Thinking of starting a community? Sky Blue, former Twin Oaker, former director of the Foundation for Intentional Community, has some advice.
General Community
Cooperative Governance
Sky Blue (a former Twin Oaker and long time community activist) looks at what governace is and how it works in communities and other cooperative institutions.
Economic Models for Intentional Communities
Sky Blue is a former Twin Oaker and a long time community activist. Here they talk about how economics interfaces with communities and what kind of economic models are possible for communities–including income sharing.
The Relative Fluidity of Community Values and the Permanence of Community Buildings
by Laird Schaub
(Note from Raven: This was one of the last columns Laird wrote for his blog. As he always did, Laird has some really good advice here from his many years of work with many, many communities.)
Looking back over my 50 years of personal experience with intentional community, I have some things to say about the role of common values in communities, about how to think about community buildings (as distinct from private dwellings), and about how the one relates to the other. Let me take them in turn.
I. Common Values
Intentional Communities are called that because residents have purposefully come together around explicit common values. That is, they’ve made the choice to seek out a life in association with others with whom they share key values. While there can be great variety in what those values are (spiritual, ecological, dietary, parenting philosophy, alignment with certain personal growth disciplines, political agenda, sexual orientation—you name it, and in any combination), the point is that group members agree on those that are the foundation for their life together, and they recruit new members on that basis.
What is often misunderstood about common values, is that they do not eliminate disagreement among members—both because there are any number of ways that members can (and often do) disagree about matters not addressed by the common values, and because different people interpret the same words differently, and those nuances are typically not exposed until you get into the nitty gritty of living together.
So why bother having common values? They are helpful in three main ways:
a) They are the essence of your elevator speech when recruiting new members. You want all new residents to agree to be guided by reasonable interpretations of the group’s common values. (If a prospective cannot agree to abide by that, tell them thanks, but no thanks.)
b) Communities do their best work when they regularly identify which common values are in play when wrestling with any given issue, for the purpose of figuring out how best to balance them when choosing how to respond. That’s the heavy lifting of plenary considerations, and should generally be well-grounded on a foundation of common values.
c) They also help distinguish what groups are obliged to wrestle with, and what is a member’s personal request, that groups are not obliged to honor.
When groups relate to their values in this way—as living, dynamic concepts, rather than as stone tablets handed down by founding fathers & mothers—the community becomes a manifestation of its values, which evolve over time.
With this in mind, I advise groups not to belabor refining their common values at the outset, through a series of what-if thought experiments (how will we handle x, or situation y if either occurs?) Reality will be challenging enough, without worrying about how many angels can be accommodated on a pinhead.
A corollary is understanding that groups effectively refine what their common values mean through the decisions they make. To be sure, the weight that the group gives certain values can (and almost certainly will) change over time—both because there are inevitable shifts in community membership, and because 20-year-olds may value things differently as they become 40-year-olds, and then 60-year-olds, etc.
(Thus, when a long-term member responds to a request to reconsider (or reinterpret) a value with, That’s not the way we do things here, it’s not particularly helpful. Far better, in my view, is something like, In the past we made the decision to handle this issue as follows… What do you think is different about the current situation that justifies a new approach? See how this both honors what has been done before, yet leaves the door open to making adjustments, in light of new perspectives, or new circumstances?)
Looked at all together, the body of decisions and actions taken by the group over the course of its history becomes an increasingly nuanced statement of what exactly you stand for (or stood for in the past). What’s more, you should know that prospective members will be more attracted to what you are, than what you say you intend to be.
II. Community Buildings
Now let’s switch gears and consider buildings. While I’m not an architect, I have built some community buildings and been involved in any number of design charrettes. From that experience I want to share some principles about community structures meant to serve the whole. Some are peculiar to the dynamics of community; others are generic to construction in any circumstance.
• While buildings typically last a long time (40+ years), the functions that the community wants that building to serve are likely to change before the building’s useful life has been exhausted. Thus, an important design criteria is how easily can you reconfigure how space is used if you change your mind about what you’d like. Example: when Sandhill Farm (my community for four decades) built a major building in 1981, we took this principle to heart by constructing a two-story 25’x48′ earth-sheltered building that had no interior load-bearing walls on the lower story. Forty years later, the community has twice completely changed its mind about how to use the bottom half of the building, and it was no big deal to do so either time. Whew.
• Communities’ ability to attract and retain members with high-level construction and maintenance skills is hit or miss. Great when you have it; expensive when you don’t. Additional caution: while I don’t think this is causative, it is relatively common that people who possess blue collar skills such as carpentry, plumbing, electrical work, HVAC expertise, and the like are not necessarily great at soft skills such as communication and relationship repair. Thus, be advised that when you sacrifice the latter to secure the former you are sowing the whirlwind.
• Be cautious about accepting a design for a community building that relies on novel technology or a complicated system to function well. Because membership turnover goes with the territory, what will you do when the “expert” leaves?
• Before signing off on a design feature, ask yourself the question, how will we repair it if it breaks or no longer functions as expected? If you don’t have a good answer, think about it some more.
• For things with a relatively short lifespan, the original purchase price is often the most important financial consideration. With durable goods, however—generally defined as things expected to last more than three years—it is prudent to also have a close look at projected maintenance costs. In fact, the longer you expect an item to last, the more important it is to consider maintenance costs. Buildings, of course, are something you expect to be very durable. As such it’s generally advisable to use the highest quality materials you can afford, and those which are expected to require the least maintenance, or need replacing least frequently. Example: metal roofing or tiles, rather than shingles.
• Don’t limit your thinking solely to indoor space when designing a building; it behooves you to also think outside the box—literally—to include the use of spaces immediately adjacent to the building’s thermal envelope, which have the potential to have high utility at low-cost.
Example 1: at Sandhill (in northeastern MO) we had hot humid summers and cold winters. In the winter we’d use our screened-in east-facing porch for firewood storage. For the other three seasons, it was prime social space. It would catch the morning sun when the day was cool—perfect for morning coffee—and be in the shade when the afternoon sun was bearing down, and any breeze was cherished. (As a bonus, it was the ideal spot for processing horseradish in the fall, when the noxious fumes would assault your mucous membranes if attempted indoors.)
Example 2: for minimal cost Sandhill built an unheated expansion to the back porch for the primary purpose of storing canning supplies (obviating the need to schlep boxes in and out of the attic all year). This was a big deal for a community that grew about 80% of its own food, and preserved things in quantity.
III. The Intersection of Common Values & Community Buildings
Years ago, we were having a discussion at Sandhill about the possibility of constructing a new building, when one relatively new member expressed disapproval of how past community buildings were designed, because they didn’t adequately take into account permaculture principles.
I recall vividly my response at the time. With a certain amount of irritation, I said the community made decisions about the design of past buildings in exactly the same way we’d approach future ones. To wit, we’d discuss it as a group and combine the best thinking of the current membership to determine the design parameters, giving extra weight to the preferences of the project honcho.
Thus, while I tried to assure the new member that the community would be happy to include his sense of permaculture principles when designing future buildings—so long as he stayed—I was unwilling to feel ashamed that we hadn’t anticipated his perspective in the past.
By and large there is nothing that communities do that is a longer lasting statement of how they interpret their values at a certain point in time than its buildings, which often have a lifespan that exceeds that of their constructors. You’ll do well to keep that in mind (and remain humble). My advice? Do the best you can with what you have at the time, and expect to get smarter as you go.
What was once a shiny, new state-of-the-art accomplishment can inadvertently slide into the ignominy of becoming a stodgy embarrassment over the course of its lifetime. Oops!
Louisa Communities Tidbits
by Raven
Louisa County, Virginia is home to perhaps a dozen intentional communities. (And it’s not a very large county!) I’m not sure of the exact number because I’m not down in Virginia. I heard of another one recently, the Bay Branch, mentioned in the October newsletter from Living Energy Farm. I’m also very aware that communities fall apart or are discontinued and I often don’t hear about it until long after the fact.
But working with the communities that I knew of, at least a while ago, I created another Match Game, with eleven of the communities in the county. The clues were tricky and unless you were in one of the communities or were paying very close attention to what we’ve been publishing on Commune Life, it would be hard to get them all correct. So I thought that, beyond publishing the answers, I’d write a post explaining them–and putting out a little more (and sometimes obscure) information about these communities.
So, here, again, are the clues and the communities and where this information came from and a little more about some of them.
A loose association of ex-Oakers and other former communards: Bakers Branch. Bakers Branch is a road about halfway between Twin Oaks and Acorn where, as it says, a lot of former folks from Twin Oaks and other communities live. It’s not really a community but they do view themselves as somewhat connected.
A monastic community of song and prayer: Community of Peace. On their website they describe themselves as “a monastic Christian community” and they mention that they hold “Sung Prayer” three times a day.
Heritage and heirloom seeds are now their largest source of income: Twin Oaks. This was one of the tricky ones. People who know a little about the Virginia communes hear “seeds” and think Acorn, but when Twin Oaks published about creating a new office for their Seed Racks business they specifically said that. The clues are in the words “now” and “largest”–seeds have been Acorn’s only business for a long while.
It was founded by an anarchist from Richmond: Cuckoo Compound. Mo Karnage, an anarchist who had been part of the Wingnut anarchist house in Richmond founded this and owns the property.
Living sustainably in downtown Louisa: Magnolia Collective. A spinoff from Living Energy Farm, they try to demonstrate that you can live ecologically and they are located “just a few short blocks from Main Street.”
Perhaps the newest community in the county, they want to be “weird in the woods”: Bramble Collective. That’s how they open their website: “Let’s be weird in the woods together.” And, given what I wrote about the Bay Branch, it seems like they are no longer the newest community in Louisa County. It’s tough to keep up.
Their main members are an artist and an ex-priest: Little Flower. Little Flower is a Catholic Worker Community run by a couple. Sue is very artistic and has decorated their community. Bill is an ex-priest and they are both long-time peace activists.
They have a very visible boat that doesn’t float: Cambia. Cambia went looking for a boat that didn’t float figuring that it would make a cheap and interesting place for housing. The boat is in their front yard and very visible from the street.
They only have one community business but they are the most prosperous community in the county: Acorn–of course. Southern Exposure Seed Exchange had been doing incredibly well before the pandemic but it really took off when people were isolating and started thinking about buying seeds. It’s still doing very well and Acorn has been generous in employing folks from the other local communities and involving the other communities in their business. As it says above, the wholesale part of the business has become Twin Oaks’ biggest money maker, a case of a very successful offspring now supporting the parent.
They’d rather do Easy Reaper than Easy Rider: Living Energy Farm. LEF (which I’ve heard them pronounce as ‘leaf’) has developed a simple combine that they call ‘Easy Reaper’. (I will bet it’s a play on Easy Rider.) It was recently displayed at a conference in Iowa.
Working to build a BIPOC focused community in Louisa County: Moonseed Collective. With Serenity Solidarity having moved to New York State, Moonseed is the primary community in Louisa County focused on “the needs of Black Americans”.
Again, this is not completely up to date. I’m not there so I’m not certain about the current situation. Some of these communities may no longer exist or have changed and, as in the case of Bay Branch, new communities may have emerged in the county. It certainly makes Louisa County an interesting place to live.
Land Day, PR, Pumpkins, Brownies, and a Kibbutzim Question
by Raven
We’re still looking a couple of months back on Facebook and this week we have everything from pumpkins and brownies to a provocative question about the kibbutzim.
But let’s start off with Living Energy Farm. They’ve had their place for fourteen years.
This post did okay, just sliding in with six likes and a hundred views.
Twin Oaks was happy to get a bit of local publicity.
Unfortunately, this did do very well on Facebook, with three likes, a love, and a mere fifty-seven views.
SESE wrote about pumpkins.
I thought it was interesting but apparently not many folks did. It got no likes or loves and only thirty-nine views. This was our worst performer of the week.
And East Wind Nutbutters posted a recipe.
Okay, lots of pictures and a recipe for a sweet treat. Yes, it did well, although not as well as I would have expected, with only three likes and a respectible hundred and fourteen views.
Finally, I thought it was time for another Facebook question and I wanted something controversial and having mixed thoughts about the Kibbutzim (plural of the Kibbutz) these days, I decided to put out a provocative question.
I wanted comments but I only got a couple. (Some good thoughts, though.)
While I was hoping a controversial, provocative question would attract a lot of views, I had also been warned that Facebook was limiting the views of “political” stuff. And that seemed to be true, at least at first. There were only two comments and only two likes and after the first day there were less than a hundred views, and so I thought that was that. But something happened that I had never seen before. I’m not sure why (it didn’t seem to have gotten any shares) but it started gathering more views over the next couple of days and while a hundred and eighty-six views is not much for a controversial question, it’s a lot more that I thought we were going to get. I’m not sure what happened but this post did well after all.
Cody, Remodeling, Collards, and Another Match Game
by Raven
Because I took the month of December off, we are now way behind on reporting Facebook posts over here. Two months behind, as a matter of fact. (Actually a little over two months because the first of these posts was from the very end of October.)
That first post was from East Wind talking about one of their members. One of their more industrious members.
This post did very, very well on Facebook with eleven likes, five loves, and two hundred and twenty-six views. It was by far our most popular post of the week.
Over at Twin Oaks, they have been posting a lot about the transition from hammocks production to expanding their part of the seed business.
This also did well on Facebook (I think people like construction pics), although not anywhere near as well as East Wind’s post about Cody. It got two likes, two loves, and a very respectable hundred and eleven views.
At Acorn, they were harvesting collards.
Unfortunately, this post didn’t do so well on Facebook. It was the beginning of a rapid decline in viewers, and although it got three loves and a like, it only snagged fifty-two viewers.
Finally, since it was a slow week for commune news, I thought I would post another puzzle. They had been fairly well liked in the past (although for some reason, the original puzzle tends to get more viewers than the answers), and, even though it’s a lot of work, it’s also a bit of fun to create. This one was about the communities that are clustered in Louisa County.
If you want to play along, stop here and try checking out your knowledge of the eleven communities (or at least that’s how many I counted this past fall). The answers are a bit below.
But first…
Honestly this didn’t do so well, with one like, one comment, and only sixty-four views.
Ah, well,
And now, the answers. (I’m skipping a lot of the day’s post since it was only a repetition of the clues that I have above.)
Okay, I’ll admit it was a difficult and I will say that I intend to write a Monday post explaining the answers sometime soon.
I may very well repost it on Facebook again since it got so few views. As I said, these puzzles tend do better than the answers and since the puzzle did so poorly, you can almost guess that the answers did worse. And they did, with no likes or comments and a very meager forty-nine views.
2025!
by Raven
It’s a brand new year. The FEC is all but gone and the coming US administration may be as anti-sharing as you can get, but I believe that this is a time when sharing and community are needed more than ever.
Commune Life is a blog dedicated, first of all, to egalitarian income-sharing communities, and beyond this to communities in general (and how to start them) as well as exploring ways of radical sharing. I also want to explore mutual aid, clusters of communities, interdependence, and the networking of communities–with perhaps various types of cooperatives and other alternative institutions. I’m expanding the focus of Commune Life to areas that I see are connected to communal living (like relational work, the importance of infrastructure, and the need for more experimental communities). I will still limit the focus on general intentional community stuff since much of that is covered by the Foundation for Intentional Community and its allies.
It’s going to be a challenging year. I’m hoping the stuff published here will help at least some people realize the need for more sharing and community, not less. I intend to keep publishing pieces from income-sharing communities (communes) and other interesting communities and alternatives to show that all this can work and even be fun. Hopefully it will inspire more people (maybe even you) to find ways of doing more sharing and more community building in the coming year. Beyond that, I guess that we will just have to see what this “interesting” year ahead will bring.
Intercommunal Support, Season Extension, Green Eggs, Denver, and Alliums
by Raven
Unfortunately, this week last month, was the beginning of a slide in Facebook ratings for us. I’m not sure what is going on but we didn’t get a lot of viewers on Facebook, not even reaching my one hundred mark once this week.
I thought the posts were interesting, though. The first was a clear case of the Louisa communities relying on each other.
While this post didn’t do great on Facebook (it didn’t even nearly reach the hundred mark), it did the best of any of our reposts of this particular week, with three likes, a love, and eighty-eight views.
Southern Exposure Seed Exchange wrote what I thought was an interesting article of ways of extending the growing season.
Here’s a link to the full article.
As I said, I thought it was interesting. Apparently Facebook didn’t. It got no likes, loves, or comments and only a dreadful twenty-nine views, making it the worst performer in a bad week.
We haven’t posted anything about the Baltimore Free Farm in a while and I noted that they have had some changes. The article is from April but it does reflect some of what’s going on there.
(I guess by “Olive-Egger” they meant a hen that lays olive colored eggs.)
For such a low viewing week, this didn’t do too, too badly, with two likes and eighty-three views.
East Wind’s nutbutter business travels to trade shows around the country, and this post was about them going to Colorado.
While this post didn’t do well by any means, it landed in the middle of a bad week for viewers with four likes and fifty-nine viewers.
And last, but not quite least, I reposted another piece from Southern Exposure about their allium shipments, an important part of their season.
And this wound up with just two likes and fifty-two views.
I would like to tell you that things went uphill on Facebook from here, and they did, but not incredibly well, for the most part. More about this next year.
Communes in the Age of Trump
by Raven
I imagine that most Commune Life readers are not happy with the election of our former president. (If you are, I wonder what you expect.)
Of course, this isn’t the first time that Trump has been elected. In January of 2017, the Atlantic magazine published an article entitled “Seeking an Escape from Trump’s America”. It featured a bunch of folks who talked about joining or being in an intentional community as a way of being protected from the chaos of the new administration. One of the communities profiled was Living Energy Farm.
When Trump was elected in 2016 I was living in the Ganas community in New York City. It’s not an income-sharing community per se (although the core group shares not only income, but assets) and it is not an egalitarian community (and they will tell you that) but it could be a very caring community and the morning after the election (when few folks had expected Trump and the Republican party to be swept into office) we had a regularly scheduled planning meeting. We threw out the agenda and we were just there for each other. I wondered how people outside of community were able to deal with this. I was so glad to be a part of a community where we could support each other when something like this happened.
This time around I’m living in a very small income sharing community and, honestly, we have barely talked about the election. Of course it wasn’t the surprise that his first election was. But the community that I’m in focuses on interdependence and mutual aid, and I think that those are some of the most important things that we will need during the trying times ahead.
Community, as I pointed out above, means you don’t have to be alone with the trying times ahead. Communities like Living Energy Farm (and ecovillages like Dancing Rabbit and Earthaven, not income-sharing but committed to ecological living) are developing the tools that we will need to live in the age of climate change, even as the Trump administration will probably slash most of the “Clean Energy” development funds. Small communities like the Possibility Alliance, the Baltimore Free Farm, and Cambia are showing that living simply is not just possible but can be fun. As MAGA Republicans attack immigrants, queer folks, trans folks, and folks of color, communities such as Serenity Solidarity and the Tennessee queer communities offer places of refuge for those affected. And larger communities, such as Twin Oaks, East Wind, and Acorn are often looking for members. The Foundation for Intentional Communities maintains a directory of intentional communities of all kinds.
Beyond the general benefits of community living, income-sharing in particular offers collective shelter from the economic winds ahead. In income-sharing communities, we are not only there for each other emotionally but provide a financial buffer for many folks who would otherwise be struggling.
Perhaps people will begin to realize the need for community as the chaos spreads in 2025. Maybe interest in communities and communes will rise. Hopefully we will be able to rise to the occasion and take folks in and create many more communities of all kinds to meet people’s needs.
I think communities and communes are very important anyway, for a number of reasons, but I think that they are especially important now.
commune life 