living in community

[willow83]

How cool! I never saw this thread before! Well, first off, my DH, DD and I are in North Cali, and we are starting an intentional community (ecovillage) off the grid (except phone and internet) and we would love to find some mamas and papas with their little ones that would like to join us in this formation. Our babe is three months old. we are planning on living in an RV until we get the permits and build a main house. There are a few single moms who talk to us about moving out there, and a single guy who is coming in a few weeks to live in a Teepee. Its a great location, a half hour near town, and only15 miles to a community college. So, check out our website below, and get in touch!

[achintyasamma]

hey, i looked at your website last week. good for you! i've been wanting to live in community for a long time. we're a little conflicted about how to make the transition because of family obligations. dh's family are dependent on dh and his brother for financial support as they are retired with no savings and one child still at home. i won't get into the details here, but it's not possible for us to just walk away. dh is finishing up his phd and is looking to get into either an academic position or a research position in a private company. there are maybe 4 companies he'd be interested in working for as his field is highly specialized and with universities it's somewhat hit or miss. he wants to be in a school that's doing quality research so he has the option to move on if he needs to. right now i'm in the process of going through the communities directory and making a list of communities that might be a good fit for us. then i'm going to see which ones have universities nearby and dh will go through that list and see where to apply. he knows that living in community is really important for our family and that it's a move we need to make, but he also wants the best possible work environment for himself since he'll need to work full-time for at least 3-5 years and maybe part-time for a while after that. sorry for the long digression...
my name's laura and ds achintya is 7 mo. we're planning for #2 next year before dh graduates. i'd love to be in a community that was child-centered which is what attracted me about your website. i visited twin oaks in virginia, and there were so few children. because they were an income sharing community, they had tight restrictions on getting pregnant and many of the adults there were childless. i'd love to visit a community with many children just to see the dynamics of children in community.
how far of a driving distance is your land from chico? if it's not too far, i may try to put some pressure on dh.

btw...are you interested in/open to cob building? that's a big dream for us.

[willow83]

Hi, well I'm glad that u saw our site. We haven't even moved out there yet, hopefully this month. WE are wanting to build cob, but we need to get the permits which take a while. Maybe by the time you guys are interested in moving we will be a little more developed. Chico is only a half hour away from the land, and there is a good sized state university there. Plus a community college. Hope you find what your looking for.
namaste

[achintyasamma]

my husband and i looked at the cal st chico website and i told him about co-operative effort. he was excited by the prospect even though the university is smaller than what he was initially considering. now we just have to wait and see if they have any openings next year. meanwhile, i continue to pour through the communities directory and the atlas.
we talked about making a trip out west this summer to see some of the communities we're considering. we'd love to come visit. i joined the co-operative effort yahoo group, so i'll keep an eye out for updates.

[mama_kass]

Hi Willow!
I think it's great what you are trying to do good luck. It's been my dream to join a commune since I was 14 years old. I would love to come and join you but you are too far from me. My DH works in Reno and can not transfer from his job. Maybe you will have an open house sometime and we'll come for a visit once you get your community going?

What is a Cob building?

[willow83]

Hi mama kass, I'm glad that living in community interests u. I think if everyone was living tribally this world would be a better place......."it takes a village to raise a child". To answer your question, a cob building is a mixture of clay, sand, and hay, and u use this mixture to mold a house, it is really cool. If you search on the web u could find some beautiful homes. You can mold bookshelves, or faces, or whatever u want into your walls. You are definately welcome to come visit once we get things going. check out www.ic.org there may be a community in Reno that would interest you.

[mama_kass]

Wow! Thanks for the link. What a great site that I would have never found on my own.

[stretchmark]

Hi, I am not interested in moving but wanted to add that I lived in an intentional community that served retreats in the summertime for two years.

If you need any info on what didn't work/what did, I am happy to let you all know. Of course if you have it all together, great, I am happy to see communities forming.

Forgot to add a link lama

[katmainomad]

Hello!
stretchmark...I am very interested to hear what did and didn't work, and also to hear of your work/research to date, willow. I just bought 40 acres off the grid and 3/4 mile trail from the road near a small town (talkeetna) here in Alaska. I would also like to build a multigenerational intentional communtiy/ecovillage someday soon. we don't really have permiting problems (so remote...) but income will be an issue for me at least. alaska can be hard to live sustainably in too... I'm just beginning research on how to go about this, and it would be good to hear of others' experiences.
best wishes to all!

[willow83]

hi katmainomad, well first off, congrads on the land purchace. It would be pretty easy for u to find people interested in starting a community up there with u, there are lots of adventurous people in this world. You could try by only allowing people who could put the finances in to developement. Just be careful who you choose, as you may be stuck with them. Check out cob building or cord wood construction on the internet. These are fairly cheap methods of building and might be up your alley. It would be hard to be sustainable in alaska, but not impossible. You could have greenhouses and research what would grow in that type of climate, and you could just do alot of canning for the winter time. you could do solar in the summer, and hydroelectric or wind power in the wintertime. Or even a generator and charging batteries. we are moving into an RV out there this month until we get the permits to build. But someone out there is gonna live in a teepee with us, and we have a small cabin *only 120 sq feet* but it costs less than 1000 dollars to build that and it will have a loft. check out our site, and search for other communities on yahoo to get ideas, thats what we did. I'm sure there are some in alaska u could visit. good luck!

[stretchmark]

I'm a bit sick today and can't think very well.

I am going to check with my friend who lived there with me and make sure I have our structure accurate before I post about it.

The thing I loved is that EVERYTHING was decided by concensus process, like the quakers. Things took a lot of time to figure out sometimes but everyone was an equal, everyone's opinion mattered, and a "yes" or "no" vote to something had to come from a place of what is best for the group.

If we had a personal issue with someone, we couldn't vote no, we were encouraged to work things out with them. However, if we could really see that this new person or new decision was really not best for the group, we could say no. We could "stand aside" on a vote too if we weren't sure and 3 stand asides meant no. We could also remove ourselves from the vote if we felt we weren't qualified to make a decision on a particular topic (like I did once in a discussion about chickens).

Our income came from donations and running summer retreats. It didn't bring in tons of money but got us by and we screen-printed prayer flags too.

The biggest money-maker for us was a permaculture convergence called "Build Here Now" named after Ram Das's book 'Be Here Now' that he wrote at Lama in a schoolbus. About 125 people all paying 450$ish come for a week and learn to build with some of the amazing local natural building experts, (cob, straw bale, timber-frame, straw-clay, bamboo, etc.) and we got a few new structures every year. Of course we had a huge kitchen to feed all those folks and they all calped out in tents. We had a great washhouse too and outdoor showers.

Lama took many years to get to where it is now, (started in the 60's). It survived a devistating fire and most the structure were lost.

We were at 8,600 feet and had some hard winters.
You know, another thing that brought in income and that I think is a fabulous idea for any place that has lots of land and is far from town is hermitages.
We had two very small structures here is one and here is the other. They rent for like 40$ a night and I am thinking of acuiring land of my own to build a few hermitages on for the locals to get away.

Sorry to be talking so much about this here, I know the thread started was all about who wants to come to nothern cali and here I am reminiscing about community. It was just such a wonderful place and now I am thinking aobu it again.

One last thing that is so funny is that most of us who met at Lama which is about 40 minutes from Taos now live in Taos and are the greatest friends I have ever had.

Perhaps I will do a new thread on the structure later so people can reference it being aware that it is only one structure and that many are possible.

Peace everyone.

[katmainomad]

Thanks you guys! good info and ideas from both of you. I'm happy to hear that retreats make a little money, that would be a very gentle way to go. yah, willow, i'm sorry we hijacked your thread...your land and setup in cali looks great! I'd be contacting you about it if i wasn't so attached to Alaska.
The business of building and living on the land I actually have done a lot of thought on...I plan to build a PAHS/earthship hibrid for the main living area, with log buildings for outbuildings (that don't need winter heat). look into PAHS (passive annual heat storage) if you are in a cloudy cold climate like us...it seems like an amazing thing, though perhaps a bit more expensive in the shortrun than straight cob or cordwood (i have also read extensively about those techniques). we will probably use wood for supplemental heat and cooking(we can sustainably harvest enough every year). I plan to have water catchment as we have no open water on the property. there is also almost no wind, so mostly manual power. eventually maybe solar for an appliance or 2 in the summer. greenhouses are part of the earthship design, and i'll have plenty of raised beds for cool soil loving crops in the summer. i already can a lot. we will probably travel to dip net salmon in the summer and smoke and can...it is much harder to live sustainably on vegetable matter alone up here...and to me gathering sustainably is even better than growing non-natives for food.
it is the structure of the community that i am researching now. i have friends and a mom that have lived in community, and am gathering as much information as i can. i am an idealist, and expect a lot of my human relationships sometimes, so i am also working on myself. my relationships with dp and ds are good starting points I also really don't want to make myself into a benevolent dictator of 'my' ecovillage, so i'm exploring how to start the project without being the leader/owner in the long run.
i appreciate any information/experiences, and will look for new threads so that we don't totally overrun your thread willow!

[willow83]

well good luck with your land in alaska. its sounds like we are both in the same position as far as starting this community. Its hard to assure that the people u invite will be compatable with u . That is what I'm dealing with. Since we are half owners of the land, and the founders of this, we kinda want to make sure everyone will be on the same page with the goals we are going to want to accomplish. So, if someone isn't working out, we need to be able to let them know that. I really want to encourage u to have something in writing as to how a person will join and a trial period, or something that creates a removal process, because u never know if someone will be difficult and not a team player. Try going to www.ic.org and looking at other peoples communities and rules and pick and choose what u like, thats what we did. I wish u the best of luck, and if you know of anyone that would be interested in our community then bring em over to our site!

[love2all]

hey willow- sounds like you guys got it going on!!!!
I really love the idea of community with separate space for individual families- we all, well in my experience anyway, need that space in order to contiue with our deep family conection.
we enjoy the idea of nightly dinners but one question- we are strict vegans who will not eat when meat has been cooked. i noticed there was no mention as to if the kitchen would be a vegetarian one?- this is important and deeply held beliefs/behaviors for us...
we have a 24ft geodesic dome that we are lookinig to set up somewhere- also i would love to talk with you about a community school- i have 2 school aged kids and a background in education!!!
lets talk-
maria