Intentional Community Tour Days Twelve and Thirteen
We started the morning with breakfast and a longer tour at Trillium Hollow Cohousing Community (https://trilliumhollow.weebly.com/). I had to sit out most of the tour for work reasons, but everyone else got to see some of the individual units and meet more of the residents.
Next up we took a detour off our planned route to look at the Laurelwood Academy property in Gaston Oregon. This was one of my dream properties in my search to purchase somewhere to build a community three years ago. The buyers then got it for a steal, and don’t appear to have done much of anything with it. I met one of the previous residents and current neighbors and intend to follow up with him and try to track down the buyers to see if they would be interested in selling it.
We proceeded to Labishire Homestead Commons (http://labishire.weebly.com/) in Salem Oregon. Our host there runs a self sufficient homestead frequently populated with wwoofers and other travelers, with an eye toward finding more permanent residents to build a persistent community. We got to see his many garden and animal efforts, and shared a meal. We cooked mostly groceries we brought, and he contributed pasta and sauce and vegetables, fresh and canned from his gardens. He invited us to spend the night, so we did.
The next morning we made our way to CoHo Ecovillage (http://www.cohoecovillage.org/) in Corvallis Oregon for a very quick tour. Unfortunately due to work and school commitments only one of us got to take it, so I hope to learn more from them later.
Our next stop was at Alpha Farm Cooperative (https://www.ic.org/directory/alpha-farm/) in Deadwood Oregon. Their community of currently 10 people grows in the summer and shrinks in the winter as the farm needs dictate. We had a tour of their various private and common buildings and most of their food production spaces. The most surprising aspect here is that the property is owned by the corporation of which the longest term residents are members, controlled by them after the passing of the community’s founder. They vote in new members based on participation and contribution to the community, without a financial buy-in component, which stands out as relatively unique among non-secretive communities. Another interesting feature was their community business which is as a USPS rural route contractor; about half the residents are approved as drivers and take turns to deliver mail across the local towns each day. We got to meet about half of their current residents and had a long conversation with a few. We also saw some samples of their 50 years of recorded-on-paper meeting minutes, providing insight into the history of the community.
We ended up at a hotel in Eugene Oregon for the night, with a stop nearby planned for the morning.