What We are Looking for in a Community

Of course, this trip isn't all about doing touristy stuff... we actually do need to find a place to live at some point.  We have based our list of potential communities on the directory published by the Fellowship for Intentional Community (http://www.ic.org).  As of this writing, the directory contains 1,962 communities in the United States.  Naturally, not all of these communities fit what we are looking for.  Some are still just an idea in someone's head, in what they call the "forming" stage.  Others are dedicated to some specific common trait among the members, such as a particular religious faith or urban house-shares (called co-housings).

What we have been seeking is a piece of farmland in a somewhat rural area, but still close enough (no more than an hour drive) from a town with some services.  It doesn't have to be as big as, say, Portland, but hopefully large enough to have a small natural foods store.  We are looking for a place where everyone has their own home (not everyone living together in one big house), but with a common facility to allow shared dinners and a common "hang out" space.  We'd prefer that everyone garden together, but individual plots would be okay as well.  The main point of it all is to live closely with other like-minded people to build community.  There should be sharing of resources like tools, and sharing of labor for projects.

Our criteria when searching the FIC directory includes:

• Must be open to visitors and open to new members
• Does not use the co-housing model (meaning everyone has their own home instead of living in one big house)
• Does not have an identified leader (no cults, please)
• Does not have a leadership 'core group' (we believe the community members should all equally have input on and control what goes on, not some board of directors - we saw enough horror stories with Florida homeowner's association boards)
• No common shared spiritual practices (see cult, above)
• Decisions are made by consensus or democratic processes
• Alcohol is allowed (we would like to brew and possibly sell beer/wine/mead)

When you put in all of those criteria, the list of 1,962 shrinks dramatically.  I don't think we're being too picky - after all, we have to live in this place day in-day out.  When we set out on this trip, we thought there would at least be a few dozen of these places to see.  However, after reading and researching more information about each community that fit the above criteria, we further reduced it down to a total of three in Washington, none in Oregon and one in California.  Yikes!

You can read our previous entry about one of the three in Washington, Finney Farm.  Another Washington community, River Farm, never responded to our request to visit.  A third community we accidentally missed (oops!...)  We had been working from the paper printed edition of the directory and only recently switched to the online directory, which is more up-to-date.  We didn't find out about the third community in Washington until we were in southern Oregon, when it was too late to go back.

As I mentioned, we found none in Oregon that met our criteria.  Through some misleading information in the directory, we included Lost Valley Educational Center, located near Eugene, Oregon, in our tour, although it does not meet what we are looking for.  More information on that in the next post!