're talking about, and are ready to look at themselves (and not just others) in considering what it will take to effect lasting improvements.

Digesting this leads to the conclusion that it's about quality more than about quantity, and that it behooves us to focus tightly on the people we think could benefit most from what we have to offer. Our marketing should be geared toward cooperatively leaning entrepreneurs, or toward community-based folks who are fine making money in cooperative markets. Our marketing should not be slanted toward convincing people that these two values can (and should) be married.

How to Enhance the Likelihood That the Client Will Use Our Advice
While the consultant should get paid whether the client decides to follows our advice or not, we're not in it just for the money; we're in it to build a more cooperative world. We figure that the client will be much more likely to seriously consider the changes we recommend if we make the effort to thoroughly understand the client's frame of reference and offer our suggestions in a language and sequence that matches well with what the client reports being interested in.

Further, we've learned that multiple, reinforcing visits tends to be much more effective in midwifing change than one-and-done raise-the-dead weekends. We need to break down the implementation into bite-size, digestible chunks, so that each step seems doable and within reach.

It is not enough to want things to be better and to believe that you have advice that's useful in that endeavor—you also have to serve it up in dishes that look appetizing, will be picked by people hungry for something new, and will taste good to others when they're ordered.

• • •

I like to think that good things will hatch from our Green Eggs weekend in Louisiana, in some small way compensating for the Pelican State being given the black marble twice in six years.

Child as Father to the Man

For three days this week, Terry O'Keefe (of Asheville NC) and I were visiting Acorn, an income-sharing community in central Virginia which operates Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, a mail order business specializing in heirloom and organic vegetable seeds. We were conducting a preliminary examination of SESE operations with an eye toward seeing if we could offer them substantial help in improving both their bottom line and their member satisfaction. It was the initial field trial for GREEN EGGS—Guild for Relational Economics: Experts in Neighborly & Entrepreneurial Growth that is Green & Sustainable [see my blogs of July 26 & Oct 17, 2009 for more on this budding consortium].

Acorn is a community of about 23 members. It was started in 1993 as a spin-off of Twin Oaks, when that well-established income-sharing community was full to overflowing in the midst of the nation-wide surge of interest in community living in the early '90s (which was the last surge before the one that erupted in 2005 and continues today). Rather than build another residence, Twin Oaks decided to build another community—and Acorn was the offspring of that inspiration. Located just seven miles away, Acorn is an easy bike ride away from the mother ship.

Twin Oaks fronted the money to buy the land and create the initial infrastructure for the fledgling community. For its early years, Acorn's economic base was doing contract work for Twin Oaks' robust hammocks business (for decades, Twin Oaks had the main contract for supplying Pier One, which was the largest hammock retailer anywhere). Thus did the parent offer economic sustenance to its child.

Acorn has not had an easy history. Most of its 16 years have been characterized by high member turnover and a lack of clarity about what it wanted to be in the world. Throughout the uncertainties however, it was sustained by Twin Oaks' benevolent attitude toward the long-term debt and its steady offer of income work in Twin Oak's businesses.

Ten years ago, Acorn made a big decision: they bought Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and committed to building it into becoming their main business. SESE was launched in 1982 as a sole proprietorship. Over the course of 17 years, the owner had painstakingly nurtured the business from a seedling (that had co-opted the homestead kitchen table for seed sorting), into a flowering business featuring heirloom seeds with about $100,000 in annual sales. Happily, when the owner wanted out, Acorn wanted in. Thus did the community begin to emerge from under Twin Oaks' economic skirts.

When an intentional community operates a business (which most income-sharing groups do, but which most non-income-sharing groups do not), one of the trickiest challenges is finding a profitable enterprise that is a solid enough value match. Understandably, groups are chary about being associated with products or services that don't align well with the values they're espousing, and recruiting members to rally around.

In buying SESE, Acorn had a winner. Here was a business providing the seeds and knowledge to help people grow their own food—a basic need if there ever was one. It was dedicated to protecting heirloom seed (varieties that had been established prior to 1940 and the genetic manipulation spurred by World War II and the Green Revolution) and genetic diversity. SESE sells only non-treated seed, almost no hybrids (only four in the 2009 catalog), and as much organic seed as it can find or grow. When it contracts with other growers to supply seed for them, they're offering meaningful income work at home for gardeners all across the country, helping to make it possible for them to remain where they love being yet struggle to find work. What's not to like? On value scale of 1-100, SESE probably scores about 99.

Over the past decade, as it turns out, Twin Oaks and Acorn have been moving in opposite directions economically. Twin Oaks lost the Pier One account (as that giant of the leisure furniture industry abandoned the tried and true in favor of fresher products) and the community is still groping for a business mix that will replace lost revenues. Meanwhile, Acorn posted steady progress in building up SESE and was perfectly poised to benefit from the 70% jump in the demand for garden seeds that ensued from last year's economic nosedive. For the first time, in 2009 SESE's gross sales will top half a million dollars.

When Acorn scrambled to find enough people to grow seeds for them, they contracted with Twin Oaks, which is now growing as many of SESE seeds as Acorn is. In the face of last year's rocket ride in sales, Acorn turned to Twin Oaks to help them package seeds, and even has some of the senior community's veteran gardeners conducting germination tests and fielding customer queries about horticulture.

While Acorn is still paying down its mortgage to Twin Oaks and the older community is still asset rich, when it comes to income work today, it's Acorn offering steady work to Twin Oaks, not the other way around. The child is hiring the parent, and it's working well for both. It's a feel-good story about cooperation a grand scale. Now if we can only get Democrats to see Republicans that way, and vice versa…

Post-Harvest Exhalation

At Sandhill we had our first killing frost a week ago, and we finished milling and cooking down the last of the sorghum harvest Tuesday. While there are still untold buckets of produce spread across the floor of our walk-in cooler (the physical manifestation of our abundant gardens), for the first time in months we can linger over that first cup of coffee in the morning, because our days are not so packed with pressing work.

It's life on the farm.

The crescendo of the highly orchestrated days of fall has suddenly given way to the lingering days of Indian summer—where there is time to savor the dwindling warmth and walk among the fallen leaves swirling in the autumn breeze. The Earth is turning toward dormancy and there is time to exhale and reflect.

For all of these reasons, fall is my favorite time of year. I love having a full and busy life, yet cherish also these seasonal pauses that Nature periodically inserts into the calendar.

I'm in Colorado this week, gathered with five compatriots who together with me comprise the half dozen principals of Green Eggs (Guild for Relational Economics: Experts in Neighborly & Entrepreneurial Growth that is Green & Sustainable). This consortium is exploring whether we have a viable business specializing in services that marry healthy economics with cooperative dynamics. [See my blog of July 26, 2009 for more on Green Eggs.] It's a great group, and we're optimistic that some of our creativity will translate into income streams—both for our clients and for us.

Before I left home for this junket, I had enough post-freeze time to finish reading a library book (which is a novel way for me to spend time during harvest), make my final batches of tomatillo salsa & hot pepper relish for the year, and craft a custom-made threshold for Ma'ikwe's new house from Sandhill's stash of seasoned 5/4 white oak—which I delivered to the house site Thursday afternoon, en route to the train station for my overnight ride to Denver. (Though I love working with wood, it was a rare treat to be able to spend time with a plane in my hand, beveling the quarter-sawn oak board to highlight the ray flecks.)

When I return home next Thursday, I'll help Ma'ikwe install the triple-wall stove pipe for her wood stove, and maybe lend a hand with building the cob wall in the southwest corner. Better yet, I'll get to spend more constructive time with my wife—not just more time with my wife's construction. I'm looking forward to that especially.

Incubating Green Eggs

This weekend I met with three friends (David Waskom, Susan Short, and Elph Morgan) in Ann Arbor to explore the creation of a business consulting consortium for cooperatives that we're styling GREEN EGGS—Guild for Relational Economics: Experts in Neighborly and Entrepreneurial Growth that's Green & Sustainable.

The Ecovillage Design Education curriculum sponsored by GEN identifies four foundational elements of sustainability:
—worldview
—economics
—social
—environmental

Our premise for Green Eggs is the dynamic marriage of the economic and social components. While our group may not be world experts in economics, nor the only tools in the shed when it comes to the social aspects of cooperative living, we believe we have something special to offer when it comes to the two together—analyzing cooperative businesses in such a way that we expressly factor in the community and social features.

Like all new commercial ventues, the market place will soon tell us whether our thinking is sound.

• • •

My observation is that the economic leg of the EDE formula is the weakest. Many cooperative groups disdain regular economic tools because they're so strongly associated with traditional capitalistic thinking (and are therefore evil). Marketing is eschewed because promotion is linked in cooperators' minds with Madison Ave and manufactured demand. At Green Eggs, we believe we have to do better than that. If you have a product or service with sound values and you believe in what you're doing, it shouldn't be a debasement to tell people about it, and with enthusiasm! We're not talking about twisting arms; we're talking about not hiding your light under a bushel.

Our point of leverage is to help cooperative ventures get over whatever humps they encounter on the path to profitability and excellence. We've embraced the egg as an icon because our idea is to either help birth businesses or to offer them rebirth. (While we aim to assist in live deliveries, we don't figure to be particularly involved in raising the offspring.)

We won't just look at bottom lines and supply lines; we'll also look at communication lines and feedback. The revolution is going to have to make social sense as well as economic cents, and we believe this can be fully realized without compromising values. In addition to offering financial and social analysis, we'll broker financing, and examine management and staff selections and relationships. We'll look at how well the business fits with the values and make-up of the community in which its embedded, and at how well the business recognizes and leverages its advantages while coping creatively with its liabilities.

We're launching the Green Eggs initiative on the belief that there are enough cooperatives out there who get it that setting a high bar for social dynamics doesn't mean you have to settle for a low bar for financial success. While we may or may not be prophets; we believe in profits. In the coming months, we'll find out if this concept is profitable.