Article by Linda Parker originally featured in the Relocalize - Volume 2, Issue 2 - February, 2007

Big Sur Powerdown had Brian Weller as a guest speaker this past summer. Brian is from Willits CA. As a part of the WELL project (www.willitseconomiclocalization.org) to bring the community of Willits together, they joined their local grange.

Our small community of 1,500 residents has a grange hall in the heart of Big Sur, California. As an effort to connect with our community, some of our members of Big Sur Powerdown joined our local grange. We got quite an education of the history of our grange from the hand full of elders that have kept our grange going for the past 50 years. We also realized from attending the monthly meetings that the long time members were exhausted from holding it all together without very much community input or assistance from the community. So, what began as a project to bring community together for our group, Big Sur Powerdown, has now blossomed into the revitalization and rebuilding our grange hall from the foundation up.

We want to breathe new energy into our grange hall creating a fresh new environment so our community will want to come together using the grange hall for events, meetings and community center. For the past 3 months Big Sur Powerdown has had a grange hall movie night, showing films such as The Power of Community: How Cuba survived Peak Oil, End of Suburbia, Iraq for Sale, and our next film is Crude Impact. We also have our community meetings at the grange for Big Sur Powerdown, with the vision that more and more of our local community will join us in the grassroots movement to relocalize, powerdown, and come together as a healthy and sustainable community. We have begun applying for grants, and are discussing other fund raising ideas to make the necessary repairs to our grange building.

"The Grange movement in the United States was a farmers' movement involving the affiliation of local farmers into area "granges" to work for their political and economic advantages. The official name of the National Grange is the Order of Patrons of Husbandry. Some consider the organization a special interest group. Founded after the Civil War, it flourished until the end of the 19th century. Many small rural communities in the United States still have an old "Grange Hall" standing on Main Street. The word "grange" comes from a Latin word for grain, and is related to a "granary" or, more generically, a farm." (Wikipedia, 2007)

We want to keep our grange hall alive and well for our community and its future generations!

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Linda Parker is a coordinator of Big Sur Powerdown (www.bigsurpowerdown.org) in Big Sur, Califonia. You can contact Linda Parker through her contact form. Note: you must be logged in first.

To find out more about the National Grange, visit www.nationalgrange.org.

"The National Grange is the nation's oldest national agricultural organization, with grassroots units established in 3,600 local communities in 37 states. Its 300,000 members provide service to agriculture and rural areas on a wide variety of issues, including economic development, education, family endeavors, and legislation designed to assure a strong and viable Rural America. It was formed in the years following the American Civil War to unite private citizens in improving the economic and social position of the nation's farm population. Over the past 137 years, it has evolved to include non-farm rural families and communities."

"Major objectives of the National Grange support stewardship of America's natural resources; promotion of world-wide free trade; a combination of local and federal support for rural education, medical, communications, and road systems; non-partisan political participation; assurance of safe and properly labeled food products; organization of cooperatives and other economic services to support rural Americans; and elimination of direct government farm programs so as to assure a competitive and efficient farm system."