Casa Chaos stuff
Mar. 15th, 2006 03:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelidonI've been spending very little time online lately, so am completely behind...well, just about everything ;> Trying to at least keep up with commitments, I just wrote up a long-promised intro for a group I was asked to join as a resource which was formed around building intentional community, co-housing, etc. It occurred to me that at least a few of you might be interested in some of this, so I'll repost it here. And heck, posting something helps me feel a little less out of touch with you all! If I owe you email, please feel free to bug me :>
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A asked for an intro, so here goes...
My partner and I have set up and lived in one or another form of intentional community and/or group housing for the last 20 years or
so, across three states -- kind of funny for two people who were both only children! The composition and size of our households and
"extended family" changes over the years, but we do seen to "flock," with members of an extended social group of perhaps 40-80 people
periodically dispersing and clumping again, with a core group of perhaps 15-30 who have ended up sharing housing and living
arrangements with each other more often than not. Right now, six of us (my partner, myself and our son, and three housemates) live here,
on 20 acres in west-central New Hampshire -- five of us moved up together from Maryland a few years ago, and another long-time former
housemate just moved up from Maryland last Fall -- and she just bought her own place a bicycle-ride away into which she'll move in
June. Six other close friends and family members have all moved into the local area over the last two years, and more seem to be on the
way, so we do seem to be "flocking" again...
We've been setting up our housing and land in as sustainable and self-sufficient a model as we can arrange, as time and money allow.
One of our goals has been to be able to offer our land and space for community events, gatherings and retreats, and so far we're
up to handling long-weekend events of 25-30 people. This year I'll be building bunks and putting a wood stove into the horse barn, which
should make it possible for us to host 15+ more people comfortably there during the colder months (we've already had many folks camping
up in the paddock during the warmer parts of the year). I put a composting toilet in the tack room last year, and the barn has
electricity and hand-pump water, so aside from the lack of shower facilities (and solar showers are a possibility), it should be a very
comfortable space. I just added a room (with root cellar underneath) onto the front of the main house, part of which will be set up to
host several guests, and over the next two years, I'll be building a 4-season treehouse, as well as a couple of yurts and/or
timber cabins at various spots on the land. I pulled out the oil boiler in the main house this past fall and installed an internal
wood-fired boiler and heat storage tank which supplies all of our heat, and I've got plans to put a microhydro system in the largest
stream, but the amount of trenching I have to do to make it a reliable 4-season system means that's probably a multi-year project.
PV and hot-water solar systems are a definite possibility, either for the main house or the cabins, and longer-term, I would love to build
a big off-grid meeting/dorm-space pole barn out back using timbers from our land. Expanded raised beds for are in the works over the
course of the next three years, and there's a 28-acre parcel behind us that I've got my eye on, in part because it was logged out about
15 years ago, so unlike our thickly-wooded land, it would take a lot less work to be pastured and/or farmed.
Anyway, we've had wonderful experiences with group-house life and the communities of which we've been a part, I think mainly because we've
had the right people involved. I've spent a lot of time thinking about what makes the "right people," those who can live successfully
in a healthy and harmonious intentional community, but that's a whole 'nother topic. Ideally, you get to know people well before you share living
space, and that's how it's usually worked with us, but even in the couple of cases where we've taken in "strays," we've lucked out (or had good
instincts), so that everyone with whom we've ended up sharing living space has proved very compatible over the years, in most cases, even
where we're now separated by many miles, we're as much "family" as friends. In terms of day to day living, child-rearing, sharing the
expenses, resources, work (and play), and now, dealing with health issues in the household, it's hard for me to even begin to express
how important and valuable living in a close-knit community has been.
One issue we haven't had to deal with is community property ownership (other than going in together for household purchases like
appliances, along with sharing bills, food shopping, cooking, etc). That has kept things much simpler, I have to say. We started out
originally sharing rental expenses, and then my partner and I bought the group house in Maryland we shared for 10 years before moving to
New Hampshire. That may change if we do manage to purchase the adjacent lot (there are a whole range of possibilities for how to
organize that), so I'm interested in the successful legal and practical arrangements others have made around community property
ownership.
-------
A asked for an intro, so here goes...
My partner and I have set up and lived in one or another form of intentional community and/or group housing for the last 20 years or
so, across three states -- kind of funny for two people who were both only children! The composition and size of our households and
"extended family" changes over the years, but we do seen to "flock," with members of an extended social group of perhaps 40-80 people
periodically dispersing and clumping again, with a core group of perhaps 15-30 who have ended up sharing housing and living
arrangements with each other more often than not. Right now, six of us (my partner, myself and our son, and three housemates) live here,
on 20 acres in west-central New Hampshire -- five of us moved up together from Maryland a few years ago, and another long-time former
housemate just moved up from Maryland last Fall -- and she just bought her own place a bicycle-ride away into which she'll move in
June. Six other close friends and family members have all moved into the local area over the last two years, and more seem to be on the
way, so we do seem to be "flocking" again...
We've been setting up our housing and land in as sustainable and self-sufficient a model as we can arrange, as time and money allow.
One of our goals has been to be able to offer our land and space for community events, gatherings and retreats, and so far we're
up to handling long-weekend events of 25-30 people. This year I'll be building bunks and putting a wood stove into the horse barn, which
should make it possible for us to host 15+ more people comfortably there during the colder months (we've already had many folks camping
up in the paddock during the warmer parts of the year). I put a composting toilet in the tack room last year, and the barn has
electricity and hand-pump water, so aside from the lack of shower facilities (and solar showers are a possibility), it should be a very
comfortable space. I just added a room (with root cellar underneath) onto the front of the main house, part of which will be set up to
host several guests, and over the next two years, I'll be building a 4-season treehouse, as well as a couple of yurts and/or
timber cabins at various spots on the land. I pulled out the oil boiler in the main house this past fall and installed an internal
wood-fired boiler and heat storage tank which supplies all of our heat, and I've got plans to put a microhydro system in the largest
stream, but the amount of trenching I have to do to make it a reliable 4-season system means that's probably a multi-year project.
PV and hot-water solar systems are a definite possibility, either for the main house or the cabins, and longer-term, I would love to build
a big off-grid meeting/dorm-space pole barn out back using timbers from our land. Expanded raised beds for are in the works over the
course of the next three years, and there's a 28-acre parcel behind us that I've got my eye on, in part because it was logged out about
15 years ago, so unlike our thickly-wooded land, it would take a lot less work to be pastured and/or farmed.
Anyway, we've had wonderful experiences with group-house life and the communities of which we've been a part, I think mainly because we've
had the right people involved. I've spent a lot of time thinking about what makes the "right people," those who can live successfully
in a healthy and harmonious intentional community, but that's a whole 'nother topic. Ideally, you get to know people well before you share living
space, and that's how it's usually worked with us, but even in the couple of cases where we've taken in "strays," we've lucked out (or had good
instincts), so that everyone with whom we've ended up sharing living space has proved very compatible over the years, in most cases, even
where we're now separated by many miles, we're as much "family" as friends. In terms of day to day living, child-rearing, sharing the
expenses, resources, work (and play), and now, dealing with health issues in the household, it's hard for me to even begin to express
how important and valuable living in a close-knit community has been.
One issue we haven't had to deal with is community property ownership (other than going in together for household purchases like
appliances, along with sharing bills, food shopping, cooking, etc). That has kept things much simpler, I have to say. We started out
originally sharing rental expenses, and then my partner and I bought the group house in Maryland we shared for 10 years before moving to
New Hampshire. That may change if we do manage to purchase the adjacent lot (there are a whole range of possibilities for how to
organize that), so I'm interested in the successful legal and practical arrangements others have made around community property
ownership.
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Date: 2006-03-15 09:48 pm (UTC)