The Common House
Our common house is a one story, 2800 square foot building created with the help and creative touches of much volunteer labor. It includes comfortable spaces for formal and informal gatherings, cooking and dining, recreation, and youth and children’s activities. We have an excellent kitchen and lovely well-lit dining area. We gather often for potluck meals, and occasionally teams will cook for the whole community. Some of us gather every morning over espresso drinks. In addition, we meet in the Common House for discussion circles, business meetings, movie nights, Friday afternoon game sessions, Wednesday evening art group, holiday meals, English country dances, workshops and parties. A separate recreation room is used for ping pong and foosball. A cozy smaller room serves for private conversations, committee meetings, and small group TV and movie viewing. During the warmer months some activities move outside into the walled patio area adjoining our dining room. Members may reserve the Common House for personal social events, and for non-RoseWind events in which they are involved, such as house concerts, potlucks or meetings of local organizations.
Our Commons
Our Commons is a car-free central area bordered with 1 and 2 family homes on small lots. Our land contains small, dense thickets of wild rose, snowberry and hawthorn, as well as 2 areas with planted native trees and 1 thicket that is growing up into a woods. We care for three small fruit and nut orchards, a common garden, a children’s play structure and play house, and lots of grassy open space. One section of the Commons has low perimeter fencing for RW members to supervise their dogs off-leash. We also have a number of smaller, non-contiguous common areas (our “local commons”).
Our abundant community garden is centrally located in the Commons. RoseWind members are welcome to join the group gardeners, or to request a plot to garden individually. Vegetables flourish much of the year in the fenced common garden and greenhouse. Outside the fence, we grow crops such as onions and rhubarb that deer find unattractive. The community greenhouse is warm enough to produce delicious tomatoes and peppers in the summer, and it extends our growing season for salad greens nearly year round.
We also have perennial crops– rhubarb, raspberries, strawberries, artichokes and asparagus– some mature and some developing . We manage many varieties of apples, pears, plums, specialty fruits and some nuts in our orchards and west field.