Small Family Looking For A Commune

Hello Everyone!

We are a small family of 3, myself (30 years old), my wife (31 years old) and my son (5 years old) and as the topic title suggests we are interested in finding a commune to live in. Between my wife and myself we have had a whole lifetime of experiences with the standard daily grind of how life "should be" (haha what a joke). Honestly we have grown quite sick with it and its getting tiresome to work and work and work with nothing to show for it. I have spent more than 12 years in construction and i love doing it and am now working at a typical desk job in an architecture related field. My wife went to college and wound up being there for a bit longer than usual because she had to deal with the traumatic event of her mother passing away. That, coupled with having our child only a year or so after graduating, has put her in a place where she has no interest in trying to catch up in the corporate world, and I don't blame her. She graduated with an Art degree in sculpture of which she has only ever received scorn for, and this truly breaks my heart. There is a tremendous amount of passion and love inside of her and the world as smothered it and pushed her away.

Ultimately, I am looking to find a place where our individual talents can be utilized in a way that's actually beneficial to the community we are a part of. I grew up on a farm and am no stranger to hard work, I love getting my hands dirty. I rise early and most of the time stay up late. I do everything in my power to try and provide as best i can for my small family and I'm terrified of all the evil this world has to offer my son. I want him to be free and not have to worry about running out in the woods and play, as I did when I was a child. I want him to feel proud for seeing the rewards of his labor. I want a place where my wife can be who she is without fear of reprisal and scorn. I want to end this oppressive never ending vicious cycle of work work work and never really getting what we want/need out of it. We want to belong, we want to exist as people (are meant to exist), we want to be a part of something, not just another cog in the wheel.

As a side note we live in the PA/DE area, but we are completely open to almost anywhere in the US.

Thank you in advance for any suggestions or comments.

 

consumer culture can be truly disgusting when you really step back and look at it.

people should be to school for what interests them, not for what "careers" happen to be in high demand.

 

I'm trying to get a permaculture campground going in central AZ. I've got lots of ideas and all kinds of skills but no resources to buy land. I'm camping on a friend's property for now, hoping to find a few partners and raise a little funding before heading out into the boonies. Just found an awesome property near Snowflake with a solar well and everything for $36k.

Here's the thread here(website is down): http://www.hipforums.com/forum/index.php?/topic/448131-permaculture-campgrounds-for-creative-types/
and here's a link to my forum: www.muut.com/campexist

If AZ is not right for you, maybe you can use some of the ideas.

Anyway, best of luck in your search!

 

I've been intensely searching for an ideal place for my family with no luck yet. Are there any specific web based resources that any of you know of that could help out? Thank you in advance.

 

IC.org

 

Most of the communities that are thriving have little to no web presence. They're chillin in the woods eating awesome food and lovingly interacting with their communities. They don't have a need to waste time on the web. I've searched, mainly on the web, for the right one for years and all the advice I got was to backpack up, hit the road, head for cool palces, and start asking around. I can't afford the gas to do that and don't want to abandon all of the stuff I've saved up over the years so I figured I'd better start my own!

 

I've wasted sooo much time there. 90% of them are perpetually forming with no land, or long abandoned. The rest are religious, weird/kooky, like as in the leader wants to have sex with everyone, or wants no sex at all, huge lists of rules, slave like labor requirements, indentured servitude, and a bunch of them want high rent or buy in prices and wouldn't know sustainability from a hole in the ground. I've sent about five emails to the IC.org folks asking them to thin out some of the obviously failed posts and they'd never even reply. Can't say I recommend that one.

 

It's a place to look...

 

Ya, I've been there quite a bit searching only to come to the realization of this:

And I realized the irony of my post in reference to web based resources right after I posted it. I was just hoping to get a link to some sort of "underground" resource that is not widely known or referenced.

 

A realistic underground resource would be great... I don't know of any though.

 

You might take a look at the Twin Oaks community in Virginia. If you have skills and a willingness to work, that might fit with their scheme where everyone signs up to do jobs, either producing items for sale or working around the property. Not that the members are agreeing to be slaves, but I think they'd say that without a plan, anyone who's inclined to be lazy would get away with too much, and even the willing workers would be inefficient.

You can tell from their website that they do seem to have their stuff together. It would probably depend on how much organization you can tolerate--most likely there are some people who'd fit the place well, and others who'd be better staying away.
http://www.twinoakscommunity.org/