Couple of questions answered

I've had some friends ask me about a few of the more interesting and challenging aspects of life at DR - employment, wexing, humey, and education. 

There aren't really any 'jobs' here, per say, although there is lots to be done.  There is not much opportunity to clock in, do some work, clock out, and get a paycheck.  Certain jobs here are creditable for ELMS (village alternative currency) that can be used to pay some co-op fees.  Things like weeding common gardens or maintaining common areas are creditable, for example.  Also, you can make a deal to help someone with a project for ELMS.  There is no actual currency, one of the members here handles all the credit exchanges and maintains an online 'account' for everyone.  Most people here have some type of telecommute job - tutoring online, software or web development, etc. 

Wexer - work exchanger.  The work exchange program allows people who have building projects going on to put out ads asking for people with certain skills.  The members pay the co-op fees and living expenses of the work exchanger, the work exchanger comes and gets the experience of the building project, plus the awesomeness of living here.  A handful of new wexers showed up yesterday, and it was really cool to see the new faces and get to know some new folks.

Humey - poop.  That's the long and short of it.  The humanure system is a way to recycle human waste into something that is useful.  Rather than flush toilets, biodegradable waste is collected in buckets.  Weekly (or more, depending on who's cooking) the buckets are taken to the humey compost piles.  There are three bins, each in varying stages of decay. After...6 months, I think, they humey is 'clean', meaning that all the biological material has decayed out of it, and what remains is essentially nutrient rich dirt.  As far as I understand it, humey isn't used on low growing produce (like strawberries, for example).  When we did it we used it to mulch fruit trees.  It doesn't smell, it doesn't look anything like poo...it's just dirt.

Education here is interesting, and extremely exciting.  Right now one of the residents here Thomas is reading Winnie the Poo to one of the kids in German, than translating each page.  Education is constant here, whether it's languages or biology or woodworking or astronomy.  There are people here with some very impressive credentials (astrophysicist, biologist, ecologist, various engineers) who are almost always willing to spend some time with an interested kid.  The more 'formal' education is done through a co-op called DREC (Dancing Rabbit Education Co-op).  Parents and teachers take turns teaching, and the subjects, for the most part, are kid directed.  There are some exceptions (it's interesting hearing a 9 year old bitch about algebra, than say 'well, I can't do anymore physics til I learn it, so I'll figure it out') for the subjects we all need but few want to deal with.  Middle school and high school kids can bus to the nearest public school (I can think of a couple who do), of course, elementary age children have the option of public school as well, but it's farther away and they don't run a bus out here.  Since the vehicles are shared, it makes it a bit harder to get the younger kids to and from school, so most parents choose not to.

Hope I've managed to make a few things a little more clear.  Feel free to throw some more questions my way.