Thank you, John, for coming and seeing what life is like living here in our new cohousing community. First, I would like to share with you a little about how the buildings and the community is designed differently from most traditional neighborhoods. First of all, John, I would like to share with you a little about the overall design and concept of the village. We are a community that strives to live holistically within the natural environment. We are an intentional community that makes community based decisions about our lifestyle and what affects it has on the natural environment as a whole. In addition, we believe that by working together as a community with the same common goal is what holds the community together.
The community is designed on advanced principles of environmental sustainable living using regenerative techniques. The houses and facilities face south to get the best solar gain. The attached houses and apartments have extended roof overhangs that allow sun to pass into the units during the winter and block the sunlight during hot summer days. As you can see, deciduous trees are on the south and west side of the buildings to provide shade in the summer and as the trees lose their leaves in the winter, the sun passes through; providing extra warmth to the buildings and pathways. Over there are the evergreen trees that block winter winds which help prevent the removal of heat from the buildings. On the roofs of the buildings are skylights providing natural light for people who live in them. This also helps reduce electricity because during the day most areas of the home are well lit. The roofs also have photovoltaic systems that generate electricity to the buildings, in fact during most of spring and fall the photovoltaic system provides sufficient energy supply so that we do not have to rely on outside power. The buildings used water loop systems that heat and cool the buildings during extreme temperatures. The buildings are also constructed with renewable materials and they are insulated with recycled material such as corn cobs and straw. Most of the exterior walls are almost 2’ thick which we have found to really help on our energy bills during winter and summer.
Most of the buildings in this cohousing community are equipped with composting toilets and graywater loop systems where water from sinks and showers can be used in the garden areas around the buildings. The showers are equipped with a filtration cycling system that maintains a desired temperature and uses minimal water. This is a really cool system in my opinion because it uses only a few gallons of water and instead of heating cold water it just maintains the temperature.
John, now that I have talked to you a little about the buildings I would like to show you our gardens and common house. The community has two types of gardens. The main garden which is shared by the community is where we grow most of our food. The garden is situated into the areas where building placement was less desirable or not feasible such as the power easement. In these areas we grow food such as corn, potatoes, carrots, lettuces, and beans. All of the members of the community participate in some form or another in helping maintain the main garden areas. The other types of gardens are the personal gardens which you can see are located near the front or back door of the units. These gardens provide the residents with opportunity to grow foods that fit their particular desires. Some of the international students have really taken advantage of this because they are able to grow some of the foods and herbs from back home. In my garden I have chosen to grow mostly herbs and peppers and some tomato varieties that we do not grow in the main garden.
Now let’s walk over to the common building. The common building is one of the most important spaces to our community because it is where we really engage with other residents of our cohousing community. This building gets lots of use for many reasons. Some of these are the dining hall, children play room, mail stop, workout room, learning and tutoring center, and meeting room. Let’s check out the dining hall. The dining hall is used up to twice a week and we all gather here bringing our favorite dishes. Sometime we even have a theme and bring dishes from a particular country. Over here is the children’s play area which is mainly a big room that is carpeted for small kids to play. This space over here is where the residents get and drop off their mail. We provide the community with envelopes and packing materials we make ourselves from the garden waste. Let’s go look upstairs. Up here we have the workout room and learning center. The workout room has a great view of the community and has an adjoining room for exercise classes and duels as our meeting room with portable tables. The learning center gets a lot of use by all the students, we all help tutor each other in subjects in which we excel. A good example of this is that some of the students are fluent in Spanish and help other members in the community with their Spanish homework. As you can see the learning center also has computers with internet and printers.
John, I hope you will take some time to really think about if this is the right place for you. Most of the people that live here really like it but some people are not ready for this lifestyle and chose to live in other areas of Starkville. Please feel free to call me or if you would like to talk to other residents I know they would be happy to talk with you. It may not be a bad idea to get other residents’ perspective on what life is like in the cohousing community. Thanks again, John, for coming by to visit.
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