84 acre commune looking for people!!!

it's *never* boring to hear about someone's interest...
the only thing we can hope for is that sam (sandra, the woman who has started this commune/venture/dream), finds people who are also a good fit into the community..

so far everything is deeply autonomic.. things need to be done, discussions are had, people take responsibility for it and it gets done...

it should be noted that i am more of a strong supporter and external member, than a resident, although that will probably change very soon.

sam's ultimate vision is to create an educational setting for city youth.. the commune will be self sufficient, and it is exactly that knowledge & experience which we hope can eradicate some of the negative effects of city upbringing.. there's absolutely nothing like learning from and experiencing nature, & communing with other creatures (wildlife and the horses & donkeys & turkeys & geese & pigs &...) to change self perspective from internal & self interested to external & less fettered...

mostly she'd just like something that will let people who desire to be free, and are willing to work to maintain it, allow them to exist with the kind of simplicity that peace & compassion use to thrive most greatly...

it ain't "all butterflies & rainbows", of course.. depending on where you think they should fly & what kind of skys they should live in.. it's cold, now, for instance & heat comes from one wood stove in the main house that needs to be tended at 4:00 a.m.....

animals get fed about the same time...

there's only minimal electricity & hot water takes a while to make..

there is, in fact, no running water at the moment, as the main house is still under construction.. that issue is being resolved, even as this is being written, but there's definitely a strong element of camping and self-sufficiency involved..

we are striving to be as far off the grid as practicable..

there are a number of projects either slated or underway.. currently the commune will be using 2 veggie powered vehicles; a shorty schoolbus and a 1995 veggie cargo van.. these belong to me, and are intended to be used for the prospecting ventures, farm needs, etc...

my recommendation to you or anyone else whom is interested in participating here is that you *communicate* with us..

keep us posted, give us some bio, establish some familiarity.. that's the way to set stuff up for follow through...

i'd like to make a few points here, regarding the farm/commune and the realities surrounding it.. this is sam's post in early november;

"hi i'm the owner of the farm letingo is in texas and i am using his signon
this area is big tobacco farming very rural... i am hoping to attract artist and craftsman to give them the time and aliviate stress to do their thing so they can sell or what ever you do... i offer food and shelter at this point at start up . if you need soda and candy and designer jeans etc it's your ticket... one guy here now likes meat so he went out and got a deer!! there's plenty of rabbit and turkey too!!!

it's 2 hours drive to any big city one way!!!
we will be doing a garden and selling next season -
you can pick up a few handyman jobs but this area is depressed..
stop by and visit and check us out
peace
sandra"

another important one, which i couldn't find, addressed the issue self responsibility.. this place generates *no* cash, on the balance sheets.. there may be an odd job here or there, or maybe $50 every other week or so from the flea market, but there is, effectively *NO* cash that can be relied upon.. that doesn't mean people are being selfish, it just means that:

1) there's almost no money

& 2) contributions of personal cash or income are strictly voluntary.. if the farm needs cash, well.. we either succeed or fail based upon on our personal and combined resourcefulness...

that being said, you have to be responsible for having a way in & a way out.. that's a precautionary statement, because we just don't know how people are going to fit.. & so it is also a pretty factual one...

& *that* being said, i'll close this on the note that Spirit Wynd is no longer with us... even before i had found out about the 84 acre commune, there were storms brewing...

there is *NO* question that he ( AJ ) did a tremendous amount of work, and that much is owed to him on both a communal and personal level for setting the foundation of this thread, and accurately conveying sam's vision and disposition towards her dream..

that being said..

Spirit Wynd now is more.. oh... a spirit, one might say, than an actual person..

if you have any inquiries about participating, visiting, or maybe even throwing down a little bread, etc., etc, you really should shoot them to sam, hip forum username letingo ... http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/member.php?u=191523

whess?
hope that gives you enough to go on after you do whatever you need to up in detroit..

soo... that's about it, for now.. & i hope that covers enough stuff to justify whatever time anyone spends reading it...


peace,

john

 

Gwendolyn, hi...

i'm going to leave a visitor message for you...

: )

peace,

john

 

Who are these "Andy, Chuck, Royal & Hailey" character's you're talking about TryingAgain???


And just to clear it up, we're on dial up out here and dont spend much time on it.

We've all got common duties to tend to as well as individual projects we're working on which keep us busy enough to get by without spending a great deal of time online.

As an example, I'm currently working on gathering the odds and ends together to set up my Blacksmithing workshop & small scale foundry but the snow hit just after I got the firebricks where I wanted them so that gets set off for a few days till things melt.

A secondary project being the surrounding woods, they've been clearcut then untended for the past 10 years and are basically choking themselves out so I'm taking it upon myself to work through them, clear deadwood and pull all the catsbriar and other vines or cut it back,,, the waste I gather will be going into the charcoal kiln I'll be digging out during the next thaw we get (Sunday perhaps) This will then become a down and dirty form of Terra Preta for the Garden areas once the leaf mulch is added as we dont really have any topsoil in the old farm plots, just burnt down to clay which would need years of tending to become friable soil,,, so I'm just gonna' make my own dirt... :cheers2:

And I know there are many folks interested in coming here right now, but for the time being the infrastructure here is pretty shakey, as an example we need to rent a generator to pump our water or haul it from a local church in big buckets. (As it turns out theres no one around these parts who would bore out and resleeve the cylinder or grind the camshaft on the one I was working on before so it's waiting for a short block motor which is out of our price range a.t.m. or for me to build up a machine shop,,, And then I'll get to figure out if it was the generator or the inverter that was fried on it cuz' it wasn't putting any voltage out the last time I saw it run...)

As far as sleeping quarters are concerned, theres really only the main Cabin and 3 open couches, beyond that it's pretty much a "Bring your tent" situation. And as mentioned money is tight and so is food. Just things to keep in mind. Not trying to say "dont think of coming here" but just letting you know that there are reasons why we aren't exactly rushing to respond when folks say they want to come.

By this Summer we should have the basics established, dependable water from the pump 24-7 and a full 200A electrical service properly wired up, but right now we're really squeezing every last milliamp we can from the 20 amp breaker and 250' of extension cords running it to the house, scraping by but building solid foundations.
Getting some good garden space established will help alot come spring to where we can start to have some veggies and dry goods stockpiled to help feed the extra mouths as we expand.

Then of course comes the lodging issue which we can address as required when the time comes. as an example, I'm currently in a smallish 10x15 toolshed with a woodstove but plan on building in a few 10x12 "Hobbit holes" in the near future once I find a good spot, the shed will most likely become the temporary housing for those who visit and want to stay beyond the week or so they'll be couch surfing untill of course all parties concerned decide if they'll be staying on longer at which point they can maybe build their own structure or buy a pull camper to live in or something?? Many things being played by ear so far, might even build clusters of small sleeping room sized hobbit holes with centrally located cooking hobbit shacks (I'm really fixated on these personally, odd in a way as I'm 6'5" but used to ducking.)

And as far as there being any primary focus here, there really isn't one. Working with Children, survivalist workshops, homesteading workshops, Organic / Permaculture-esque farming, metal & wood shops, Ceramics & Glass studios etc, all on the table in the planning stages as we develop the core of this community, but the core needs to come first and time will tell which comes first past that point. Very bend like a reed mindset around here but it's a matter of needs and necessity for the time being. But down the road is looking real gravylike.

And as TryingAgain stated, it's important we all get more familiar with each other prior to visits, we here need to know more about candidates, what their skillsets are, strongpoints and weaknesses, do we need to have a load of Thorazine ready in case you forget your meds for a day, stuff like that can be important to know. We're not looking for people who are just looking for another place to come sit on their ass and be a leach on the community, Drainbow free zone... We're also not looking for slave labor and there is plenty of time to put towards our own personal projects like me with my foundry / forge and another member and I working on a woodshop where the goal is to do rustic designs of all sorts with vintage-style handtools (Hence i'm sort of rushing on getting the forge/foundry in place, wanted to wait till spring but I cant find a big enough splitting maul in stores around here to make me happy,,, or a Drawknife for that matter too many Yuppies hanging them on the wall in the Den...)
And on a more personal note, I'll say here, if you think theres only 1 way to skin a Cat this aint the place to be.

To be clear however, No little secret pot or Shroom gardens anywhere, no mini-meth lab's or making extracts from entheogens,,, stuff like that dont fly here, could get the land confiscated by the Feds and thats just not an option. VA is one of those 0 tolerance states plain and simple. To clearly state it, no manufacture or cultivation allowed here and if someone decides that sneaking onto the back 40 of the neighbors property to grow something would be a way of avoiding that, keep in mind one thing, we would just kick you out in a heartbeat and torch whatever crop you had going here,,, the neighbors on the other hand,,, well,,, they would just fill you with lead for trespassing plain and simple.
But realisticly speaking theres nothing anyone could do were someone to come with their own private stash tucked away, kept from public view and used in a solitary setting or in small groups of likeminded individuals without waiving their business in front of others or having their habits affect their ability to function plain and simple, any heat from that would simply fall upon the individual were heat to come down. But once we start working with the Childrens groups down the road, there will be background checks and random testing, thats simply a federal requirement of working with kids and such. Hope that clears things up some.

I'll be around. :willy_nilly:

 

I'm down. I would seriously love to be a part of this beautiful experience.

 

6'5"????

i thought it was 6'4 & 7/8ths...

; )

 

Thats 6'4"& 15/16th's to be exact Sir, but who's counting.

Although, I really have never taken my height measurment after hanging on an inversion table for an hour or so,,,

With a little luck we'll have steady running water in the morning provided we bought enough 10-3 wire to reach the pump from the breaker box!! 250' should have us covered but we'll see, by dinner at the latest if I need to splice more in. I know I certainly would hate to ask for anyone to come here visiting or otherwise without as much as a raised tower of water drums feeding to a heat exchanger and firebox of some sort, life is so much better with a hot soak to wrap the day up with. Getting there step by step, might be ready for more curious minds and eager hands to come visit in the next couple weeks or so, expecting an above freezing streak over the next week or so meaning we'll be able to make some progress on straightening up all these loose ends we've been tripping over here as of late.

We'll update as things become more certain but we still have lodging issues to address. It does get really cold at night at times but thats just for the next couple of months or so I hear.

 

Interesting !!!!!! ill be following your progress and cheering for you .

 

Spirit Wynd, My name is Jeff. I'm a veteran of the USAF, and I have a degree in nursing from USC. I've been an RN and a personal trainer for many years. I was raised on a farm in NC, so I have extensive gardening skills. I am a very hard worker and have always been a "deep" thinker and reader. In a few words, let's just say that my life philosophy is the diametric opposite of that espoused on FOX News. I am "into" physical fitness, music, gardening and the inward journey. I also have a good deal of skills in construction, and am considered a "Jack of all trades." I have even done a fair bit of modeling in LA (thought that wouldn't help out in a commune. I am very interested in y'alls proposition. Please write me back, Jeff

 

BTW, jeffblythe@hotmail.com

 

Hey folks, heres another thing to keep in mind, it's great that our project here is developing such a high degree of interest among new members and that you found us through such a great website as Hipforums here, but realisticly speaking, we want to get a good feel for anyone we plan on inviting here first so by all means make 100 or so posts in other threads on topics that interest you as we do review the post histories of prospective visitors and will not openly welcome anyone we haven't developed a good sense of.

Not trying to discourage anyone but I'm sure you can understand. I mean, if a total stranger walked up to your door and wanted to come hang out you would turn them away, and if you wouldn't,,, then your view of humanity seems a bit out of touch and I wish you much luck with avoiding all the Charles Manson types in the world. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but I and others have both tried to say it in a softer manner many times before and we cant be liable for those who wont read the writing on the wall.

To further clarify another point that some folks seem to have glossed right over, Spirit Wynd is no longer here so no need to flood him with PM's. He's a great Guy and I'm glad I had the chance to meet him before his departure, but he is as I and Trying Again have stated before, on another path in life, no longer here, has exited stage right, joined the ranks of the departed, this is an ex-member.

Happy New Year everyone, be safe.

 

Hey everyone, this is Spirit Wynd, yes, I have gone back to re-join Babylon for a while, mainly because when I left to get my things, I hooked up with an old girlfriend of mine, we hung out for a few months before I returned to the commune.
I did many things there, but also learned many things, one of which that I wasn't fully ready to live in a commune. Though I have a commune like spirit, and much to offer, I wasn't (at the time) in a commune state of mind. I wanted more than the commune had to offer, which was a mix of modern and primative living. I couldn't let go of my pc games, electric guitar, vhs/dvd movies, and the like. I do love the outdoors, camping, hiking, practicing primative survival skills, and such, but I wanted both in my life and that wasn't the game plan for the commune, so I clashed a bit... no hard feelings to anyone, everyone there are good people and was glad to met them and get to know them a bit.
I know not all communes are right for everyone, so make sure you do your homework and really evaluate yourself on what you really want before contacting one, but was glad to at least had the chance to check it out. Had I been able to get rid of my stuff prior, things may have worked out differently... however, I'm on a new path, one that I was thinking about before coming back, but if I didn't try, I would always wonder about it and kicked myself for not trying... so this new path is to earn money and save with my girl to eventually buy our own land and do our own thing.
I want to thank Fritz da Cat for taking over the updates and the inquiries from new(and old) people... if I get any new PM's, I'll be sure to refer them to ya, and will check in from time to time to see how you're doing. He's good people, we talked for months before finally meeting, so don't be shy with your questions.
I wish you all well, with prosperity and success in your future.
Peace and blessings to everyone,
Respectfully,
Spirit Wynd

 

I am in the same boat as you Spirit Wynd.

 

hey folks...
i'm on the road up to virginny, as we speak... grabbing a coffee... should be to the farm in the morning....

bought some prospecting tools at a flea market on the way up... just a few earth working hand tools.. shovels, pick, sledge.. pan, prybar, 30 pound steel pestle, rockpin.. we'll start practicing there, 1st..

i have some final work to do on the bus & van.. i may outfit the van more extensively than originally planned, which will take longer, but that's to be decided..

gonna wrap some miles under my wheels before it gets too dark...

buttttt.... things *are* happening : )

talk to 'y soon..

& peace,


john

 

Let me know if you need help with the Bio Char Retort, have made quite a few of them and even have some plans drawn up that are easy to follow.:2thumbsup:

 

@ D.T.D. (Where'd yer' post go??): Slapstick is always amusing around here, dont sweat the small stuff eh'? P.S. Planning on crossing the Pond anytime soon? Be sure to let me know so I can give you directions.

@ Dingo: Cool beans, I've also got a ton of tech books onhand and bookmarked online. But as far as Terra preta, it;s been my experience that when working with fresh organic material the neutral pH of Bio-Char isn't so essential and homemade charcoal with a bunch of potash will work well enough, so if worst comes to worst we'll make due with whats onhand. (The high alkaline level of Ashy Char will break down the Organics faster ,,,) we've got a mid-90's Chevy S-10 in need of a fuel pump which might donate it's engine to the project and leaf springs for crossbows and sheathknives (once the forge is in at least) But in any event, maybe come summer stop in for a visit. Who knows eh'?

@ rollingstoned: Like I said before, if it's what floats your boat, although you may have to sign a no-fault waiver. We do have a gay Dog here to help out if you need help working up to Donkey-Girth.

 

hi sure would like to know more about how I would be able to join and what I could contribute. Time, work, heart,soul and $. Please let me know. Thanks. Joel:sunny:

 

god dammit lol i was kidding. it would be weird for me to not live in a city, i dont think i could do it. or want to.

 

@ Spirit Wynd: So sorry I rolled over a reply to you last night Bro but the cheap whiskey got the better of me and having sent a P.M. stuck in my intoxicated head as a response. Wishing yyou the best in your future endeavors and will be more than willing to pitch a hand in person or at least tech support (if you end up somewhere too freaking cold for my tastes that is. )

@ Joel, first step is as has been stated many times before, hang out on Hip Forums, be an active poster. Heck, contribute if you can, it's a great website with allot of good people and I'm sure Skip would appreciate it.

Basically it works like this, if you want to come here, let us know and we then take the time to review posts made by you or whoever is looking to come over, we will only really bother looking into post histories after someone has been here a while and made a substantial number of posts as I indicated above a number of times, we want to be able to develop a feeling for what you're about, who you are, where your head's at before we invite you into our home. And as stated we do not discriminate, but keep in mind that any personal recreational activites must not bring any heat down on the farm. We run a clean shop, we dont cultivate any sort of illicit substances nor do we condone extracting compounds from entheogens here. But if you befriend some locals and have a sincere interest in exploring the spiritual nature of them on your own time and off of this parcel of land in way's which wont have a negative impact on your ability to perform your duties around here (Which become easier and fewer as the infrastructure develops and we slowly grow in number), no one can prevent you from doing that, just use common sense and caution and above all remember,,, no heat on this farm.

Sometime today I think, I'm going to cull through my posts with all the responses as to "What do I need to do to come there" and add them to one of my first posts in the thread. It would be nice if folks who wanted to come would take the time to read through the 22 pages of posts so far, but I know thats an unrealistic expectation of most folks. :cheers2:

@ Rolling: Yea' kinda figured. lol But we really do have that Gay Dog if you ever change your mind.

And I can understand the idea of choosing to live this way as seeming a bit crazy to you and many others. I grew up and lived in Chicago for about 34 years and didn't become truly discontent with that lifestyle till I was in my mid 20's, but even before then I had a strong interest in Survivalism, homesteading and D.I.Y. stuff. Seriously, this aint' for everyone.

Well I think that covers it all for now, Sun's coming up and it's time to move a few 4x8 trailerfulls of logs up here before the Clay road down to the wood field melts and turns to soup. (5 acre Clearcut patch of odds and ends)

 

Fuck sarah palin, Fuck john mccain, and FUCK EVERYONE who voted for them !! Goddamn the bigots, Goddamn the racists and GODDAMN the fascist republicans !! The rights of the willfully ignorant DO NOT supersede the rights of the enlightened. I seek community with people who choose consciousness and whom decry self-deception. I'm finding it more and more difficult to understand the rationale of "democrats" who are too damn cowardly to speak TRUTH to power. I'm so close to being done with American society at large. And don't even get me started on self-loathing, shame-filled, "christian" gay republicans. ...just want to roll a doobie and get back on my tractor, plow the Green Earth and share a healthy meal and a good conversation with people who know what love really is.

 

Well, everyone here has their own personal political views, we are neither collectively Democrap or Republicant but could be either individually, they both have their own appealing carrots on sticks they wave from time to time. I'm just a good ole' fashoned Anarchist at heart, of course most Sheeple confuse that with meaning some sort of Sociopath for some reason, guess they just cant envision life without a Shepard over their backs??