escape america to a COMMUNE!

sooo yeah..seems as though all the forums have been really dead lately...hello everyone

 

hello!

good luck with your project. you seem very enthusiastic and i hope your scheme works out. I would LOVE to escape to CANADA so maybe someday I'll join you.

peace out!@

 

your very welcome to...as long as you bring cake

 

....And i quote "A sample day may go something like this:

600 am: Wake up, Tend to the animals needing milking

630am: Eat breakfast

700am: Make sure all animals have enough food and water.

800am: Continue work on new dwellings

1200pm:Lunch

200pm: Work more on dwelings

600pm: Stop working for the day for supper (supper will be atended by all the members of the commune)

???pm: Go to sleep"

To me it sounds like a con (no offence) plus it also sounds like being in the army.

 

hey, I was really really tired when I slapped that site together...sorry it isn't more creative

the construction would only take place mostly in the spring and summer..when a;ll the buildings are complete we would prety much just have to water all the plants and live our lives.

 

Interesting thread.

The poster that mentioned the VA loan.... is no good in Canada. A US VA Loan has to be used to purchase US property only. I would have used mine here in Canada 8 years ago if I could.

Az

 

Actually, to me it sounds like an overly lax, poorly planned and ultimately naive scheduale, and after working both in agriculture and sustainable building I can without a doubt say that making a go at self-sustained communal life is very much indeed like the army(matter of fact I spent a bit of time doing that too), it requires hard work and dicipline, on top of knowledge and experience or the whole thing becomes a well intentioned flop!

I'm going to give the OP a reality check (and by no means is it my intention to offend) if you're serious about starting a comune from scratch it's not something you can do by simply buying land with other well meaning folks and rolling up your sleeves(you certainly won't get by with no Canadian Tire solar panels ). Your going to need to look at this from all angles and be willing to commit to some serious self-education and figure out a realistic means of the initial investment, and supporting yourself while you get the project up and running.

Having a self-sustaining homestead(not just for myself, but for the family I one day hope to have), and possibly even a community/sustainability learning centre, is a dream of mine aswell. So instead of telling you what you need to do (because I don't know what aplicable experience/knowledge you have) I'm just going to share with you my experiences thus far and a rough plan:

Step one for me was deciding on a way that I could provide for myself not just a profession that would allow me to afford this dream but one which I would enjoy and would be of use when the time came to make the dream happen. I dropped a good wad of cash to take a 5 month Sustainable Building Design and Construction program. During that time I touched on, but by no means mastered, things like strawbale construction, renewable energy systems, grey-water treatment, rammed earth floors, passive solar design, radiant floor heating, the list goes on, and on, and on. The program was a bit of a rude awakening, not only was I going to need further training and specialising within the industry to make a decent living, but I realised my own romantic vision of sustainable comunal life was grossly over-simplified.

Step two is to come to turns with the required mantra of "education, education, education", and realising it doesn't come cheap. By September Im hoping I can afford the better part of a college education because I'm going to take a 2 year carpentry program which focusses on traditional carpentry. Not the modern day suburbia residential building shit they teach carpentry aprentices but the type our ancestors used to pioneer this land with what was at hand in a time when building derived from necesity and purpose(and not monitary value). The skill set I'll walk away from the program with will allow me the freedom to enter into the building work I'd like to do and make some decent cash too! Enough that I'll be able to, from time to time, pursue less lucritive learning/job oportunities like a permaculture internship, community development projects or whatever else I feel I need to know to properly manage my land and be a compitent leader/team member within a successful, wholistic community.

Although land is on my mind, and I hope I'll be able to call a respectable piece of it my own before I'm 30 I don't think it's a logical start point nor is searching out partners for the project. I think only through education and imersing yourself in the present sustainability/comunal living culture will you give yourself the skills and come across the like-minded people needed to make your dream possible.

 

Yes I was sure that a commune would require hard work, andf I am fully aware of everything that needs to be done. I have been planning what would need to be done for a little while. I do not intend to be self sustained, but mostly self sustained would be about right. everyone has got to stop being so serious nothing will ever get done if we are too serious.

 

And I'm saying I've been DEVOTING my life to this very same notion for the past 4 years and have learned, often the hard way, that hard work alone is not enough, you need 'the skills to pay the bills' as they say. I'm entirely serious about this, and nature has taught me if you arn't entirely serious and knowledgeable about it then it will beat you around something awful.

How many trees have you felled, limbed, dragged, scribed, notched, hoisted, stacked and chinked? How much lumber have you milled, windows have you fitted, doors have you hung? Foundation? Roof structure? Do you honestly think you can just show up in the bush, after reading a few books and presto: log cabins just because you 'worked hard'? It takes years of experience to take on a project of that magnitude, I certainly couldn't pull it off and I've done, to some degree, most of the forementioned activities.

and if this is your notion of what it takes to put food on the table:

I give you a month before your crawling back into civilisation because of malnutrition and exhaustion. Farm and pioneering work means you'll want to be eating double what your used to so you can keep truckin'. Which will mean having an extensive knowledge and experience with the diverse manners and intricate timings of nursing, planting, tending and harvesting from spring thaw to winter frost to keep a steady, nutritious diet available. Familliar with digging and bracing a cold cellar? As if all that wern't enough you're delusional enough to think you can also tend to livestock?(*ahem* barn?) As for the winter are you knowledgeable about canning and preserving? How about hunting, skinning and quartering, game?

I'm not saying all these things can't be done, on the contrary, if you know what your doing and are willing to intigrate some modern day sustainable technology to ease the workload I'm sure it's a very liberating experience. But trying it all out at once, dry run, for the first time, with relative strangers(likely inexperienced too): Suicide. An old addage that's been rammed into my head by a few employers "work smart, not hard".

To get by in the bush you have to be either incredibly knowledgable and well seasoned or filthy rich, or a combination thereof, so which one are you?

Again, not trying to cut you up, I just think your way over your head on this. If you are serious about all this though I can point you in the direction of some really wicked resources, internship oportunities and workshops you might want to look into. Unless of course you want to prove me wrong and tell me how it is you know how to do all these things(and not just in theory, that shit doesn't exist in the bush).

 

yovo, you're such an optimist!

ps, i'm way too lazy and into creature comforts to ever go entirely back to the earth. well, if civilization collapsed, i might have some motivation, but i dont think that's going to happen for at least 6 more years.

this still has me laughing.

pps, dreams create reality. nothing would ever happen unless someone thought of it first. maybe cob or strawbale would be more realistic than log homes.

 

haha, I just went back and read what I said, maybe I was being a little harsh

and ya, strawbale would be a better option than log homes

 

Yes you are being very harsh, and over asumeing.

We intend on useing timbers(i guess it's what you call them) wood from the lumber store.

I do not intend on BAM living in the wooods one day, this will take alot of work and time. I am aware.

I live on a farm, I know about livestock, I know about canning, I know about growing things.

Not everyone lives in the city and knows nearly nothing about nature.

I would also like to say thank you though. Would you mind writing something like that for my webpage, something like "reality check" for communes...or whatever you would call it.

 

rawr.

*humps yovo's leg*

 

read yovo's post and at first thought that he was dissing the thread but he does make sense .a lot of things i take for granted made me realize that ,yes ,a lot of people would be clueless .......reminds me of the back to basics,back to the land throves that moved in this area in the early 80s .they had the resolve and some actually did learn quite well but a lot moved right back to the city with their city jobs ..........this is just one point ..first off ,get and learn to use a chain saw safely ,there are courses but experience is the best teacher ..or better yet try to amass a group of people that have all the basic skills ..if you were raised on a farm,chances are that you already have a lot of the skills needed ..........but if you plan on building a log cabin do not buy timbers from the store ....damned thing will cost you a fortune ..lol.......by the way ,in lumber ,a timber is a long piece of wood that is a minimum thickness and width of 5 inches ,planned or unplanned

 

oh .and by the way .i built my own log home .....don't need to be an einstein to build one

 

oh well timbers are not what i was thinking...I am thinking 2X4 frame, and "press board" walls and such.

as for building the thing. My father was a capenter for 5 years...I'm pretty sure he would be able to help.

 

if you are moving north .frame your cabin or house with a minimum 2 X 6 ...you will need the space for insulation ........2 X 4 wall is just a waste of heat and good lumber

 

also frame it nineteen on center rather than 15 or 16 on center, cheaper to insulate, less wood and thicker walls etc like tuatara said,,,,.... n nope it dont take a brain surgeon to build a cabin,,, we have dunnit here

but on the same note i hafta say that anyone that just jumps on board this on the mere notion that this is anything close something legit n pays money is a bloody fool...atleast until ya actually go up there n see n learn for yourself.... i am by no means saying youngbuck here aint got good intentions or anything else just that precautions need to be taken so as not to be taken in any situation,,, as well many have wonderful intentions n understand aspects of communal life yet it does not work out the way it was intended originally n then everyone is scuse me but fukked in the end... as ai said,, not intended to be harsh or anything just got to look at things realistically from the start instead of with nothing but high hopes n big dreams,,,, just leads to heartbreak in the end otherwise...
luv~n~lite

 

Yes I have come to see the whole "give me money" thing to be a bit odd to some. so I have decided to find another way to get the money.

but I still need people, I almost have enough people willing to come.

thanks for all the lumber tips everyone

 

i am willing