WHAT IS BARNRAISING?
Helping neighbors is something that you probably already do. Barnraising is helping and learning about sustainable practices: to educate the people who are working on the projects, increasing ability, sophistication, using ingenuity...and in some cases requiring outside education.
Please add your comments.
WHAT IS SIMPLY HELPING NEIGHBORS VERSUS BARNRAISING:
Helping Neighbors:
Helping someone who is just a bike ride away from us to lift a wood stove into place.
Organizing neighbors on your block to blow in insulation together (more sophisticated, but repetitive, doesn't require driving in a car).
Helping a neighbor dig a garden
Building a raised bed on a neighbor's lawn
(all of these are focused on energy and food....helping a neighbor build a fence is helping a neighbor too of course!)
I would say that, if you are in a place where people DON'T ALREADY do things like this, then that neighborhood may need to change if you are planning to live there under adverse conditions. Or, consider finding a group of people to live with or live near who are interested in helping each other.
== "BARNRAISING" == Now...what would I GET IN A CAR AND DRIVE for:
Blowing in insulation for the FIRST TIME, and a few more houses that day:
Building a solar greenhouse...particularly a community solar greenhouse.
Renewing a Grange kitchen for community food preparation.
Helping a neighbor design and build a root cellar in the basement, (and there are many different kinds of root cellars)
Building a walk-in community root cellar or walk-in community freezer, next to the community kitchen and community garden.
Raising a community wind turbine.
Working together as a group of semiskilled volunteers we can raise our level of competence in energy, transportation, food assessment and implementation and develop a ability to help people using methods and tools that are known to be effective...perhaps with an intern or two from high school or college.
What do we need?
1. A project
2. A leader or team who loves this project and wants it to succeed.
Example: RAISE A HUMAN SCALE EFFICIENT WIND TURBINE
Andy Goodell has helped set up a Bergey XL 1kW turbine on the 80 foot kit
Here is a vertical, quiet wind turbine designed for an urban setting in Britain. (By 2010 this technology is expected to be able to compete with oil...oil will go up, turbine will come down): 
COMMUNITY SOLAR GREENHOUSE
Please see the GREENHOUSE page linked under GREEN BUILDING SOURCES
