Community/Washington State land available

The following is a letter from the good folks at Dapala Farm in Washington state, near the Idaho border. Fred and I have been in contact with them lately, and they have clear title to an 8 acre parcel attatched to their land and are looking for a few good people to purchase this parcel and to continue along the path that they have started. They want whoever buys this property to be self reliant, but can also work with them in their organic food production. There will be a stipulation in the purchase contract that whoever buys it can only sell it to people who will follow in the same path, they would prefer that it only be sold initially to a family looking to settle down for long term in the self reliant lifestyle. If you are interested in this offer contact me or Fred for more info and there is a possibility of NWR funding the right people if need be.
Here is a link to their website: http://www.ic.org/nica/communities/dap1.htm
and here is a link to pictures of their farm:
http://www.ofoto.com/I.jsp?c=7367si3.yj7f1or&x=0&y=xa8jr0

Now here is a copy of the letter and their responses to a lot of Freds questions. Please do contact us if interested in this special opprotunity.
Rabbit,

Good to hear from you so soon. I also heard back from Fred as well and sent him this letter I pasted below. Let me know what you think.

Best Wishes, Earth & Sky
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Fred... well thanks for your well presented response. i looked thru your photo album and it looks like you've created a garden of eden. it's beautiful. ​

Earth & Sky... Thank you for the compliments. What you are looking at in these photos has taken us 40 years of effort to accomplish and it was very hard work. We know from personal experience that there is a lot to be said about the knowledge, skills and infrastructures which were passed from one farming generation to the next...this is truly invaluable. It is a shame to see how so many family farms are being lost everyday...along with them go everything which was learned and built upon by so much effort.

Fred... one thing you didn't make clear is what your needs are. your project obviously has much to offer and will certainly serve as an example to other people looking to create sustainable rural community. there is certainly a growing need and desire to create such community.​

Earth & Sky... Our need is to join in community with a couple or small group of people who would be able to purchase and build upon the additional acreage which borders our land. This is 8 acres which we presently use only as a wood lot and has over 70 cords of wood cut and stacked for later use as fuel or a couple of cord wood homes. This land has the same year around stream running through it as our own. It also has its own deed.

You could help this couple or group in the purchase and carry their loan as we would rather not have people indebted to us and also have to manage our relationships with them as fellow community members. This is not to say there isn't merit to handling finances with people of integrity, it just isn't our interest nor expertise.

It is, however, important that the couple or group have the skills and abilities to build their own homes and manage their own homestead. The couple or group who purchase this property will need to be able to handle whatever hardships come their ways in the development of their land. We are nearing retirement age and have our hands full with growing for our food self-reliance and the maintenance of our land and home. It is not possible for us to take on any more work nor be caretakers of others who are not adaptable to the demands placed upon them in this lifestyle.

Fred... a major focus of our forum will be to connect people with such desires with opportunities to turn their dreams into reality. it looks like you've already
gained much experience and built a beautiful infrastructure, so what is your next step? to connect into a network of like minded people which can flow some thru your project? ​

Earth & Sky... Yes, we are open to making and nurturing these types of connections, but being farmers we have limited time, energy and experience in intensive online networking. Also, for "people which flow thru" we are limited in our energy as well. When one lives this lifestyle it is very different then talking about living this lifestyle or going to a workshop or seminar on this lifestyle, so we find we have little time and energy for talking and networking. People can "flow thru" best by offering us their help around the center in whatever needs to be done. This we will be willing to accommodate at no charge. If people come for just a farm tour or instructions we need to charge them for our time and energy.

Fred... are you looking for people to move there or just visit? ​

Earth & Sky... We are looking for people who are resourceful, committed and who have nurtured a vision of this lifestyle where they want to begin the work of actualizing their dreams. We can agree to visits from those in which we share dialogue with toward the goal of community and their purchasing the land. Otherwise, visits will be payment in advance.

Fred... are you looking to expand your project in any way? what would you need for this expansion? ​

Earth & Sky... Yes, but one step at a time. We have built our homestead and educational services on solid foundations of sustainability. Any expansion would also need to be built upon a sustainable foundation.

Fred... it seems that at this time you have a dyad partnership going. do you plan to keep this as your structure or do you desire to expand the number of people and develop some form of larger community?​

Earth & Sky... Yes, we can include others into this community as we have an extra bedroom in our home, a 20' travel trailer and a 20' tipi. People can also build temporary or permanent housing on our land as well. We also purchased the majority of the building materials we need for building of an underground community center to be used for educational purposes and to provide additional living spaces.

However, with the exception of the 8 acres next to us we can't offer people ownership nor would we be willing to put any other type of incumbrances on our land in order to accommodate people's need for ownership. The land we steward is in our name and we have invested over $750,000 in it, not including what is the value of our years of labor, which would put its value in the millions. We have seriously considered the idea of placing our land, our home and all its infrastructures into an institution for the advancement and preservation of this work toward teaching others the how to of self-reliant and sustainable living so that future generations will have an opportunity to benefit. This we will do as our experience being in community with others progresses and is known to be sustainable.

Our belief, however, is that someday ownership will not mean as much as it does today. That day will be when what matters most to people is that they cooperate with one another for their survival. This was what mattered to Native Americans before the white man came and why to them individual ownership was a strange concept. For people who are fortunate enough to be in the post-crash communities these will adopt a mindset that the community sticking together is more important than their own individual wants. This is our mindset and how we look at the future. If this sounds rather "cultish" or "fascistic" or "socialistic" or whatever to anyone, keep in mind that in the pre-industrial world, community cohesiveness was an all important survival consideration, and our latter-day individualism springs from a mode of life soon to go the way of the dinosaur.

Fred... i'm sure that we will be able to find other people interested in joining into your project thru our forum and hip forums.​

Earth & Sky... Maybe. We've been involved in the communities movement ever since its early days and have learned a great deal. In short what we learned hinges upon willingness, incentive and education in regard to what works and how well it works. If being in community with others is more important to one then any other personal agenda then this can work.

Commitment of the heart is a necessary, nearly sufficient, condition for community building. People who are seriously committed to living together in community seem to rise to the challenges of differing goals, values, and strategies. There are some tools and skills which help develop community, but the best of them are of little use without this underlying commitment.

Fred... how is your funding situation?​

Earth & Sky... We've been pay-as-you-go folks for many years...we have no debts whatsoever and we want no one indebted to us.

Fred... could you use some funding to expand the project?​

Earth & Sky... Whatever loans you might want to offer you could offer to the couple or group who would like to purchase and develop the land next in our own. However, in case the new owners decide to sell some time in the future we want covenants on the land which restricts its resale to only those who will take over for the previous owners the goals and responsibilities of being in community with us as clearly outlined in an agreement co-created and signed by all before we sell them this land. This would mean that if the present owners wanted to sell the land with their homes on it they would need to find a buyer or buyers who are willing to live in community with us, and who share the goals of the community and who are willing to live by its principles...a tough sell to say the least. Ideally this opportunity is best suited to those who are looking to put their roots down to work with others in a life statement they strongly believe in and who want to do this over a lifetime run.

Fred... what state are you in again?​

Earth & Sky... We are located on the eastern side of Washington State, near the Idaho border and 21 miles north of the city of Spokane.

Fred... do you want me to start a thread on hip forums to find some interested people?​

Earth & Sky... Yes, please, this would help as we have little experience with doing this and with the maze of details in computer land.

Fred... posting a thread with a link to your photos should turn up some interested people.​

Earth & Sky... We hope so.

Fred... i'm forwarding a copy of this letter to our forum to let people see what's going on.​

Earth & Sky... This sounds like a very good idea, so we don't have to repeat ourselves.

Fred... i'm also going to add your photo link to our links folder.​

Earth & Sky... OK. Thanks for your help. It is much appreciated.

Fred... so tell us more about what you have in mind.​

Earth & Sky... To be in community with others toward goals of mutual self-reliance and the benefits of support. We would also like to continue to expand our educational efforts to help others learn to live in harmony, balance and self-reliance upon their lands, and to develop other related cottage industries and services. We see a great need for these cottage industries and services in the near future as major changes begin to assert themselves in our economy and environment.

peace fred​

Best Wishes, Earth & Sky

 

Greetings Rabbit & Morea,

Fred informed us about the new thread you started for our farm and community at Hip Forum. We read what you posted for us/about us and want to thank you for the accurate and complimentary way you presented our efforts toward the co-creation of our community. Thank you, you shared a fine introduction for us.

In thoughts it occurred to us that people at the Hip Forum may not understand the difference between our style of community building, which is cooperative, and the style most people image of how a typical community is organized. We wanted to clarify that there are many models which are being practiced in the communities movement today.

The original model in the communities movement is the Egalitarian, and this has organized itself in a collective called the "Federation of Egalitarian Communities". In egalitarian communities their approach is to share everything with all fellow community members. This includes the land, income, savings and investments, businesses, cars, housing, meal preparations and cleanup, health and retirement plans, consensus decision making, conflict resolutions, interpersonal relationships, child care, all maintenance demands on commonly held community buildings, land and gardens, etc. In egalitarian types of communities there is little people do not share with one another, it is required.

As you may guess, the egalitarian model has many built in difficulties, especially difficult for the average individual raised in our "me first" culture. We have attempted to actualize the egalitarian style in our efforts to form community on our land and have failed. We learned it takes a special mix of talented and dedicated community founders to successfully put together and maintain an egalitarian community.

In the early days of the communities movement the egalitarian model was considered to be the only model in which to build a community upon. However, there is another model of intentional communities which has emerged and became popular in the last 20 years. This the cooperative model, such as CO-Housing...have you heard about this model?

In the cooperative model people purchase or buy into a common piece of land or property and divide this up equally amongst their co-investors. The intention in a cooperative community is also too share with and help one's fellow community members, but this is not a requirement and is not done to the degree in which is expected in an egalitarian community.

People in cooperative community build their own homes on the divided up common property and agree to share an equal portion of the expenses and responsibilities of land maintenance and other goals which they decide together they would like to undertake cooperatively upon the property. In the cooperative model each individual or nuclear family is responsible for their own finances, medical and retirement plans, cars, the building and maintenance of their individual homes, businesses and others resources, assets and investments.

Couples within the cooperative community may organize child care with other couples, but it not a requirement that all members contribute to the raising of the community's children. The same goes for many other aspects of each individual cooperative community member's personal life and needs.

In the case of the CO-Housing model people purchase one of the homes which was built by the developer of the community's property, usually at a high initial buy-in cost. When buying-in this gives the person access to a common community center building and the benefits in a non-required system of support as members in the community. There may be commonly maintained gardens and other services which the members establish or these services and common projects could be accessed and benefited from by making monetary contributions.

The problem with CO-Housing is people need to have hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to initially buy into the community. We have opted for the cooperative community model in our effort to form an intentional community, but not the CO-Housing style. Our cooperative community is a great deal more accessible and reasonable in order to get in on. A couple or small group may purchase the 8 acres which borders our own acreage and develop their land and build their homes.

One of the benefits available in our community would be our fellow community members may be able to work with us cooperatively on the food self-reliant food security systems established on our land or they could contribute as members of a community supported agricultural project (CSA) while they pursued their careers and other necessities in their busy lives.

There are many other benefits which our members would enjoy. If you are interested, we could further discuss our idea on building a cooperative community. We are also interested in your efforts there in California. Have you envisioned it as an egalitarian or cooperative community style?

Wishing you the best of holiday experiences.

Warmly, Daniel & Patti