Because it Takes a Whole Village
Many Farms
We need to start thinking about is how are we going to be able to sell all the produce people are going to be growing on the 70 homesteads and on the Mini Farms and in the Vegan Village as well as the 300 acre Community Farm.What comes to mind is to have a natural foods store in town. Village Foods can be anything we might want it to be. This will allow us to cut out the middle dog and sell directly to the consumer. That will allow us to create a positive and productive presence in the local community of Willits which does have enough of a population base that we will be able to serve the public and support a lot of people in the process. Better food is worth more as you should well know. And that will allow a lot of folks to make a good living off their 2 acre farmsites alone.
Job Creation
This will also create more jobs that would just not be there otherwise. And that will add another important element to our Sustainable Micro Economy which works by recycling our own money as much as possible. But these other things that bring in money like Eden Valley Natural Foods and the Community Farm are what helps to drive our own Micro Economy.This will make it easier to be able to sell some of what we grow on the 2 acre Farmsites that go along with each Homestead. We may have a ready buyer for much of that in Village Foods as well as the many jobs that would be created.
We will have better control of what happens to our own food supply so we can get it from the farm to the table when it's at its peak of ripeness. We need to take back some control of our own food supply and there is no better way to do that than by going into the natural foods business.
The Community Farm
That is another thing entirely. We do have another 200-300 acres out in the middle of the valley which should be put to some good use. A lot of little stuff that takes a lot of attention is just not going to cut it way out there. And people do want to know how that is going to work, and what we're going to grow out there.One big planting of an off beat food producing plant like Raspberries which do bring in a good price would make a nice permanent planting for the Community Farm because they will create a lot of jobs. Once they get started, they start producing almost right away unlike trees and they keep on doing it for a very long time, just like trees. Raspberries have to be hand picked at the peak of ripeness by a bright young person with a keen eye. They cannot be machine harvested.
They last a very long time.
They are very popular and there is always a big demand for them. They bring a higher overall return than most any other berries and that creates a lot of jobs for some of the many young people we will be attracting like a magnet for an entirely different set of reasons. But once here everybody is going to be looking to pick up some work. Raspberries are as permanent as Trees. They start producing fast and last a very long time like the rest of your life. No one really knows.Raspberries
Everyone will need to make a living one way or another besides what may be going on in the Village or on the Homesteads and Farm Sites or in various jobs in building and the smaller industries l9ke the Village Arts Council.We will be creating all kinds of work in Eden and many of us may even be making a living in many different ways but you do have to have that creative spirit. Those who are not with us on that will not be with us for long. We can't afford to be carrying other peoples weight around for long unless we can find a way to finance that.
Everybody needs to be relatively self sufficient as well as competent at what they do to be able to make a very real contribution above and beyond just being there. Things will have to be allowed to reach a certain Eco-Logical Balance and they will do that naturally once we get set up and running. But a certain amount of self determination will always be necessary.
Two by Two
Some people will couple up on us which is where babies come from and that is also a very basic level of sharing a homestead that doesn't need much of an explanation. Eventually that becomes an Extended Family. But it is also quite possible for two couples to share a Homestead. Think of a Zero Down Payment split 4 ways and you begin to realize that one quarter of Zero is a very doable proposition.One out of 3
We do have the no down payment as we have said to support a certain amount of diversity. A quarter of nothing and you can move right on. Enjoy your Homestead. Walk the land. Introduce yourself to the plants and the other animals who live there already. And you can start to make yourself at home within this community.Then let's take a good look at that first payment towards your contribution share some 30 days later. That will be only $380. or so if you are right up there with us right from the very beginning. Later on it will be a little more. Split that up 4 ways that is only $95. a month each which is not a big hardship for most people who are willing to work a few days a week.
You can do it
Even if you are not rolling in money if you can get into cooperation with other folks. This plan supports most every kind of cooperation that shows good human skills. We can all do this folks and you can see how easy it could be.So many people thought money was a big problem nobody could solve. Well consider that to be her story. We have solved the Imaginary Money Problem. Money is only a secondary consideration for new people who have the right attitude and a desire to learn and to grow in this community.
Truth Talking
We are going to be taking it easy in comparison with the ordinary situation that any college student or other single person or young couple would probably be facing like a single mother trying to make in a non single mother world without understanding what is out of place. Eden does support some of these more fragmented family units unlike corporate america does.That is what these zero downs are really there for, single mothers and other brothers from another mothers. But all people really are expected to bring something to show for themselves along with something for everybody else. We are all to become breeders and feeders. It is really going to be very easy and even larger numbers of people can share a homestead which cuts that down even further but it is a good idea to leave some room for expansion onto other worlds.
People do reproduce and so we do want to leave some room for them to procreate in peace. That's why I recommend starting out with only about 4 as a good sized core group although you can have as many as nine adults and 9 children on any one homestead but let it grow up to that point later is what we might recommend. That is for the extended family that is naturally going to grow out of all this as your kids hit the big 18 one by one pushing you over the top.
Homes and Cabins
How can you pay for that when you have been taught that you are helpless and alone and cannot create all the solutions to the problems facing you? First of all you can unlearn most of that and then get together with your friends and decide to put up something like $50/week each into your Homestead Building Fund.4 people kicking in that much a week will be set with $10,000. a years worth of building materials. And that is more than enough to build a good cabin.
Natural Building Fund
That will keep you in building materials big time especially if you use things like recycled lumber and natural materials. That can go a long way and is enough for the beginnings of a fairly nice little cabin within just that very first year. But this is just one way to go about it folks.Any kid could have come up with most of this. Not everyone has been taught how to think for themselves and I wasn't either. I was taught to be stupid like everybody else. But I learned how to resist that and somehow we have all resisted those attempts to process the life out of us until there wasn't anything left. How that happened I do not know but you can see that we have remained free enough to have the courage to speak the Truth which is all that has gotten us this far.
The real main house
That will culminate after several years of working steadily towards our goals which has always been the way of the wild reality that grows like a twisting Manzanita Tree. There are some limits here if only out of respect for the holding capacity of the land and for Eco-Logical reasons. Meaning the cabin is limited to 700 square feet and the home to 2,000. That has a lot to do with Ecological Footprints which are a no no. Don't wreck the Earth, the planet of our Birth.Earth Works
The Earth works for a whole lot of different folks. We like to follow the laws of the natural world and this will become a demonstration of the Natural Way of life that we are proud to be initiating right here on Earth at this time. Thank you.Well it has long been the way of all of the ancient peoples who have ever lived and died here before us in peace and harmony within the natural world without acting like it was some kind of imposition on us all just to accept the basic parameters of life. I know my time is almost running out as the modern attention span runs prematurely short but:
Eden is Revolutionary
It's not just about our own personal individual success anymore and that is why we never play against the community like it was an adversary. They play against the house in Las Vegas which is probably where you would rather be right now.They play against the house as Wall Street day traders who are there for one reason only and that is to extract resources while provided no service. That is not only playing against this country but that is also playing against the Earth and that is what is wrong with America that we plan to change.
Now we are here to succeed as a Community as well. Eden cannot be allowed to go down like the failed Enron did. That means things need to be put together into the proper order in accordance with the Priorities of Importance we have already established. We are the Village People. Everything counts that can be counted and it does have to be something that we really do want to count. We are not real big on counting heads and especially when there is nothing inside but everyone should be glad to put in about 4 hours or Community Service time per week.
Human Scale
What we are creating here is Human Scale and using an approach to things that is not just aesthetically alive but meaningful and dynamic as well. You can't escape the realities like the folks in the city who thought they could go on living an unnatural way of life in debt forever.Or even those who thought they could do it without the community or with no money at all not to mention those who thought they could do it all without the Web of Life. Not a chance. That is too much like the people who thought they could do it without the entire ecosystem. Go to Mars if you think you don't need that.
This is all part of a very well established tradition of life in community right here on Earth that is the only way that life works. What works is real. The rest is not.
This is not just a game that we can just play around with in some irresponsible manner. It is a natural set of laws that we must learn to live within. We cannot be strangers to this way of thinking for long and remain as a Sustainable Community in Eden or anywhere here on Earth which will drop us like fallen leaves in the wind if we don't get back on track very quickly.
Sticking it to the Man
Everything else will then follow. And that doesn't mean it will all be given to us like candy to a baby. It means we will have to do it all by ourselves or with each other one thing at a time and each thing in its own time. We don't live in a vacuum here. We are not all like brand new here but we should be alive with energy and good things to share. Those who come with only a lot of dead stuff will not be allowed to drain the resources of this community.Those who come to Eden should be comfortable with the still only moderately high voltage ideas expressed here. We should all be able to climb out of any hole we might have gotten buried into like being over your head in debt to the man without a plan.
The tower of dreg will most assuredly collapse like the twin towers we saw go down like a house of cards on fire. Designed to fail. People could even be seen diving out the windows on that eye opening day that we call ground zero.
That could be a good symbol for us and our children if we don't make other plans for them to have a world that is fit to grow up in to just prepare them to jump out the windows and they will be free.
Keeping it Real
That was a warning to us to move more quickly now and a sign of worse things to come if we don't wake up fast. We do have to have a different kind of Architecture to get busy with that is about Reversing tor surviving he Dark Ages that may be brought on by the almost inevitable Post-Eco-Logical Dis-Integration.The Earth does try to speak to us very clearly about how we are to live here. Many lessons are being taught. We were supposed to learn something from the experience every time a Tree falls down.
We must all be willing to learn not to burn from the numbers of blunders will become more and more extreme along with the weather. Eden has to be designed along quite different lines entirely so let us do be prepared for a change. Eden represents the creation of a New America that is to start springing up now like a Forest that will start here in the Americas and then it will spread throughout the world. And that Forest will be called The Emerald Forest. We are the Kindred Spirits of the Emerald Forest
We now have well over 600 great big fat members in this group which is huge for any single community email group...
Thirty Five Dollars from each real member will give us something to work with over the coming year. We have not be slacking off here.
We do have some great big fat publications in the works that are just dying to be printed, and that will allow us to reach out to a lot more people. But we can only do that with your help. In return for that we will now be able to send you not only The Eden Journal which is something real that you can show to your friends, but now you will get the Free DVD along with that just as a token of our many thanks. - T
To Save the Earth
