Up-dated Information

Pigeon house we made and placed near the office building.

December 2001

Hello!

We had months without up-dating this page. We hope with these news you have an idea of what has happened at Los Horcones in these past months.

It is very likely that you are not just interested in learning about the latest changes on our physical setting, but also about the social setting. You may like to know if we have grown in members, or if we are still commited to a behaviorist philosophy or if our dream of a community has worked. You may want to hear about the problems we have faced in our cultural design project.

About Los Horcones' members:

People write us to ask if we are still here, if we continue with our project of building a Walden Two. Of course we do, we are really into it. The present number of people living at Los Horcones is around 40 from which 24 are members (including 4 children) and the rest are extended visitors and children with autistic behaviors who live here temporarily while recieving education. In the picture, Timo practicing guitar.

Visitors

We continue recieving visitors from México and other countries. We had a group from Japan among whom was an sociology professor and a member of a community. From Holand came first José Luis and then his wife Susana for a year because they are interested in joining. Lately, there has also been people from Canada, United States and Germany. In general, we have very few visitors who come with the objective of joining.

In the picture from left to right: Timo, José. Pablo, Hanna, Eli, Carolina and José Luis.

School visits. School visits are frequent. Among these groups of students who come to learn about out lifestyle. We had a few groups of small children for whom we made a special program. They were particularly interested in self-sufficiency and we showed them how we make bread (which they tasted) milk the cows (they each got to milk a little) and make cheese with the milk. They also fed the chickens, picked the fresh eggs, fed the pigs and hugged the rabbits.

CONSTRUCTION WORK

During the past months of this year, we have invested labor and money in building, remodeling, reparing and up-dating some community areas which needed it. Sometimes, due to the scarcity of members and thus of workhands, the projects in some of the areas get delayed. Here we will thell you about the latest improvements we were able to make in some of the areas.

A new rabbit hutch:

We built a new and larger rabbit hutch. It is more functional, comfortable and easier to clean. We placed it by the organic garden and brought 40 new rabbits for breeding. They are of 4 different types: New Zeland (all white), California,, (white with black ears), Chinchilla (grey) and the Aztec a mexican breed (all black). They are all beautiful and when they reproduce we will eat part of the rabbit meat and sell other. We will also sell some as pets to the children who come to visit Los Horcones with their school groups or with their parents.

This rabbit project is part of the educational program we offer to schoolgroups and people from nearby villages who sometimes come to learn about the management of raising rabbits. In this way they can imrpove their nutrition, start small industries in their village and improve their financial stiuation.

Snack kitchen and dinning room: We built an addition to the communal dinning room consisting of a small kitchen and dinning room. The small kitchen has also a large new oven and a large wood stove. It also has two counters where food will be available for snacking. One of the counters will hold items like bread, butter, peanut butter, marmalade and what is needed to make cofee and tea, On the other counter there is a blende and fruit to make fruit shakes. The kitchen is connected to a dinnign room with a great view to Walden Pond. There we meet to have a snack and talk.n

Work shop: The arrangement of our physical seting affects our behavior. We are building a new workshop to make easier and more reinforcing working there, find the tools we need, have a place for each tool where we can put it back after we finish working. It is a large area by the old shop as you can see in the picture below.

A view of the new dinning room.	The new workshop

Private rooms: We started to build two private rooms. Private rooms are the bedrooms each member or couple has and they are not communal.

Cows again.

We finally decide to have cows again. It is an area we abandoned a few years ago when there were fewer members and because of the drought. When working with cows one can not say "today I will not milk" or "there is nobody to milk the today". They have to be milked twice a day the 365 days of the year or while their production lasts which is interrrupted only during one or two months of the year.

So far we have bought 3 cows. One of them is a Holstein (see picture on the left) and we name her "Sofia". The other two are Jersey's, we call them "Camila" and "Melcocha"(which mean Molases). See picture below. Sofía is about to give birth and the Jersey's are producing from 30 to 40 liters of milk per day. These cows arrived with their calfs. We now have four calfs and need t be fed with a bottle which is a job our children love to do.

Now that we are milking we repaired the milking space. We added a steel shade to keep some alfalfa bails closer than in the big barn. The fences and corrals were re-painted and we planted some alfalfa (picture above). We are irrigating this alfalfa with sprinklers. We all participate in milking. There are milking teams of 3 or 4 members and extended visitors. Sometimes we bring cookies, coffee or chocolate to drink it with fresh milk. Of course there are other members who go there and helping to milk turns into a social or recreational event and even sometimes it turn to an informal meeting.

Horses

We like horses and have 8 saddle horses (which we can ride), 3 young mares and 2 ponys. At right, Ramon is holding "Ollin", at left "Punky". We use the horses in our recreational activities. Children love to ride them, specially Alejandra, 15 yrs. who is already very skillful. She is now taking a course on week ends to improve her riding and training techniques. These horses are also used when we have camps for children, since is the activity they love the most. The lessons where they learn to ride are given in the corral and then they go first for short rides and then for longer ones.

Solar water heaters

Now we have had the time needed to build somo more solar water heaters. Some of them will be used in bathrooms and one was installed in the communal dinning room. We are glad to have warm water now to wash idshes during the winter, it makes the activity more reinforcing.

As we build more heaters, our tecnhiques to make them improve. In Los Horcones we have been investigating how to make these techniques more practical, effective and inexpensive.

Behavior Analysis course.

At Los Horcones we constatnly have classes about subjects related to the science of behavior and behaviorism. Presently the course is taught in the afternoon for a couple of hours. Attending to these classes are part of our daily labor cuota.

Next January we will give a course on behavior analysis open for students who wish to take it. We extend an invitation to spanish spaking students, specially to those from Mexico, South America and Spain.

PSI at Los Horcones

Our children atill attend to school here in the community. Most of the courses they take are in PSI (Personalized System of Instruction by F. Keller) format.

Emmanuel 10 yrs and Daniel 8, are studying third grade of elementary school, while Abraham 7 and Andrés 5, are in first grade. Besides the required subjects, their curriculum include English, French, behavior Analysis and Piano. Alejandra who is 15, recently finished her highschool studies (equivalent to 9th grade) and will continue with the next. All the children who study at Los Horcones present exams in Hermosillo (the city) and get their legal certificats.

We are waiting for you

We always wait for someone who want to live with us, but despite many people learn about this project, identify with the objectives and encoourage us to continue, very few people come. What happen? Is the present western culture so reinforcing?...Consumerism, family, school, people...

Questions or comments to:

up-dated: January 2002

Donatios are welcome.

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