Arthur (my housemate, partner, co-conspirator) has wisely suggested that we take a look at the ecovillages and other intentional communities currently being built. Thanks to the Global Ecovillage Network, I’ve got a directory to start with.
This morning I looked at White Hawk Ecovillage near Ithaca, NY. Their plan is to have 30 families on the 120 acres of their land, sharing resources and building the very thing I’ve been envisioning for a while. Here’s what I immediately like about the community:
- They already have several people involved, of various ages, including children
- They embrace principles of green building, permaculture, community self-reliance and learning
- The community is vegetarian (they aren’t raising animals for meat) and have a lot of space to work with
- The photos of the land are just gorgeous
- The village is for pedestrians – they have a separate lot for vehicles. (yay!)
- The community plan looks much like the plan that Art and I created last year while traveling in Europe (and visiting ecovillages in Italy):
And here are my immediate concerns:
- The lot least is $40K-$50K per ‘family’ unit, and I’m not certain what schedule they require
- The structure is more “co-housing” than what I think I desire. Why have 30 kitchens that won’t get used that often? I am familiar with co-housing communities where people keep to themselves a lot and don’t end up sharing resources as much as I think we could. I like the model at Damanhur, where each family “pod” shares living space, and there are about 20 adults in each “pod”
- It’s in Ithaca, NY. In all my scheming and planning, I’ve always thought of the Pacific NW as the place to be. I crave more water, more green.
Be sure to read their mission statement. It’s lovely and I’m happy to have stumbled upon their community.
Maybe its just the decade and a half of Colorado living, but I can’t relate to Ithaca as being short on water or green…. Great blog, yay!
Well, just a couple of comments on White Hawk from someone who is already living there…
First, I should probably mention that we’re not strictly vegetarian. We are trying to encourage people to do gardening and raise their own food, but we don’t set any kind of restrictions on diet for residents.
Second, I can explain a bit about the kitchens. We are building incrementally, so that people who want to move right away can do so; many other communities are structured to wait for a certain “critical mass” of people to join before they break ground, and for some this just doesn’t work out — they need to move *promptly* for a job or because their old home is being sold, and they don’t want to be stuck in limbo with a big deposit made on something that may take years to materialize.
But the flip side of this is that we don’t have the common facilities (like the common house) constructed yet, so people need kitchens. Instead, we are sharing some resources between houses. I have a root cellar big enough for several homes; one neighbor has a washer and dryer that they share; another has a garden shed where I keep my tools. This way we immediately get some resource sharing, and can plan for more later, when the washer and dryer and can move to a common laundry room and storage facility.
Finally, I should tell you about water. We’ve got two streams on our property. The smaller one is somewhat seasonal and (as far as I can tell) unnamed; the larger one is the upper part of Buttermilk Creek that leads into Buttermilk Falls, one of the dozens of local waterfalls. We also have lots of green on our property, between the fields of grass and wildflowers, the apple-tree-lined property boundaries, and the roughly 10 acre maple grove where we hope to make syrup. We will definitely be adding more over time, as part of our developing site permaculture plan.
Good luck with your Ecovillage search… it’s definitely a great move in these uncertain times.