Communes

[Sad Eyed Lady]

I was wondering if any of you have ever lived on a commune? I have not, but have visited and stayed a few days on The Farm in Summertown, TN. They are the group that came with Stephen Gaskin from San Francisco in the late '60's/early '70's, and are one of the few successful communes to be continually populated to this day, if not the only one. Of course, not in the numbers of residents that it once had. Ina Mae Gaskin and her midwives are still there delivering babies; so much still continues. It is a very appealing and peaceful place to visit, but I don't know how it would be long-term. It's not that I am thinking (seriously) of this, but just wanted to hear your thoughts, especially from anyone who has spent time on a commune.

[Kevin]

I was looking at what you might call communes, but which these days seem to be known as 'intentional communities', and I was surprised to find that there are many of them here in the UK.

There are various different types, some religious / spiritual, many not, even one founded in 1898 by followers of Leo Tolstoy (which could hardly be called a commune in the modern sense), the Whiteway Colony.

There is a directory of them on the Diggers & Dreamers website:

http://www.diggersanddreamers.org.uk/index.php?one=dat&two=dat

I'm very much a dreamer rather than a digger, but if I could I would like to spend some time at the Tinker's Bubble community, which is in the South West England section of that directory.

Kevin

[RCWRTR]

I'm interested in this, too. Thanks for starting the conversation, Shalom Poet!

[organictex]

I've thought of it as well but have never even visited one. There is
one called Dancing Rabbit in Missouri that I keep up with through
their email updates. Seems pretty cool and would be an option for
me when I retire (if I retire).
tex

[Tenngal]

very interesting topic. I think The Farm in Summerville is only a couple of hours from my house. I had never heard of it or the history. Might be an upcoming daytrip for us in a couple of months.

[Sad Eyed Lady]

very interesting topic. I think The Farm in Summerville is only a couple of hours from my house. I had never heard of it or the history. Might be an upcoming daytrip for us in a couple of months.
Tenngal, they have a great website that will tell you the history of the commune and everything going on there today. www.thefarm.org It is an interesting place and there is a great couple there who will let you stay at their house, feed you vegetarian home cooked meals, and answer the many questions you will probably have. Barbara has written some cookbooks and is a wonderful cook. It has been a few years since I have stayed with them, but at the time you got all this for $25.00/person! Check out the website and then you might decide you want to visit. It is probably a couple of hours from my house too, since I am in KY less than an hour north of Nashville.

[Maxamillion]

I've thought if I ever had the money, buy some land and build four or five little cabins, each with it's own large garden area and two or three chicken tractors apiece. Maybe have a singe fenced-in area for goats. I'd live in one cabin and rent the rest out to like-minded people.

[Selah]

I'm not sure about how you would go about researching it, but there are still many, many successful kibbutzes (kibbutzim) in Israel that are going strong. Sometimes they have members who travel to the U.S. to talk about them, and the Nefesh B'Nefesh organization has a list of communities you can research. NBN's website is www.nbn.org.il. Just click on "Aliyahpedia" and then do a community search using kibbutz as search criteria.

[Zoebird]

a friend of mine gave birth at the farm.

another friend of mine lived at dancing rabbit for 5 years. then, she had a child, and her family wanted her to be close to them, and then she had another child, and his family moved closer to them, and they haven't gone back to DR, even though she'd planned on it. She's still hoping to get an escape velocity so that she can return.

here in NZ, there are several from the 60s and 70s still around, and many are ghost towns. the ghost town ones are something else -- you can hike to them, see the old buildings, and in some cases, use them as huts/shelters. there are several where people still live and work together -- one that apparently has about 100 members, and roughly 25 of those children. I find that fascinating. btu what is interesting is that if you go to them (say, for a working bee or some such), you NEVER see the people who live there, only the people who USED TO live there and come in to help out once a month or so. very strange.

also, there are whole areas of government land (which was rented by the communes) covered in all kinds of amazing crops -- and here, if you can find them, you can harvest them. there's also a movement stemming out of this to garden public spaces with edibles -- "a tree for every kiwi!" being part of the slogan. In hawkes bay, I understand it, they have many persimmon trees and several other fruiting trees in the public gardens for everyone.

but i digress.

i visited the eco-village in Ithica for a time -- that was fascinating -- and i have done some small-scale co-housing. It didn't often work out because I tend to need some cleanliness, space, and alone-time, and my co-housers generally needed mess, a full house, and an endless party. it didn't jive.

i would be willing -- if need be -- to do things scandi-style: shared kitchen and bathhouse, but separate bedrooms and a small sitting area/library that is separate. So long as everyone kept the kitchen tidy, i'd be ok. messy kitchens give me skeevies.

i don't think i'm good for communal style living, particularly if it's consensus based. i did that in quaker meeting. it was insanely difficult.

[sweetana3]

Zoebird, you captured our problems with cohousing. We love the idea but the huge amount of mental work that goes into it drives me batty. Endless talk about little things to reach consensus is just not worth my time.

[ctg492]

I never really thought about this type living. Interesting reading the web sites and I will educate myself more on it. Not sure why I would want to live with people on a group level. To have everyone on a similar line of thought on how things are ran and dealt with, would be very difficult I would think.

[ApatheticNoMore]

Oh I've had periodic fantasies about running away and joining a commune. Is it a practical idea? Of course not. There aren't even any communes anywhere nearby (I think by and large CA is too expensive for the commune idea to really be viable here). But it's just another impractical dream. I have so many, they call to me so loudly sometimes, it's deafening.

[the rickster]

i would be willing -- if need be -- to do things scandi-style: shared kitchen and bathhouse, but separate bedrooms and a small sitting area/library that is separate. So long as everyone kept the kitchen tidy, i'd be ok. messy kitchens give me skeevies.

i don't think i'm good for communal style living, particularly if it's consensus based. i did that in quaker meeting. it was insanely difficult.

This is my ideal of how it would be done. As a child of the 60's I've often wished to live in a communal situation but with some privacy. My g/f and I talk about this often, how to find like-minded people to create or join a community like this. Great topic and a good dream for a Friday afternoon!

[Spartana]

I have also thought of the commune life - or more of living in an Intentional Community. But I'm not a big fan of sharing communal things (Spartana does not play well with others :-)) and know that the level of stress brought on by always having to conform to what others in the group wanted would drive me batty. Too much potential for a bad experience IMHO.

[ButterflyBreath]

Great topic! I have had a little experience with this. There's a place in Whitwell, TN about an hour or so from Chattanooga called Moonshadow or Sequatchie Valley Institute. It's a neat place. They build their own structures and have a beautiful garden, water is gravity fed from spring, solar power, etc. Their main building is made of stone and wood, with a tree through the center of it. It is a little grungy and I'm not sure I could live there, but a very neat place to visit. They are an educational place as they give workshops and all. I have been visiting by going to events for years and it seems that there are less people there now than when I went the first time. That could be because the kids living there are grown up now and it depends on the time of year. www.svionline.org

Also, I lived in a co-op house in Chapel Hill, NC. There are a lot of intentional communities in the area but this was just a house. It was a couple of blocks from the main drag Franklin St. and right on a busline. I had to interview to be admitted to the house and everyone already living there had to approve. They had been in existence for 10 years at the time (2006) and had developed their house to where it ran very smoothly. We each made dinner one night a week/during the week, and although it was a vegetarian dinner you didn't have to be veg to live there. We had HE washer and dryer, clotheslines, compost, recycling, and we shared the bills which was a huge help. I paid $300 for a room, plus divided the utilities between all 6 of us, can't remember what they ran, but not much.

It was actually pretty laid back from what i remember. I shared my bathroom with 2 guys and one of them apparently was more particular about it being clean, as he was always complaining that it was dirty. However we resolved it. One of the prerequisites for living there was that you had to have good conflict resolution skills and were good at communicating. It was also a rule that you had to be there in the evenings most days to socialize so that when problems did arise we felt comfortable communicating and we would know each other. I would love to live in another co-op situation if it was well run. That's the key. AND I believe that's the answer to most problems in society : ) We should help each other, however not through government but on a more local level, responsibility for each other. We should start a bunch of business co-ops. AND a lot of larger intentional communities do have cottage industries they run, I just don't know the details.

Anywho, just thought I'd share.