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🍀March 2017
Newsletter
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Purchase of a home in Quimper Village is offered and available only to individuals/couples whose principal residence is the State of Washington and who have obtained membership in Townsend Meadows Cooperative by way of its Offering Memorandum. 
WE ARE SOLD OUT!!
And a waiting list for future openings is already forming!  If you’re interested in living in Quimper Village you may want to get on that list now!  
The exterior of an "A" unit features a porch skylight, adding brightness to the interior.
28 households will live in 8 buildings.
Monthly Update
(as of February 25, 2017)
 

Overview:  Activity remains at a high level, most phases of the buildings are being worked on. Members did a site visit on Saturday, a lot happens in a month!
 
Building #8 - Insulation inspection, drywall started, siding on hold ‘til windows for kitchens arrive this week 
Building #7 – framing inspection complete; insulation starts Monday 
Building #6 – sub-slab insulation and rebar in place, inspection Monday and slab will be poured early in the week 
Building #5 – sub-slab waste lines backfilled and ready for waterlines, and interior footings 
Building #4 – plumbing begun to rough in waste and water; electricians have boxed and began pulling wires; interior pickup framing near complete; firewall drywall in place; windows to be installed this coming week; porch slabs complete; porch framing has started. 
Building #3 – roof sheathed and weathered in; porch slabs complete; porch framing begins this week 
Building #2 – trusses rolled out; stick framing has started for roofs over B and C plans 
Building #1 – wall layout has started; walls to start framing this week

Garages, Carports - painting prep has started 
Art Shop, Tool Shop, Storage Buildings – painting has begun on shop building, yes, that sure is 
RED
Common House – footings laid out, inspection, pouring on Monday 
Miscellaneous – fire lane and grass pave excavation has started, road sub-grade gravel is being brought in; sidewalks formed and ready to pour on next nice day
The Common House foundation is begun. Here we will share meals and companionship - the heartbeat of the community will be here.





Trash needs a place, too.
Letter to the Editor:

Dear Editor,

I have been enjoying the great articles in your newsletters, but I have a concern. Do you fact-check yourselves? 

I have to wonder, do you really have so many amazing members with exciting lives or are you just trying to create some kind of image?

And the photos, are they photoshopped? I mean, the project appears to be going all too smoothly and that just isn’t realistic. 

I don’t want to accuse you of manufacturing fake news, but, really, one does wonder if you’re perpetrating alternate facts.

                                              --Doubting Thomas




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VISIT Port Townsend
QUIMPER VILLAGE WEB PAGE
National CoHousing Conference in MAY in NASHVILLE
SEE MORE Construction Photos
Reframing the View
 
Ah, the joys of living in the Pacific Northwest, where we can’t always get from here to there when we want. Such was the case when I tried to get back to my home in Suquamish after the February general meeting and early Valentines Day party. The Hood Canal Bridge was closed due to high winds, so I turned around and headed back to Port Townsend. Lucky for me, I now have a whole community of Quimper Village friends who have offered me refuge whenever I need a place to stay in PT.
                                                                                                                              
I had often wanted to attend the Quimper Village bi-monthly Friday Forum, but always found myself heading home instead of staying over. Now the weather gave me that opportunity. Friday Forum presents an opportunity for us to get to know each other on a more personal level than we normally see in our general business and team meetings. During this meeting, on our first check-in round, a common theme emerged, of how emotional we feel about giving up our current housing and life as we have known it, as we head towards a more intimate lifestyle in co-housing.
 
Some mourned the loss of not being able to take some of their favorite possessions with them, since they just won’t fit in their new homes. Downsizing, even with all the many good suggestions Pam wrote about in the last issue of this newsletter, is proving to be emotionally fraught, especially when it comes to a lifetime of photos to pare down. Do we really want to keep all those snapshots of our trips and outings over the years? Will our kids want all their baby pics? Letting go of pictorial memories is heart wrenching. What to do… 
 
Many bemoaned the loss of our physical surroundings, our views, whether it be of the neighborhood, forest, mountains or waterscape. This is a tough one, since our environs influence us daily. For the last 3+ years, I’ve been lucky enough to live in a magnificent setting right on the bank of Puget Sound with a view, eight miles across the water, of Seattle and beyond to the Cascades. Huge Douglas Firs and their resident eagles and other wildlife are my closest neighbors. Living here has profoundly changed me, as I live immersed in constantly changing nature, yet protected from the elements in my warm, mostly glass house. When I first saw the Quimper Village site, a still green meadow with no trees or water or views of any mountains, I looked up at the blue sky and said to myself, “Well, the passing clouds are pretty.”  As hard as it will be to give up this “dream home,” and others feel the same way, we all agreed that what we are gaining is a loving supportive community.
 
Many of us stated that in all the beautiful places we have lived, we have never had a strong sense of community. So now, as our houses take shape and we can see the layout of the front porches, we all expressed envisioning mornings of having coffee with neighbors, or a glass of wine in the evenings, with the very special view of caring friends. And that’s what co-housing is all about.                                               --
Araya
What Makes a Meal a Community?
 
Kitchens are the heart of a house where people seem to gravitate when a meal is being prepared, snacks are being laid out, and where conversations grow. Although Quimper Village houses will all have their own kitchens, the cohousing community plans on getting together for a least two shared meals each week in the 3,000 sq. foot common house.  Wisdom from Chuck Durrett, our design architect, in his book Happily Ever Aftering in Cohousing comes when he says “breaking bread together is a timeless experience that reaches across all borders. The ritual of sharing a common meal bonds people like nothing else. It brings cohesiveness to a cohousing community.”
 
To get Quimper Village organized along this line, a team came together to see what they could glean (collect) from members having items to donate.
 
Our Common House Kitchen Team has been working together to envision the perfect kitchen, what it would need and what would be required, at a bare minimum, to get us going to serve up to 50 people in our spacious dining hall. 
 
The dishwasher and range will be purchased and installed as part of the contractor’s agreement.  Other large items the team is still looking for are a refrigerator and a rolling cart.  Many of the medium to smaller items are already being made available from community members, but much more is needed.
 
The team has been successful in obtaining offers of a complete set of cookware, a microwave oven, an under counter refrigerator for the coffee bar, a nice set of wine glasses, a great mixer, and a nice start on mix and match dish-ware and china.  More will be needed, yet it is a great start offered up from members downsizing their current homes. A collection box is being taken to each general meeting for the collection of kitchen utensils that members are donating.
 
Whatever the team is unable to glean from the community will need to be looked for in thrift stores or, put on a wish list for new purchase. This might include such things as restaurant-sized bowls and other large quantity cooking items. Don’t assume those items you are looking to move on from your kitchen have already been found. Check with the Kitchen Team and ask if they can use them.
 
Several other teams are looking at the same sort of process and include a team overseeing  the guest rooms, the laundry room, living and dining rooms, janitor closet, grounds and garden tools, workshop, office and art studio.  Several teams have reported success in receiving offerings and seeking more items according to the lists that they have drawn up and shared.
 
What a great way to move forward with creating a community.  And the meals and camaraderie that will come out of that common kitchen?  Just wait and see.           -PamC
 What’s In The Wall? 
 
“Can we put notes, mementos, something personal in the wall of our new house?”  Several QV members have asked that question recently, as the plumbers and electricians finish buildings, bales of insulation are loaded into the houses and the drywall installers start putting on their stilts.  Now or never.
 
But why would you want to put something in your wall?  What would you put in?
 
By coincidence, the NW HOMES insert in the Feb. 11 Seattle Times had a helpful article on this topic.  Apparently there’s a name for it — immurement — and the practice is found in many civilizations.  Romans did it.  So did Celts, and early European settlers in the US.  But you might not want to follow some of those precedents: the Celts often immured a horse skull, and the Irish and English put dead cats in the walls or floors to ward off evil spirits.  We all hope you don’t want to bury a cat in the wall of your new QV house.  Besides, our QV covenants say you can’t have more than two cats, and it makes no exceptions for dead ones. 
 
            These days, construction crews often sign the framing, which will be covered up.  Home owners wanting to insert notes, envelopes containing the manuscript of The Great American Short Story, or very small items can arrange to do so at some point between finishing framing and closing up the walls.  Ask the CIT, soon.  Objects of any size are banned, in order to keep the structures properly insulated and avoid impeding construction.
 
            No horse skulls either.                                                                   --JackS
Lessons from the Mountains
By Marcia C
 
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the autumn leaves.         -John Muir
 
Adventure is my favorite word, and mountains can certainly offer that, as well as valuable life lessons.  Having lived in Vermont, Colorado and California, the mountains have always been part of my adult life. They first called to me in my twenties, when my first husband and I lived in the Tetons for 6 months, before children and still free to explore, but not free to climb. The beauty and grandeur of the Tetons were right there in front of me, and the yearning to climb them was intense. However, this was 50 years ago, and when I said I wanted to go to mountaineering school and climb the Grand Teton, I was not allowed.  Being the “good wife”, I swallowed my exuberance, kept my mouth shut, and didn’t go.
         20 years later, I began to wake up, to come home to myself, and was beginning to “find my voice”. When the mountains called again, I did not ask, I announced I was going to take a 10 day Outward Bound course in the Rockies.  And to train for it I would climb Mt. Shasta (all 14,161ft of it).  I was just getting into hiking and had never backpacked, so I borrowed a friend’s gear, joined a guided group and headed for the mountain!  Needless to say, this met with objection, I felt some indecision, but I voiced many reminders to my husband (and to myself) to stop raining on my parade, and off I went.   And thus began my mountain adventures, which offered me both outer and inner journeys and so many beautiful life lessons that I try to carry with me still.  
         That first climb was filled with gifts of learning: slow but steady, one step at a time, persevere no matter how hard, never buy another gross Power Bar! One of my most treasured “gifts” was the opportunity to learn to take care of myself and not worry what others thought. (Still struggle with that one occasionally!)  It was a gorgeous sunny day, and eventually I was really hot and knew that if I didn’t do something to cool down, I wouldn’t get to the top.  As the only woman in the group it was a bit beyond my comfort zone, but I stripped down to just my long blue underwear, continued the climb and made it to the summit!  In spite of my fellow climbers just rolling their eyes, I proceeded to sit there and weep; I was finally on the top of my mountain.
           My 10 days in the Rockies with Outward Bound was amazing – to be in the mountains for that long would have seemed like I’d died and gone to heaven if it hadn’t been so horrendously hard!   Many many lessons, of course – but two come to mind as I write.   It was about halfway through the course; I was sitting in a meadow after breakfast, thinking “I don’t want to go home,” but feeling quite guilty for such thoughts.   I shared this with another participant, and he very wisely said, “That’s probably because it’s not time yet.”  And sure enough, at the end of the ten days, I was definitely ready to go home, have a shower and eat real food.  I use this learning right now in relation to Quimper Village. When I find myself thinking that I don’t want to leave our condo with the view,  I remind myself that’s because it’s not time yet.  
Stories of my Father
(excerpt from a larger piece)
By Jim Daly

 
Earlier, when we lived on a stump ranch in the country, on his days off from work at the furniture factory, Dad read, when he should have been tending the chores.  He read the classics to escape and Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale (The Power of Positive Thinking), Freud, Jung, and Adler, in hopes, I think, of finding answers to his psychic pain.  
He was deep in a book, so the story goes, and Mom wanted the grass in the front yard cut down.  The Whippet (a small pickup truck with an engine probably no more than twenty-five horsepower) was parked in the front yard. 
“Jess, you need to cut the front lawn.”  No response.  “JESS, you need to cut the front yard.”
“I will.  I will.” 
Mom kept on him until he arose, laid aside his book, and slammed out the front door.  Mom watched him return leading one of our goats by a rope.  He tied it to the Whippet’s back bumper and with a smirk on his face, banged into the living room mumbling, “When you have brains, you don’t need muscle.”  He picked up his book and was quickly immersed.
A half hour later, so the story goes:  “Jess, I need some yeast.”  No response.  “JESS, I need some yeast.”  No response.  “JESS!  I can’t make bread without yeast.”
“Just let me finish this chapter.”
“JESS!  I NEED SOME YEAST!”
“All right!  All right.!”  He slammed down his book and stormed out the door.  The Whippet roared out of the yard.  Luckily my dad looked in the rearview mirror and saw my mom jumping up and down on the front porch, waving her arms, and then noticed the goat taking giant leaps behind him.  The goat survived, but from that day forth, took every chance to butt my dad, or so the story goes.  My mother took every chance to tell it.
    


Spring........soon!
Contributors to this issue: JimD, CindyA, PamC, JackS, ArayaS, MarciaC, JimP and CheronD.  Thanks!!
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Quimper Village · 3105 Sage Lane · Port Townsend, WA 98368 · USA

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