Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[firekeeper@netscape.net]

Hehe

 

I have the rare honor of being named after a commune, the Oneida commune was an early industrial age effort. It was a "Commune" the property being held communally, that is, plus a rather adventurous idea about group marriages practices, but if I remember right the fellow that started it was actually rather paternalistic.  Intentional Community is simply that, a community based on an intentional group.  That is why the list contain such variety, since the intention is defined by the community.  I really give the hippies a lot of credit actually sonce they walked off and started practicing much of what we here are now discussing, organic, market farming, Co-ops, No-Till.  90% of these people burnt out and blew away in the face of reality, but the other 10% just figured out how to make a living.  Down Hill Farms was a commune that my family associated with,  They didn't do much more than kitchen gardening towards the end but made their living off small cottage industries like making chimes and spinner to sell to the California kids when the pot harvest came in.

 

What was signeficant about the 60s and 70s portion of that movement was that they held onto and amplified on the idea of localism.  It may be just a remarketed version of the way things were done before Autos and long distance transportation for every bite of food but if people need to have such things romantisized to get back to something practical.... <shrug>  Communes and other ICs are still being used to ferment counter-cultural revolutions.  The big trend right now is simply the idea of having communities where the neigbors know each other and communities that have a zero carbon emmision output (not that they don't produce carbon emmissions but that theyalso are self-sustaining enough to also translate that same amount of carbon back into a more sequestered form.  Although many of these are quite urban or suburban, they still warrant the attention of this list or, like myself, may show up on this list, because they will often be very invested in urban greenways and urban market gardening and will be extreemly commited to buying very local foods, which means that these people will actively seek out relationships with Market gardeners, U-Pick farms and Co-ops.

 

Not only am I and several of my congregation interested in starting an IC of some sort, or have been previous members of one, (not religion-based just by co-incidence of being one of those rather liberal sorts of churches that has a lot of hippy members) we are also currently involved in building a Community garden for our congregants and neigbors.  Additionally we are working to bring a co-op to our neigborhood, perhaps even a farmers market to work out of our building.

 

Well, that's my 2 cents

 

Pego