A Prefatory Note. I wrote this for a larger community plan, then discovered an applicable easement -- the real estate agent was incorrect on this point -- on the northern property which whittled us down to 7 or 8 starting households. With that small of a group, we can get pretty far by selecting for 'goodness', but the following is still applicable. :)
Let's keep this simple. A pile of staves does not make a barrel; but all you need are the right pieces, some rings to hold them round, and a bit of finesse, and you have something that holds water. So, let's gather the staves.
Foundational Supposition : Intention, Permission, Resonance and Inspiration. When folks of a similar mind gather together intentionally, they create a space that not only offers 1) the permission of being -- for example, to be kind, patient, joyful, perhaps vulnerable in a way that a broader culture may not appear to explicitly offer, or might even dampen -- but also 2) the cavity for a sustained and building resonance that inspires. For some of us, folded in upon ourselves as we may be, it can take only one person doing one thing or modeling some path for us to feel the permission to unfold and change course. But even if we enact personal consonance in some particular way, it takes a group to build resonance. Every culture has its own particular resonant buzz, but that's just its telltale. The lived fact, here, is a group of folks whose own individual missions might not just inform the other but inspire.
This is nigh nigh impossible to tease out -- not because a careful look does not reveal it, but because oftentimes the heart should be left in its chest rather than pulled-out for a good look -- but the spirit or quintessence of this community founds absolutely everything else. This is the source spring. It is earnest, open, growing, strong, curious, patient, grateful, and kind. Most everything else is just consequence, the cart and not the horse.
Mission : To live well : to have a life that is good and beautiful. From without : to design, build, inhabit, and evolve a space as place that, to the best of its and our own particularities, cultivates the fullness of our human being, while we're still alive. To our eye, that means it fosters an adaptable, mostly-mostly balanced way of life at a human scale -- with us to choose the fulcrum -- that is both inherently of nature and culture, personal and interpersonal, spiritual and profane, of vocation and recreation. From within : to always attempt a working presence and to commit to work the muscle of the goodness of our heart.
Bubbles exist, whether by intention or not; while we're still alive, let's try to make a good and beautiful one.
Method : A kind-of co-housing tiny ecovillage commons for a farmy-but-not-far-from-town walkable life of balance and presence among farmers, artisans, and just-trying-to-be-and-do-good'ers.
The mission, in expansion :
Adaptable : like John Wooden said, "if you are through learning, you are through"; or H.G. Wells' old note that one must "adapt or perish". Community introspection and flexibility is necessary to counter stagnation and meet the moment as it comes. Perhaps the best analog is to a body that is limber. To be limber means to be flexible, but not exactly to contort, or to break one's backbone; it is the opposite of being inflexible.
Mostly, mostly : not only because "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds", or that even moderation must be moderated, but because a wider view always pushes for wideness. But remember that consistency is not the hobgoblin, foolish consistency is.
Balanced : it can be hard to know where to put the break line of diminishing returns on the curve of anything we do -- and, in fact, sometimes it is only in extremity that we truly achieve a thing -- yet, often enough, a thing is pushed too far before we see that a little went a long way. Suffice it to say that balance is a fair rule of thumb for a happy life. While we can only foresee some places to apply this rule -- time and its spending, for example -- it is presence which shows, and adaptability which corrects, imbalance.
Human scale : David Foster Wallace said this in his "This is Water" commencement speech:
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
The scale of space and speed at which we live is so foundational yet invisible to us, it is like the water for those two young fish. Suffice it presently to say that there is a kind of water we can swim in -- lucid, cool, oxygenated, and refreshing to the core of one's being -- that from the outside one could call life at a "human scale" : a human pace of movement, a human size of dwelling, a human extent to working. The core mission of this project is to build-out a human scale life. Many of the métiers facilitate that for others.
Binaries to dissolve : wherever we find a useful binary opposition, we should find their useful dissolution, such as follows in the balance of :
Nature & Culture : we take it as presumption that our being is a fit to "nature", and that much physical, mental, and cultural sickness or health can be traced to our distance from it. But any attempt at a naked winter night would show the folly of this taken ad absurdis, and one must take care not to fall into a reflexive and simplistic natural fallacy that all that is "natural" is good. There's a balance in there to find, and a farm-centered life has proven to be a very nice starting point. Within this discussion is also the balance of the tame and untamed, and the made and just there, like the migrating birds and mountains outside our farm's mowed borders.
Personal & Interpersonal : because the history -- and the name, itself -- of intentional communities leans into community, perhaps it should be explicitly noted that we have varying realms of connection -- partner, child, family, friend, neighbor, village, town, and the extra-local -- and this particular project specifically seeks to balance our inward and outward turning tendencies. That is to say, we're more than good neighbors, but less than a commune.
Spiritual & Profane : although we're not a monastery, maybe in one of our bones we are. If we startle at the fact of existence, we can and should both 1) smile, wonder, and probe at what this all may be and mean -- the spiritual -- and 2) try to be living when we die -- the profane.
Vocation & Recreation : work will not set us free, but, despite a first glance, it's hardly a four letter word but often the best means we have for meeting some deep need. Even if our work is unexplainably beautiful to us, we should balance its weekly hours -- likely against our culture and economy's dictates -- with similarly beautiful means of re-creation. We are so much larger than our work self, but we cannot grow that fuller self -- and life -- without a reserve of time.
Groups pull together, groups pull apart. If we can foresee -- and, later, see -- the reasons for this, we might be able to stay together, even if like a cloud. That's our aim! Here are some preliminary means for building for the duration.
Filtering, Commonality, and Interoperability. We should not expect to hit it off with every single one of us -- chemistry is too precise a science to explain what happens there -- but we should create, through filtering, at a minimum, a kind of commonality and interoperability. We should also keep in mind that we evolve in time, and so be grand enough now to accept our future selves. To that end :
We are personally non-dogmatic, largely vegetarian, drug-free, good at heart, sane, and mostly inclined to the simple and the natural. We are committed to attempt a working presence and to work the muscle of the goodness of our heart.
We recognize that these inclusions are simultaneously exclusive, and that we hold them for the utility of the community and the prospect of synergy, not as a measure of any one's being.
Consensus-like Decision-making. We are a democracy of listening and exploring decision-makers. At root, our decisions shall be by consensus, modified consensus, consent-based (viz., sociocracy) or the like. The operation of standing and ad hoc committees can make lower-order decisions as empowered.
Interpersonal Soft Skills Toolbox. There are tools and reflexes for interaction, mediation, and living together that we should pack into a toolbox and use day in and out to build and maintain community. "Non-violent Communication" -- as a solidified framework of the soft and hard tools of community -- is a very good kit to begin with.
Disconnection, Prevention and Correction We should attempt to prevent small and large-scale dissolution by not throwing our rider, no matter how hard it might sometimes be to bite the tongue, take a breath, or walk away. Among other techniques, we can sometimes correct the effects of this dissolution with forgiveness, that most difficult act, even and especially if it is merely an act of faith, and not one of true belief. But, sometimes, the bell cannot be unrung, and so we should temper our tempers, even or especially if they run cold.
Earned Connection. If we have shallow contact, we have no depth of connection. If we have no connection, we have no community. This touches the butterflies wings, and so one hesitates to note it, but : we can only earn true connection through shared experience and the interactive opening of our self. Beyond putting the parts together and trying to slow down and be present to one another, our plans can have no place in the creation of true connection. But we can do that! We can get together, and we can be present and true.
Balanced space and time for self, partner, family, friend, colleague, and the community. This is very personal, so it is dependent upon each of us to learn and adapt to our present self and its desire for each, and then, importantly, to give ourselves what we need. Our aim is to bring ourselves together, without over-correction. It is in our neighboring -- our near-dwelling -- that a sense and practice of community could improve not just and obviously community, but all the other relationships that depend upon the balance of our own whole. In providing the space to cultivate the full range of relationship, we necessarily require community, but we do not prioritize it.
Multi-generational. Having folks of all ages creates a working diversity of constitution, perspective, and capability. It also permits a gradual age-based flow in and out of the commons, the stovepipe demographic of a stable nation. Some means, perhaps in the future, of creating a lower-cost entry into the community would particularly assist the lower age brackets.
Human Scale & Proximity. These separate but related points -- the pace and scale to which we put our being, and how likely we are to cross one another's path -- intersect to form our commons. In dynamic tension with any desire for personal space, we design and build the common space and human-scale life that allows the world, and each of us in turn, to come into focus. The keyword here is a 'walkable' life, but bikes, buggies, burros, and bateaux(s) are beautiful too.
Financial Integrity. A clear-eyed survey and understanding of the financial mechanics of the commons, and a thoughtful response to this understanding, is critical to our economic integrity and to our personal sense of stability. The heart of the commons depends upon both. Because we are a farm-based community, and farming to our preference will most likely be more 'expensive' than the food production of today or tomorrow, we acknowledge an inherent 'inefficiency' in our productive life. In order to maintain some relatively solid capability to interact with a broader economy -- that is, to be wealthy enough to eat out, pay for gas, go on a vacation, and pay taxes and insurance, etc. -- we will have counterbalancing income.
Ejection Buttons. For ourselves and the community, we will build clear pathways for exit, either by personal will or the will of the group. If there is a bad apple spoiling the lot, we will remove it -- surgically, with care and concern, and after preceding conversation and mediation. If this is not what one wants, we will make it as easy as possible to liquidate and go.
Devices, Connection and Separation. The capability for "devices" -- at-a-distance, hand-held, wearable, and implanted -- to influence the nature of our community and our experience of life itself is significant. These "devices" -- wired or not -- can separate us from or connect us to space, time, and person to a degree profound and far beyond books and even television. In fact, it is such a difference of degree as to be a difference of kind. Further, the nature of their connection defines them functionally as an organ, with addiction and, more importantly, structural dependency an easy outcome. While we do recognize the power of organs, we are careful around this power. Further, their potential for surveillance and the disruption of privacy are matters of community, and so should be addressed. We must collectively settle on a policy regarding something so powerful.
Let us start with a soft fail-close, and see where we might open. Thus, outside of one's home and office, and perhaps on the trails for walking phone calls, in our communal space there will be no wireless communication -- WiFi or cellular, except in emergencies or for documented allowable purposes. While wired connectivity still permits access, but in a space and time of our choosing, we prefer it. In the beginning and end, though, we should ask : how does this connect or separate us, and to what or whom?
This particular restriction does not prevent the use of portable devices with their wireless connectivity turned off or removed, for purposes that connect us with the here and now -- camera (via consent), notes, maps, voice recorder, bird identification, etc. -- and even those which connect us to others, such as via podcasts and music, etc. In fact, one can segment these capabilities, with a dumb-phone for calls and a SIM-free smart 'phone' for daily life. Exploration on the nature of one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many communication and its implication for presence with the here and now is open for exploration.
The Limits and Tensions of Community. I want to do what I want to do. You want to do what you want to do. There is no way around the fact that these two things can exist in stark contrast. Even in ourselves, in time or across it, there is flux in our desire. Our aim is to design a system of living that brings a measure of homogeneity to our desires, such that in a group they align and synergize, but also provides the personal space for self-fulfillment. But this is a game we cannot fully win. We must, in advance, carry or build the habit and reflex of acceptance for the nature of this beast, while we also seek to evolve it. It is a trade-off : some freedom for community, some community for freedom.
Necessary but not sufficient. Proximity alone does not build community or deep individual connection. Dinners together are not sufficient unto themselves, nor even working together on the farm or in the shop, nor getting together to paddle or watch a movie. But taken in sum, all of the choices we make and the expectations we hold -- of what to do and not do -- can build both, community and connection. These choices, as policy, mores, physical structure, and even reflexes of our being, determine the nature of this particular animal.
Legal structure. A Land & Property LLC will be just that, an LLC, but structured like a cooperative and functioning like a cohousing community, in which each contributing member -- as a residential unit, or per adult -- has an equal vote regarding core components of the LLC. Private and Subsidiary LLCs -- in cases such as the food farm, or other integral and long-lasting components -- to follow, with a lease on land and structures, as needed. Consider it a governmental overlay -- with its own zoning, policies, and structured mores -- but where the government is quite direct and happens at a table with drinks.
Governance structure. The Land & Property LLC bylaws are to function as a barebones framework for governance, with planners, managers, committees and policies adopted as standing or ad hoc. Various theoretical frames may be tried, but, for better and for worse, the small-size of the community will likely steer us certain ways. Twin Oaks in Virginia, Cobb Hill in Vermont, and even the Ecovillage at Ithaca in New York, are a few communities old enough to provide a good model of a wheel to build, rather than reinvent. Committees might include a "Land Committee", a "Property Committee", a "Finance Committee", etc. Policies might include those regarding weapons and firearms, light and noise, vehicles and speed, guests and visitors, etc.
Economic structure. This is an LLC of equal contributing members, collectively owning and managing a large property for private and public living, working, playing, and letting be. There will be no expectation of income or asset sharing. A discussion on wages, fortune, and good fortune, and sliding scales and alternative payment systems for intra-community work, etc. is all on the table.
Physical structure. In short, we will have small personal homes and yards, with a larger group house and the greater 400 acres in common.
As explained in the contextual notes, the APA and Town of Willsboro laws broadly determine the siting, spacing, and count of our homes. Our stomach for bureaucracy, timeline for getting-on with living, relationship with communal and private living structures, and other personal dwelling preferences, determine the details within that broad outline.
The present farmhouse and future common house aside, the remaining homes are to be nearly identical, built for 2-6 folks, and sized on about a 28x28' footprint x 1.5-2 stories, plus long 8' deep porches on the back and entry side, making for a ~36'-square footprint. Small by some standards, but not tiny. The design lens slants toward simplicity, ease of living, natural light and heat, and the lessons of a farming life. If one cannot pee off the deck -- even just the back deck -- we have failed our design ambitions, and so privacy within community is an important component of the design.
The homes will be spaced 100'+ apart on the east-side, 200'+ apart on the west-side, and 200'+ apart between these two rows.
Age Structure. The atelier workshop studios (ADU) can provide a living-space for multi-generational families, which is encouraged for those who are excited by that. That space exists contingent upon the space and home-occupation requirements of any particular household, as some professions -- boat-building, for example -- may require the full use of the atelier.
The Land. We hold the whole land in common, sectioning out some small bits for our selves and families for personal use, and collectively determining how to view the remainder. We choose this amount of land because we personally find access to sauntering spaces, migrating birds, untouched corners, maple sap in spring, the untrammeled stars, and all the like to be a necessary component to a life well lived. In this particular case, this quantity of land is how we gain that.
The Farm. The farm defines us, perhaps as much as the land itself -- for it also takes, in its contrasting balance, the surrounding unmanaged, 'unproductive' land, which fulfills the potential of both the farm and the farmer. We believe in the unique and healing qualities of a farm life, which can only be hinted at in their enumeration : the smell of manure, the thunderstorm in a dry summer, the asparagus of spring, the final harvest of winter squash in autumn, the warm shower running dirty in the evening, the field walk on Friday, the field walk at night, the pulse of life flowing through the fields and through us. Farmer or not, living on a farm and eating from the farm -- alone, with family, with all of us -- makes this what it is.
The Common House. While connection happens in space, here is one space that's warm and out of the rain. One of the 8 homes can be a shared private and common space, with the private residence on the second floor, and the de jure private but de facto common-space for dining, educating, scheming, tea'ing, and recreating, on the first. Alternatively, we may have the option to move and convert the middle barn at 3071 Essex Rd. into the common house. In either case, it should, in every way, be like a hearth.
The Common Mess. Eating together is a necessary if insufficient bone in the body of this common life. Putting food into one's mouth beside another is not the point, but everything else that happens when folks get together consistently, at the same time, to break bread, chat, delve, and wander off together or alone, is.
Our relationship to food must be large enough to take-in the needs of our whole being -- for example, root beer popsicles and banana ice cream, because we're not dead yet! -- but the general rubric of food should be mostly: 1) whole, 2) local, 3) plants. While the ancient Indian system of Ayurveda is inherently individualized, we take its base illuminations as a very useful reference for eating, to say nothing of the remainder of living itself.
There are any number of ways to build our common meals, each with a different kind of being. We should consider, at least : our preference for family, partner, and community connection; our preference for cooking or being cooked-for; and our particular dietary habits.
Tables : Long dining-hall tables, smaller tables, smaller nooks, and a mix.
Meals together : Just Dinner; Breakfast & Dinner; Lunch & Dinner; Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner.
Days : Monday through Friday; Every day of the week; Just weekends.
Cooking : A chef / cook planning, provisioning, and preparing each of these meals; a rotation, where each household cooks in turn; a pot-luck.
Here's one permutation : we rotate through dinners, M-R, with each household cooking on average once every other week, perhaps even having a designated cook to allow each household to claim a consistent day; Fridays could be a consistent pizza, etc. night, and weekends are entirely up to each household.
Or this : We do the same as above, but have breakfast together, too, with each household providing one meal each week.
Here's another. A chef / cook among us prepares five dinners a week -- M-F -- while the rest of us handle the weekend breakfasts, in rotation. We potluck for holidays, however often. This gives us both consistency and variety. We either prepare the hall or clean-up once a week. Our dining hall has booths along the side, with longer common tables in the middle, so we can eat as a family, or as a group, dependent upon preference. We have breakfast at home, and lunch either at home, with our workmates, or away.
There are many permutations, each making for a slightly or radically different world, and each costing us a particular sum of time and money in exchange for what it gives. What we choose to do really matters. What do we do?
The Commons Commons : Or, The Middle-Ground, and a call for Monty Don
A five acre middle ground between our homes emerges after several design choices, and in the context of APA and Willsboro Zoning. In this scenario, there are homes on either side, the road backing to the east, the horse pasture backing to the west, the food farm to the south, and open ground to the north. What do we do with these four acres? (Note : Some current trees and perhaps a right-of-way reduce the working acreage below the full extent.) Monty Don's Longmeadow garden comes strongly to mind. A beautiful, human-scale mix of form and function, a home for the sundry non-competitive but oh-so-lovely cultivars -- apples to quince -- that the production farm doesn't grow, a perennial flower farm, a playing field, a campfire amphitheater, a pool, etc. While we can get pretty far into the vision with the plants themselves and some knack for grouping, Monty Don is an inspired human, and so we would be on the look-out for someone similarly captured and inspired.
Amenities. We can hold any number of assets or cooperatives fully or partially in-common. This is a matter of interest, group acceptance, and funds. Here is a start.
Walking, bike, horse trails
Car, truck, van share
Workshop and tools
Tiny, fully insulated indoor greenhouse pool/spa for tethered off-season swimming and pool running
Outdoor pool for summer, though we have relatively ready access to the lake and swimming holes.
A sauna & hot tub
A moon/kilter/tension/etc. training board for indoor climbing
Fitness equipment for the winter and beyond
Cooperative childcare
Get togethers : Meditation, book club, campfires, movie night, etc.
Education, an educational collaborative. If we so choose, we can create a kind of educational collaborative, where we engage a tutor(s) for instruction of any period less than half the time required per week, per state home-school law. In addition to tutoring / teaching, these educators, in their expertise and experience, can provide the lead on the educational course, planning the content and flow of instruction, and streamlining the state paperwork. We, as parents, would split the remaining majority of the time for our children -- 2.5h/day, or 1.25h/day/person if there are two parents. Factor in the number of children. :) The cost-benefit analysis of that would be against the time, money, and educational qualities of the alternatives. The particular pedagogical approach would likely lean toward the Vermontessori -- Montessori + 'Nature', self-directed, mastery-based.
There is likely a tipping point / critical mass on this, in which a minimum scale functions as threshold for viability. If we all do it, it works. If a quarter of us do it, maybe not. The same could be said for the Lakeside School at Black Kettle Farm. They already have a school, want to provide more grades, and just need students. If enough of us were interested, how far might they push out the grades of their school? And how far do we need or want them to?
Our Métiers; or, to make the world more good and beautiful
The working assumption beneath much of this creation is that collecting interoperable components can build something bigger than the individual parts. If we are a group of farmers working together, we can build something grander than what we could each do -- and imagine -- alone. For those of us who are not farming -- or for those farmers who have other and winter passions -- there is still an opportunity for synergy. We should take advantage of that opportunity.
At base, our aim is that we are fundamentally happy and -- in which ever way our might heart turn -- in love with our work : quiet, pleasant love, or passionate. Beyond that, we gather around the twin aims of bringing beauty and goodness into the world; that is, we hope that our work makes the world more good and beautiful.
Because we prioritize a walkable life with a mostly-mostly on-site vocation, this gives us the chance to build around home-based studios and workshops. "Atelier" is a French loan-word -- now meaning an artist's studio or workshop, but first associated with the wood-worker's -- and a fine, relatively uncluttered word to center a vision : a place to envision, design, and build what one dreams. Thus, we are largely a community of ateliers, each for dreaming and creating something good and beautiful. This is a very big umbrella, restrictive principally in its desire for on-site work, and taking-in all manner of traditional artistan work to artists to 'professionals'. We cannot imagine all the ways our own individual passion might cross-pollinate or inform another's, but in advance we might provide the condensation nuclei for a few.
Importantly, we recognize that our way of farming for ourselves may not be competitive with the wider agro-industrial food system, and so we choose to structurally subsidize that "inefficiency" with off-setting, better compensating vocations and/or the need for less money.