Farm Commune Solar Home

1976 A.D. "The Farm Commune" Summertown TN.. December: I was staying at the farm with about 2000 people, my class was "soaker", while most of the others were residents of this experimental community.
This commune was famous in the beatnik community and I was there as a journalist to write about my experiences.
This is the first that has ever been written of this week long sojourn.
Steve and Ina Mae Gaskin founded along with their followers a haven for the practice of midwifery, spiritual growth and a back to nature philosophy. The concept was a Zen/Christian monastic life where telepathy was acknowledged as real and a life of vegetarian and non violent behavior was the norm.

Each building except for the Laundry room and I believe the gate house, ran all of their electrical systems off Direct Current trickle charge lines that kept the automotive storage batteries charged. About two amps. at twelve volts was supplied in each dwelling. Twenty four watts continious or in practice, using automotive tail lights for reading lamps only in the night, maybe one hundred watts or so at one time. I wish my usage today could be reduced like this.
That night I read by one of these lights, every one of the Farm produced books that every where.
At dawn after eating, we painted windows that were being installed on the only modern structure in sight.
The "Solar House" a large new high tech residence.
In Gainesville Florida at the time a comparable structurewould have been in the fifty thousand dollar range (today about $100,000-$200,000).
Having invested about two hundred dollars into this dwelling to date, this was a recyclers dream.
The basement had a huge water tank. This contained the water heated by the solar panels on the roof.
Water thus heated on the roof was circulated by a small pump through radiators and stored in the insulated water tank.
The next day we worked on the solar panels.
Basicly a box made of wood with tin on the bottom, and solid translucent, green house plastic on the top.
These were insulated and water pipes were run inside.
This event converted me to Solar Power the rest of my life.
http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/planetarycom/farm.html