I spent this afternoon at an orientation session at Whole Village,
a very successful 25-person, 200-acre Intentional Community and
Eco-Village about a half hour drive from where I live North-West of
Toronto. It was a blustery, rainy day but the welcome that I and ten
others received from our hosts was warm and gracious. I'd like to thank
especially Brenda Dolling, who painstakingly and candidly explained the
principles, processes, and highs and lows of eco-village living.
You
always learn more from seeing and doing than from research and reading,
and I learned an enormous amount. Here's what I learned in particular:
- A lot of people in Intentional Community really 'get' sustainability. The people I met were extremely well-read and, thanks I suspect to the Internet, well-informed and well
connected. They know about the organic/local food trade-offs, more
about the challenges of permaculture, bioregionalism and biodynamic
agriculture than I could ever hope to know, and about how close to
self-sufficiency and sustainability an eco-community can reasonably
hope to get in our modern economy and society.
- What this meant to me: This
was hugely encouraging -- I felt immediately as if I were among
friends, people I hope to spend more time with in the future.
- Intentional Community is a hard sell. Diana Leafe Christian's research suggests the average IC only has about 11 members, and the failure rate is phenomenal. Half of the total IC's
(planned and under development) are still at the idea stage, and most
of them will never get past that stage. To even contemplate joining an
IC you have to have three things: (a) a shared vision and shared
principles with others in, or aspiring to start, an IC, (b) the freedom
to pull up stakes and move to where the IC is (which is probably not
close to most workplaces) and (c) the resources (money and/or time) to
invest in becoming a full member and participant in the work on an IC.
How many of us have that? One person I spoke to compared it to joining
a monastery. It's a big and complicated change. Because of this,
despite the success of Whole Village, I suspect I would not have much
difficulty getting accepted -- there are a few memberships available,
rather than the waiting list I'd expected. But once you've bought in,
you might find it difficult to find someone to buy your membership if
you change your mind or if circumstances force you to move.
- What this meant to me: Until I know for sure where I belong, I probably won't invest in an IC.
- Intentional Community, done right, is affordable and responsible. The
members of Whole Village did two things very well: They did not start
until they had a core group of people (three women with farming
backgrounds and three men with carpentry or other useful construction
backgrounds) to build, rather than buy, much of what they needed. And,
they paced themselves and used connections, frugality and reciprocity
to acquire much of what they needed at less than market cost. They did
this, to their credit, without compromising on quality, sustainability,
or principles:
everything there is locally-made, natural/organic, free of toxins and
pollutants, energy-conserving and durable. You can buy a small unit
(close to 1000 s.f.) and a share in the 6000 s.f. common areas and huge
acreage, giving you a much larger 'effective' living space than the
average single family dwelling in the ex-urbs of Toronto, for a
fraction the cost. What's more, food grown on the premises, and shared
labour, save you a fortune and hours of time every week compared to
owning your own nuclear-family home.
- What this meant to me:
After hearing about some ICs that are priced out of reach of most
people, I was very relieved to hear that some ICs are very reasonably
priced. For me, this is no longer a pipe-dream.
- Skill mismatches are a chronic problem with Intentional Communities.
Like most non-urban ICs, Whole Village is, commercially, a farm. What
such communities need, therefore, are people who know about farming,
about maintenance and construction, and people with the time and
enthusiasm to do this hard physical work. What such communities tend to
attract, by contrast, are
idealists, thinkers, writers, white-collar office and technology people
looking for life closer to the land, but not very good at it, and
people who are too busy (with their wage slave office jobs, and
commuting to them) to learn and help out with what needs to be done. I
suspect this is probably the largest reason why most ICs, even
successful ones, have so few members.
- What this meant to me:
I know nothing about farming, gardening or construction, and I'm pretty
useless with my hands. And my job keeps me so busy I have neither time
nor energy for pitching in with the hard labour. What is really needed
for ICs, and where I might be able to help, is mechanisms for creating
Natural Enterprises in ICs, so that members can make a viable living
right there, in ways other than farming, maintenance and construction,
without the need to commute or work long hours. Until then, I have to
confess I'm not very useful to an IC, and I know I'd feel badly about
not contributing my fair share. What's worse, the commute would kill
me. As determined as I am to become part of an IC, now is evidently not
the time. Now I need to decide where I belong in the meantime.
- Communal living requires a lot of compromise and adaptability, and some passion for living simply.
I was already aware that most ICs have had to develop, and teach their
members, the art of consensus-building and conflict resolution. I
wasn't aware of how difficult it must be to move into a place where
most of the area is communally owned and used for what the majority
want to use it for, and decorated the way they want it decorated.
Inevitably, this compromise leads to a fairly utilitarian and
'institutional' look to the common areas. Like most homeowners I'm used
to being able to decide exactly how to use and decorate 'my' space. In
an IC, your personal space is pretty small, and because you're at close
quarters and have a responsibility to the others in the community, you
don't really have that much leeway on how it's decorated either. The
apartment-dwellers at the orientation session didn't seem phased by
this, because they're probably used to it. For single-family homeowners
this would take some getting used to. It helps therefore to keep in
mind that this is probably the most painless way to achieve a radical
reduction in your personal ecological footprint, and to dramatically
simplify your life. There simply isn't room for most of your stuff, and
that's probably a good thing.
- What this meant to me: The idealist in me envisions something
that I can never hope or expect to find in a 'real' IC, which is of
necessity a communal invention, a compromise, a consensus. How much of
my ideal am I prepared to give up to be part of such a 'reality'? I
guess I will find out.
- Farms are not 'natural' places, are not particularly attractive, and require huge amounts of land.
The farmers I know have been quick to tell environmentalists this, but
for many it takes a while to sink in. I am always surprised at how
shabby farms look, how many chemicals most of them use, how much
natural habitat of wild species they destroy. Brenda has the two-volume
set on forest permaculture called Edible Forest Gardens,
from my publisher Chelsea Green, which is perhaps as close as we can
get to a 'natural' farm, at least in temperate climates. Nevertheless,
I somehow expect to see a lot of forested land in ICs, and frequent
glimpses of wild animals, and I am usually disappointed. The cleared
farmland in Whole Village takes up much of the 200 acres, both for
edible plants and, even more substantially, for feed crops and pasture for the village's farm animals (dairy cattle, chickens for eggs, sheep for wool).
- What this meant to me:
The vegetable gardens and fruit groves at Whole Village provide enough
for 50 vegetarian families, far more than live there, so that some
revenue can be achieved at small additional cost to defray other
expenses, and to attract visitors to the IC who might become members or
at least learn more about what ICs have to offer. I am not sure whether
this is perhaps too high a price to pay. I would hope that an IC could
operate with most of its land in wilderness, open and inviting to wild
creatures. That would require it to be subsistence, and to do without
pasture and animal feed crops, and hence, without farm animals. So if I
believe this, it behooves me to do without the products of farm
animals. I've resolved therefore to go the next step, from vegetarian
to vegan. It's the least I can do for wilderness.
- Canada is cold, most of the year, when you're working outdoors.
My recent visits to Belize (wonderfully warm, but soon to become
another failed state struggling nation), Australia (warm in the more
tropical parts, but already environmentally challenged and so very far
away), and New Zealand (delightful, lovely and full of smart,
knowledgeable people, but almost as cold as Canada) have persuaded me
that the country that I have called home for almost all of my life is,
perhaps, not where I or any other human was really meant to live. Whole
Village has invested an enormous amount of money and energy just to
keep its indoors comfortably warm -- geothermal, solar and masonry wood
furnaces. They have done wonderful work, but still, as anywhere in
Canada, it means that much of the year you have to retreat indoors.
This is not natural, not healthy, not entirely sustainable.
- What this meant to me: When I retire, I will live someplace warmer, someplace where I can be outside almost all the time.
So
I will be revisiting Whole Village, to learn more and help out and
build new friendships as my time permits. But I will probably not be
joining as a member. More likely, when I retire, I'll be joining a
vegan IC in a warmer nation, probably one in an early stage so I can
have a hand in co-designing it, while striving for radical simplicity
and zero footprint. In the meantime? I haven't the faintest idea.
If
you have been looking for a way to live lighter on the land, find a
community of people with whom you share values and purpose, live more
responsibly and sustainably and self-sufficiently, the Intentional
Community model may be for you. There is a global list of ICs to contact, visit and explore, and books
about how to create your own. One of the residents of Whole Village,
Shane, spent much of the last two years visiting and documenting
eco-villages across North America in his very thorough eco-tour blog.
If
you're a regular reader of this blog, or if you've ever lived in an IC,
I'd be interested in knowing: Why wouldn't you consider living in an
Intentional Community? And what would it take to make you reconsider?
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MADE IN CANADA
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