College Dissertation, 2012

Custodians of the Earth, Witnesses to Transition: The Story of the Farm

San Francisco, 1967: the summer of love. Thousands of young people are gathering to experience and participate in the cultural upheaval, spiritual revolution, and the emerging possibilities for change. A man named Stephen Gaskin, an English teacher at San Francisco State College, begins holding weekly meetings to share his ideas on life, spirituality, and the way forward, called “Monday Night Class.” The number of people attending these classes balloons, and in 1970, he and a couple hundred of his most enthusiastic participants travel the country on a spiritually charged speaking tour organized by American Academy of Religion. After traveling together, the group decides to purchase land and put their ideals regarding spiritual communion into practice. The group bought land in rural Tennessee, formed an intentional community called The Farm and devoted themselves to living communally with a shared set of principles that included nonviolence, veganism, voluntary poverty, and a recognition of the sanctity of pregnancy, children and natural, home childbirth under the care of The Farm midwives. MaryAnn, who still lives on The Farm today, told me that the community’s history “is one long string stretching back to Monday Night Class,” where together they discussed “love, sex, dope, God, gods, war, peace, enlightenment, mind-cop, free will and what-have-you” and “the glue” that held it all together “was a belief in the moral imperative toward altruism that was implied by the telepathic spiritual communion… experienced together.”

Forty years later, I drove from Wisconsin to visit The Farm, still located in rural Tennessee. On my way, I picked up a hitchhiker who told me about how he’d been stopped by the police because he had frightened some women by walking into a church where they were meeting; he had wanted to speak with the preacher. He seemed agitated that he hadn’t been able to speak with someone, but he wasn’t angry. He told me about his belief that children are the best teachers, because they mirror back the actions and moods of parents and others around them they are actually teaching parents about themselves. The conversation seemed serendipitous, since I was on my way to a community that originally formed based on a shared desire for spiritual leadership and has viewed children as spiritual teachers and even the processes of pregnancy and childbirth as educational since its very beginnings.

The Farm is perhaps most well known for its midwives and history of midwifery. Ina May Gaskin is a famous, award-winning midwife. Her book, Spiritual Midwifery, shares how the values of positive communication, loving and connected relationships, spiritual manifestation, and community support that shaped life on The Farm also influenced (and continue to influence) the process and understandings of bringing life on The Farm. For much of the first decade, The Farm population included an incredibly high proportion of children – The Farm midwives offered any pregnant woman the opportunity to come there, give birth, and leave their baby on The Farm as an alternative to abortion, The Farm offered a supportive environment for single mothers, and Farm families often had many children (likely connected to their spiritual understandings of birth, new life, and children). The Farm also developed its own school to educate children using an alternative, more participatory model of education. Both the midwife clinic and The Farm School continue to operate today, although the community itself has changed substantially since it’s founding. Yet alternative forms of childbirth and alternative education are not the only unconventional technological systems on The Farm. Here, we will look at the history of The Farm and it’s historic change from a full-fledged commune to an intentional community more in the style of a cooperative, as well as the values of the community that have survived through its forty years and the massive transition.

Some of the alternative technologies that are now familiar from the other cases discussed herein are present at The Farm, including 80 kilowatts of solar power, a community well, local food production, and electric transportation (in the form of golf carts, ridden around the community). Some – such as the alternative forms of reproductive technologies (natural home birth), education (The Farm School), and unconventional economic arrangements related to home financing, employment, and profit making – are unique to this case. Here, I argue that after four decades and a significant transition, the alternative technological arrangements related to care – care for the land and care for each other – are the most significant alternatives presented by The Farm. These alternative forms of technological organization are motivated by an underlying custodial ethic that has always been part of both spirituality and practice at The Farm. Seeing themselves as custodians, not owners, people on The Farm seek alternative arrangements for living based on their values. While this custodial ethic has arguably helped The Farm survive many transitions (including the economic and community changes as well as population and generational changes), it may also contribute to some of the more conservative attitudes around The Farm that potentially threaten the community’s future longevity.

Welcome to The Farm

The Farm became an officially registered religious community in 1972, organized as a commune living as directed in the Book of Acts: “And all that believed were together and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all as every man had need.” The founding members originally purchased 1,000 acres, then 750 more. People originally lived in shared community structures (large army tents or buildings constructed by the community), worked for the community, and shared all money, food, tools and other goods in common. By 1975, there were 750 people on The Farm (250 of which were children); there were 1,100 by 1977 and 1,500 people (half children) by 1982. The Farm also formed satellite or sister communities in 13 states and 4 countries, some on rural land like The Farm and others in cities like DC.

By 1982, the community’s debt was substantial and their income meager. There were significant concerns that the community would be lost, and a major transition (called the “change over” and discussed in more detail below) took place. It was decided that the community simply could not live based on its fully communitarian model any more; people had to become responsible for their own subsistence in order for the community to survive. In 1983, community dues were implemented – each member had to contribute a minimum of $35 per month to pay off the community’s debts, in addition to being responsible for their own food, clothing, and shelter.

Today, The Farm community is organized more like a cooperative than a commune. People are responsible for their own housing, although they cannot get a mortgage to build on the communally owned land. Although two Farm businesses and one Farm resident have installed solar panels (one person told me that these three installed systems produce enough to cover the community’s total usage), most people pay monthly electric bills to the local rural electric cooperative utility provider and power lines are strung throughout the community. People are responsible for their own life expenses, although there are still businesses on The Farm (some owned by the community, some by individual Farm members) and the folks I met estimated that about half of the people who currently live there (a population of approximately 200 people) work on The Farm. Today, the minimum monthly dues requirement is $90 per month, which helps to pay for the communally maintained roads, the water system that is run and maintained by the community, the Front Gate and Visitor’s Center, and the community center. In addition to several businesses, there are several non-profit organizations run by Farm members; both the businesses and the other organizations on The Farm continue to be consistent with the spiritual and ethical values upon which The Farm was founded. A brochure from The Farm’s Visitor Center describes the community in this way:

“We believe that there are non-material planes of being or levels of consciousness that everyone can experience, the highest of these being the spiritual plane. We believe that we are all one, that the material and spiritual are one, and the spirit is identical and one in all of creation. We believe that marriage, childbirth and death are sacraments of our church. We agree that child rearing and care of the elderly is a holy responsibility. We believe that being truthful and compassionate is instrumental to living together in peace and as a community. We agree to be honest and compassionate in our relationships with each other. We believe in nonviolence and pacifism and are conscientiously opposed to war. We agree to resolve conflicts or disagreements in a nonviolent manger. We agree to keep no weapons in the community. We believe that vegetarianism is the most ecologically sound and humane lifestyle for the planet, but that what a person eats does not dictate their spirituality. We agree that livestock, fish, or fowl will not be raised in the community for slaughter. We believe that the abuse of any substance is counterproductive to achieving a high consciousness. We agree to strive for a high level of consciousness in our daily lives. We believe the earth is sacred. We agree to be respectful of the forests, fields, streams and wildlife that are under our care. We agree that the community is a wildlife sanctuary with no hunting for sport or food. We believe that humanity must change to survive. We agree to participate in that change by accepting feedback about ourselves. We believe that we, individually and collectively, create our own life experience. We agree to accept personal responsibility for our actions. We believe that inner peace is the foundation for world peace.”

When I visited The Farm in the fall of 2011, I stayed with a host family, a couple who were both founding members of The Farm (although they were not a couple in those days). I got to see what life on The Farm is like by observing their lives, as well as talking with them directly about it and taking their suggestions on things to see and people to meet during my time there. I walked around the entire community, visiting with the people who live there and the organizations such as The Farm Store, the midwife clinic, the school, the Visitor’s Center, and the Ecovillage Training Center and participating in community events such as a wedding party and a fall harvest celebration.

One of the people I met at The Farm, a young woman who was not a full-fledged member but worked and lived at the Ecovillage Training Center, somewhat sarcastically described the community as a “hippie country club.” It many ways, this humorous description fits: much of The Farm population these days is older, folks who were a part of its beginnings who have since aged. Many people drive around in electric golf carts, as the distances between far neighbors may seem too far to walk or bike. One golf cart passed me on the road blaring Amy Winehouse from its speakers. I saw another golf cart loudly playing children’s music while a little boy followed it on his bike. There’s even a disc golf course. There are also yoga classes, a weekly craft night, numerous meetings for community boards and non-profit organizations, and a Sunday morning meditation. Community members can be involved in community administration, organizational meetings and events as much, or as little, as they choose.

Yet the thing that struck me most about the community was the quiet peace at night – people’s homes aren’t all lit up by outside security lights, there are no sirens or police, no traffic lights or road rage. The community today is in many ways organized primarily around their shared land, three square miles with even more land surrounding it placed in a land trust by a Farm-based non-profit organization. The Farm illustrates how a custodial ethic – a belief in caring for things that you do not own, even relinquishing the idea of ownership in order to more carefully tend to spiritually valuable places, practices, and relationships – can successfully organize a community and its technologies throughout a long history and significant transitions.

History: Spiritual Community with Charismatic Leader Moves Back to the Land

Stephen Gaskin was a student, and then an instructor, in San Francisco throughout the 1960s. He had been in the Marine Corps from 1952 to 1955, went to college on the GI Bill, and got ‘turned on’ by the hippie counterculture he saw fomenting around him. He himself turned hippie, started tripping, and began exploring the spiritual undertones of the contemporary cultural happenings. In 1967, he was part of a group of a dozen people who started meeting on Monday nights to “compare notes with other trippers about tripping and the whole psychic and psychedelic world,” a meeting that grew to be as many as a thousand or fifteen hundred people each week by 1970, when Stephen, his wife Ina May, and a couple hundred others traveled to share their ideas on college campuses and public speaking halls throughout the country (now called “The Caravan” by those who participated). Stephen and those around him shared a set of spiritual and life principles; as Stephen put it: “I love the ethical teachings of almost all the religions, and I love the psychedelic testimony of their saints. But I do not believe in any of their dogmas. I think each one of us has a nonshirkable obligation to figure out the world on our own as best we can. They way we behave as a result of that investigation is our real and practiced religion.”

After months of traveling together, the Caravan crew returned to San Francisco, but not for long; they decided they wanted to put their spiritual ideas into practice on their own piece of land, forming their own community based on the Biblical teachings in the Book of Acts suggesting that all things be shared, to each from all. Stephen was the uncontested charismatic leader of this group that came to settle in rural Tennessee and name their community The Farm. He was their spiritual guru, leading the Sunday Morning Service that came to augment and then replace Monday Night Class on the Farm and marrying all Farm couples. He was also a practical leader in many ways; he was able to talk about the community as a church to locals, a culturally appropriate description for easing fears in the rural south. He went to jail for the community in the early years; he was not present when the law enforcers arrived, but was punished for illegal marijuana cultivation on behalf of the community. His wife, Ina May, was the first and most experienced midwife on The Farm, another significant position of influence (if not power) within this community striving for equality.

When the group of approximately 300 people arrived on their 1,000-acre piece of farmland, it had only a few old buildings and one source of utility-provided electricity. Although most of the founders of The Farm were young adults from the cities and suburbs, many had been exposed to the appropriate technology movement in the abstract sense (Stephen Gaskin and Buckminster Fuller actually met and conversed during some sort of hippie conference in 1970, see Figure 1), and they began – out of necessity – to put some of its ideas into practice with low-tech, low-skill technologies such as trickle-charging car batteries to use as a source of direct current (DC) power, rigging water pumps out of car parts, and reusing old construction materials to make efficient passive solar buildings. One of the things these kids from the city learned to do when they moved to The Farm was move old, unwanted buildings from neighboring lands – some of the buildings still there today were moved there in the early years, including the midwife clinic, which was an old church.

 

Figure 1: Stephen Gaskin and Buckminster Fuller. Photo by Farm resident.

Mindy, one of my hosts during my visit to The Farm, moved to the community in 1974. She is now older, probably around my own mother’s age, with long grey hair. She works as a nurse outside the community. She tells me that her first ten years on The Farm were “basically like camping” – many families lived together in the converted buses they’d driven there, even more modified buses (see Figure 2), or large army tents, where there was no hot water and the only source of light was some small DC light bulbs strung off batteries being trickle charged from their one main power source (provided by the local rural electric utility, a bill paid collectively by the community from 1971 to 1983).

Figure 2: A home on The Farm in the 1970s. Photo by Farm resident.

For the first 12 years, the community did a lot of farming in order to feed themselves. They learned to grow soybeans and make tofu. They also gave a lot of food away, as part of their spiritual practice, to relief programs and others in need. Mindy told me that in those days, their diets were good in the summer but winters were hard and “nutritionally, we were lacking,” Yet simple, vegan food and living without hot water or indoor plumbing were part of the community’s spiritual practice. Each member took a vow of poverty in those days, and Mindy described it as “this sort of third world mentality, that we were lucky to have running water at all because it was more than a lot of people had.”

According to The Farm’s charismatic leader, “the spiritual revolution has got to be something that you do, rather than something that you just think.”  Stephen and those drawn to his ideals sought to develop a community and a lifestyle based on this spiritual teaching.  From the very beginning, the Buddhist principle of Right Livelihood – that work is seamless with and should not contradict spiritual practice, that hard work is both an act of love and a path to enlightenment – was an important part of understanding work on The Farm. Thus, work is spiritual – so farming is a way to practice Zen, dismantling old buildings to construct new ones is enlightening, being a midwife is a way to tap directly into the spiritual experience. In the early years on The Farm, people accepted environmental values regarding the benefits of veganism, organic farming, and a low-impact lifestyle, but that was not the primary motivation to move back to the land and adopt appropriate technologies, low-tech and community based technological systems (see Figure 3). Instead, The Farm saw direct experience as the only means to spiritual experience and sought to live their lives in ways that improved the human experience as part of their spiritual values.

 

Figure 3: Another way to trickle charge batteries to use as a DC power source on The Farm, a way to apply physical work for communal benefit. Photo by Farm Resident

The Change Over

Yet by 1980, there were 1,500 people living on The Farm, and children made up half of the population. The Farm had gotten very involved in relief work and community service, everything from running an ambulance service in The Bronx to teaching Guatemalans how grow soy to make soy milk, tofu, and other products like ice cream and cookies to improve protein consumption among the poor. The Farm had become an extensive farming operation, cultivating much of their own as well as neighboring land, and had taken on heavy costs (and debts) for the seeds, heavy machinery, and necessary equipment. The Farm provided sanctuary for many people, some of whom could not or did not participate in the financial or subsistence ventures of the community. By 1983, 1,400 people were depending upon the community for subsistence, and the community was over $400,000 in debt. In September 1983, the entire economy of The Farm changed. Instead of providing for all needs communally, people became responsible for their own food, shelter, and necessities. Each member had to contribute monthly dues in order to help pay off the community’s debts, keep the land, and maintain the community roads and structures.

Maryann graduated from Bennington College in 1963, then moved to France until she was “thrown out” during the 1969 student uprising. She also heard about Stephen Gaskin in 1969, when she returned to the states. In 1973, she came to visit his new community, The Farm, and became a member. In those early years, she also spent time in a few of The Farm’s satellite communities, returning to The Farm for good in 1979. She told me that the economic transition, what The Farm community refers to as “the change over,” was incredibly painful and embittering for the community. Yet Paul, a founding member of The Farm, told me that they likely would have lost the land without the switch. The Farm underwent a huge population decrease after the change over; today, approximately 200 members live in the community.

Richard first saw Stephen Gaskin speak on a New England college campus during the Caravan tour. He moved to The Farm in the 1970s, but left after the change over and did not return for 20 years. He told me during my visit to The Farm that in his younger days, instead of fighting “the system,” he wanted to build an alternative to it. He told me that he and the other folks on The Farm during that first decade had learned firsthand how difficult that is, and they experienced a sadness and a sense of failure similar to those who watched the dismantling of the Communist bloc after hoping it was the beginning of worldwide revolution. Richard told me that similarly, The Farm had failed to become a communal utopia because it was stuck in the middle of a capitalist society, trying to feed and care for the masses of visitors who came to The Farm while also paying for land and food and accumulated debts. Like the early members of The Farm community, Karl Marx and Leon Trotsky hoped for worldwide economic revolution. Yet as analysts, Marx and Trotsky recognized the difficulty, or what they sometimes saw as the impossibility, of establishing a shared economic system within or while surrounded by economies based on private property, investment, and gain. While this certainly helps explain the failure of The Farm’s early model of cooperative living, the next community that I visited (Chapter 7) challenges their assertion.

Today, The Farm is more like a small town than a stereotypical commune. People live in their own houses and are responsible for their own livelihoods. Yet in this small town, everybody knows one another. And, a lot of resources are still shared communally – The Farm has its own water source (a well), its own system of roads, several businesses either owned by or housed within the community, several non-profit organizations run by Farm members, a private school based on The Farm’s educational and spiritual philosophy, a midwifery clinic and birthing center, and community structures such as a playground and outdoor music dome, a gazebo, and a community building for hosting events.

The Farm’s community members now span several generations; founding members have gotten older, and some moved their parents to the community as they aged and died as part of a spiritual commitment to care for others through life’s transitions. For example, Maryann moved to The Farm in the 1970s, building a small cabin off her remodeled school bus. After the change over, she and her family moved into one of the large homes that originally held as many as 50 people. She cared for her mother there, who died and was buried on The Farm.

Children who were born on The Farm are now young adults; although the vast majority of them have left The Farm, some ‘second generation’ folks still live in the community, some with children of their own. For instance, I met Garrick during my time on The Farm when he offered me a ride in his golf cart as I was wandering down the road. His wife grew up on what he called “the old Farm,” they had traveled back to The Farm for her delivery of their first child and had “been looking to get back for a long time,” finally relocating permanently only 8 months before my visit. Now, his children attend The Farm School and he works for SEI International (one of community owned businesses on The Farm), a company that makes radiation detection equipment, holds million dollar government contracts, and was incredibly busy after the nuclear disaster in Fukushima Japan that spring. When I met Garrick, he and his wife were staying in another community member’s home while they constructed their own residence, which they hoped to finish within a year.

The over 1,700 acres of The Farm’s collectively purchased land is itself still owned by the community (which is, and has been since its beginning, technically registered as a religious institution). The Farm is still involved in several alternative material forms and practices, technologies and material arrangements and ways of organizing social and economic life. In this unique community, a spiritually driven commitment to care and custodianship influences the way people build their homes and live their lives, but more importantly, their shared ethic shapes how they organize material and social life in ways that have endured through a long history and significant transition.

Farm Technologies

Technologies on The Farm are, in many ways, fairly conventional. The community has its own well, and the community pays one of its own members to take care of the water system, testing water quality, handling the bureaucratic paperwork for the state’s records, and dealing with all line maintenance and expansion. Jethro, the ‘water guy’ when I visited, grew up on The Farm; he is what they call ‘second generation Farm family.’ He received on-the-job training from the community member who used to be responsible for the water system. Each home and office building has its own septic tank, which is typical in rural areas. The local utility provider, a rural electric association, provides electricity, although two community businesses and one community member have installed solar panels and several homes advertise their purchase of green power through the local utility’s program. Homes are heated largely with wood, some with propane, which is typical of any home in the rural hills of middle Tennessee. A community member is paid to haul the community’s trash once a week, and their separated recycling, which must go to a different facility 40 minutes away.

The Farm no longer actually does any farming as a community. Many families have gardens near their homes, and several families shared in the expense of establishing a larger community garden with individual plots. The berry patches and apple orchard left over from the early years are fairly unattended, although sometimes there are community workdays when some community members voluntarily tend to them. The community has maintained its commitment to non-violent dietary principles; although individuals may choose to eat whatever they wish, some of the community members are still practicing vegans or vegetarians, the Farm Store does not sell meat, and families may not raise animals for consumption.

About half of the working-age adults who live on The Farm also work in the community, at one of the several businesses or non-profits. There are many businesses owned by Farm members within the community, including a media services and consulting company that in its original form recorded The Farm Band. The Farm Store, which used to be the central distribution station of the commune, was built in the shape of a mandala (see Figure 4), a shape representing the universe in Buddhist imagery and the image adopted as the mascot of Monday Night Class and The Caravan. The Farm Store is now owned and operated by a member of the community, and has changed ownership over the decades since 1983. The store is a popular place to grab lunch, use the Internet, or meet with other community members. People congregate, eat, serf the web, and hold craft night at the large tables in the store, which are cluttered underneath their glass tops by photos of community members’ weddings, babies, and events.

Figure 4: The Farm Store. Photo by author.

The community still commonly owns two large businesses located on The Farm. The Book Publishing Company first published Stephen Gaskin’s work and now publishes many other books that match the mission and vision of The Farm community, such as vegetarian and vegan cook books, books by community members on environmental issues and spirituality, books on native American spirituality, and of course, books on midwifery including Ina May’s renowned Spiritual Midwifery and books on The Farm and its history. The company’s operating procedures are also principled: employees log their time but don’t have set hours and the company uses all recycled paper. The second community-owned business, SE International, is a high-tech industry that makes radiation detection equipment, yet it was originally born out of the low-tech practice of ham radio use. The businesses and non-profit organizations all continue to reflect the original spiritual and human values of The Farm community.

The Midwife Clinic and The Farm School have survived the decades and the changes on The Farm. Pregnant women come to live on The Farm before they give birth so that the midwives can attend to their vibes as well as their health, just like in the old days, and The Farm School operates as a fairly radical alternative educational environment officially registered as an institution of religious education. Both are still important parts of the community, although they both also involve people from outside The Farm.

The current Principal of The Farm School, Preston, became a member of The Farm 8 years ago (before becoming school principal), and joked with me that he’d “move to a commune after it underwent a capitalist revolution.” The Farm is no longer purely communalist and egalitarian. Yet relations of ownership and profit making, aspects of the capitalist mode of production so vehemently criticized by Karl Marx, are still different on The Farm. These alternatives to economic organization are, from my perspective, one of the most fundamental alternatives to the material organization of life presented by the case of The Farm.

The Farm demonstrates the possibilities of steady-state economics, even within a capitalist economy. When members of The Farm wish to sell their homes, they of course must sell only to community members. They also, importantly, cannot sell their homes for a profit – they can sell them for only the amount actually put into them home. When Paul and Mindy finally built their own home, after living in a mobile home for years, they kept track of all costs, including materials and labor time (even their own), because they can only sell their home for its real cost to produce. Similarly, when The Farm Store changes ownership, it can only be sold to another community member for its actual value, without any profit being incurred through the sale. This represents a radical alteration of a particular material relationship – the relations of profit making – that has worked on The Farm for decades.

Farm Homes

Many of the homes on The Farm are very similar to the typical American home. For example, Paul and Mindy’s home (where I stayed while visiting The Farm) is beautiful, large and modern, equipped with a microwave and even a hot tub. Yet there are some notable and important differences between homes on The Farm and most modern dwellings. You cannot receive a mortgage loan to build or buy a home on The Farm, since the land is owned communally. Thus, all community members live without the debt typically brought on by homeownership. This in itself is incredibly freeing, as (FIND: quote about mortgages and revolt… )

Further, the rules that shape the use of land around your home, what would typically be considered a private yard or lot, are clearly different at The Farm. There are no covenants restricting the use of clotheslines or the installation of solar panels. Paul and Mindy have a huge clothesline based on a pulley system across their yard. Most people on The Farm have large gardens near their home; Paul and Mindy’s garden includes two young banana trees. Community members maintain gardens much more than they maintain pristine green lawns, valuing local and organic food production but not fertilizer-perfected mini fields of green. One of the biggest differences that struck me during my time on The Farm was the lack of outside lighting on homes there: when you know and trust your neighbors and value the quiet peace of night, security lighting becomes nothing more than an unnecessary nuisance.

Yet one of the biggest differences in terms of housing as well as all other material symbols of wealth or extravagance is one of attitude. On The Farm, there is what I can only think to call the opposite of “the Joneses.” Some people have built large and modern homes, while others live in extremely simple shelters such as the old communal buildings that have been converted into duplexes, mobile homes, or other inexpensive homes constructed without heavy expense. The road where Paul and Mindy live was jokingly referred to as “mansion row” by other folks I met on The Farm, but the joke was made without envy or malice, instead seeming like a way to indicate the lack of value placed in a two car garage. The Farm community has its own cemetery, and this opposite of the Joneses attitude holds even there, where there are very few large or ostentatious tombstones and simple, handmade markers are much more common. Although, as Paul told me, people on The Farm “work as much as you can or desire to,” attitudes towards wealth and material demonstrations of it still correspond to the spiritual ideals upon which the community was originally founded; there is no value placed on excessive wealth, and attitudes towards homes as well as practices of home construction demonstrate the radical value of simplicity that is still present on The Farm.

The Farm School

The K-12 school located on The Farm offers an alternative educational environment consistent with the values and practices of the community. It is technically a private religious institution, with students from both within and outside the community attending. Students from outside the community might attend because their parents value the open, participatory, and varied educational environment, or because they struggle in public school. Parents on The Farm can send their kids to public school, but must pay $2,000 a year to enroll in the closest public school because of districting. The Farm school costs $2,700 a year, although parents can also do work trade to help cover the costs. Both of Paul’s children attended The Farm School and went on to graduate college; he told me his kids “did well in college coming out of The Farm School.”

The Farm School is small, with approximately 30 students (about half from families within the community) and only two full time employees, although there are about 10 teachers at the school (including two part time employees and parents who teach for tuition trade). The school offers an incredibly flexible model of education, where many students attend part time and are home schooled for the other part of their education. Over 300 home schooling students participate in The Farm’s satellite campus program. As a state recognized category 4 religious exempt school, students are required to attend 4 hours a day, 180 days a year. Students are not segregated by standard grade categories, but are organized in 3 groups (corresponding to pre-K, elementary, and secondary education) based on not only age but also ability and interest. When I visited the school, I met an 11-year-old boy in the high school group. The students study reading, writing, and arithmetic Monday through Thursday mornings, they have both a half-hour recess and a half-hour of ‘movement’ each day (where they are not allowed to be on computers or reading), and their afternoon activities vary widely, with ‘nature class’ being the only consistent afternoon activity every Thursday and Friday.

Preston, the school’s current principal, describes it as an attempt to create a “true learning community.” During our conversation about the school, he handed me a one page sheet describing what such a community strives for: the sharing of both power and knowledge; honesty in all relationships; variation, because “diversity increases a community’s adaptability and sustainability,” integration with the large community; a “responsive curriculum;” and a constant recognition that “[a]ll learners have gifts and special needs [and a]ll learners deserve an individualized educational program.”

When I visited The Farm School, I had the opportunity to see this learning community in action. Preston told me that the school attempts to implement participatory decision-making in a diverse community (a part of having a “responsive curriculum”) and I got to see the beauty and the challenges of doing this even with elementary school students. When some young students didn’t want to participate in nature class, instead of being reprimanded, they were asked what they would prefer to do instead. Through conversation, a deal was made: they could help in the school’s garden for half the time and then take a guided nature walk. Especially with the younger students, education at The Farm School involves lots of outside time so that learning occurs in the context of everyday reality, through counting leaves or watching birds and streams. I watched as the older students played a game of Risk with Preston, discussing as they took their turns how the game relates to politics in real life (zero sum games, strategic alliances, and the cumulative effects of power begetting power) and how they felt about taking from their friends, making others suffer, or the sense of supremacy they may feel when winning. My new 11-year-old friend articulately told me about the congruencies between how he and the United States President feel about being powerful and about the fragility of that power.

Preston has a PhD from a prestigious university and worked in a large metropolitan school district for over a decade before moving to The Farm. Frustrations with changes in public education (such as policies of No Child Left Behind, which he referred to as “all children left behind”) and his inability to significantly impact the learning environment initially motivated him to find an alternative.  He told me that he didn’t move to The Farm as a revolutionary (although he acknowledged that living on The Farm has made him more radical in his views on education), but that he was sick of compromising and simply wanted to change himself in his lifetime. When talking with me, he relished in delight describing what he called the biggest change from his life before moving here: his work commute no longer involves four hours in the car each day; instead, he walks down a creek for his work commute. Further, at The Farm School, he is the principal as well as the janitor; he’s the person who gets here at 6:30 to put wood in the furnace and who turns off the lights each afternoon. Contrasting the educational environment for students in public schools and The Farm School, he uses the words “diversity versus conformity; self-actualization versus complacency.”

The children who attend The Farm School seem to benefit from this educational environment. Students in different groups interact with one another regularly, so teenage boys learn to communicate with toddlers; there is simply not the age segregation that typically occurs in a school environment. During my time at the school, I met three teenage girls, all clearly good friends. Although they were all barefoot, they dressed completely differently – one looked like a punk rocker, one like a hippie, and one like a little skater. They did not appear to feel the pressures of conformity experienced by most teenagers. After school, a very young boy who was playing outside with his mother approached me to tell me about his favorite tree; how many little boys get to have a favorite tree in their own safe haven of a three square mile playground?

Jackie, a community member whose children attend The Farm School, told me that enrollment has been low “since the change over” – that’s over 25 years of low student enrollment, and it is a challenge to cover costs and keep the school open. Preston told me that by trying to be as fluid as possible, allowing part time enrollment and work exchange for parents, they are prioritizing values over finances and hurting themselves financially. Yet Preston also says enrollment will increase again, as parents come to recognize the value of alternative education and seek out meaningful educational environments for their children. He told me that the school is “working uphill, because it’s not what the system wants.” By valuing diversity and encouraging self-actualization, The Farm School views education as a means of true human development rather than simply a hurdle producing standardized documentation and seeks to develop students as thoughtful humans rather than simply successful test takers.

Spiritual Midwifery and The Farm Midwives Today

Women on The Farm became midwives for one primary reason: because women on The Farm (and before that, on The Caravan) were having babies. Wanting to continue their steadfast devotion to natural processes and good vibes, these women did not want to enter the male-dominated, sterile hospital environment to experience labor and childbirth. So they learned how to deliver babies themselves. Ina May Gaskin is an award-winning, world-renowned midwife who developed the idea of spiritual midwifery, recognizing birth as a spiritual event as well as the importance of positive energy and physical touch in the sacred process of birth.

Certainly, spiritual midwifery has a gendered motivation: the professionalization and medicalization of childbirth, according to Ina May, has taken knowledge, power, and experience out of the hands of women. As midwives on The Farm, women are protecting other women through their knowledge and their care. Yet spiritual midwifery is about caring for both the women and men who participate in this sacramental life transition. The midwives on The Farm not only ensure that birth is physically safe; they also tend to the spiritual and emotional aspects of the birthing process. Women (or couples) come to stay on The Farm weeks before labor begins so that the midwives can be physical care providers as well as counselors, checking in with a woman or couple’s vibes and tending to emotional states to help create a successful and positive birthing experience.

Today, the Midwife Clinic on The Farm is located in an old church moved to The Farm decades ago. It includes two exam rooms, two offices, a bathroom, and a kitchen. Six women work at the clinic, two founding members who were on The Caravan, two other older women from The Farm’s early years, and two younger women in training. Pregnant women or couples travel to The Farm, stay with hosts in the community, and give birth in special birthing cabins or designated spaces in members’ homes. Although they were much busier in the first years of The Farm, an average of four babies are still born on The Farm each month (that’s 48 births a year). The clinic also hosts workshops on midwifery and a midwife’s assistant training program.

Spiritual midwifery recognizes birth as a sacred process, an opportunity for spiritual illumination and emotional elevation. A longtime member of The Farm told me that spirituality on The Farm is about recognizing life’s transitions, including birth, as spiritual sacraments. To me, it felt as if the energy surrounding The Farm community was saturated with the history of all the births that had happened there, of big pregnant bellies and new precious life; it felt like spring, in November.

Yet birth is not the only life transition given sacred meaning on The Farm. As members parents have aged, and as they themselves have grown older, they idea of ‘midwifing death’ has become important to understandings of transition. Some members of The Farm community consciously share their homes with the elderly and the dying, tending to those in their final stages of life. MaryAnn used the language “in spirit” to describe her deceased daughter and talked about the sacred nature of death and dying on The Farm. She told me, “If in our power to do so, we wouldn’t let parents die in a nursing home attended by strangers.” As the community itself has experienced the transitions of time, its spiritual ideals and practices have also come to embrace new sacraments of life, including death, and to tend to them with the same spiritual care that is given to the process of birth.

The Farm Today: Custodial Care and Transition Witnesses 

The people I met who live on The Farm today are different in many ways. Some live in bigger, newer homes, while others still live in old structures originally built (mostly out of reused building materials) by the community. Some have financially successful careers off The Farm, while others work only part time in businesses or organizations on The Farm. Some eat meat; others are vegan. Some drive old pickups; others drive new hybrid vehicles. Yet the members of The Farm community continue to share a spiritually based ethic, what I call a custodial ethic, which shapes their relationship to the land, material systems, and one another. This custodial ethic – a belief in caring for things that you do not own, even relinquishing the idea of ownership in order to more carefully tend to spiritually valuable places, practices, and relationships – has oriented the community’s practices and its use of material technologies throughout a long history and significant transitions.

One woman who lives on The Farm put it this way: “Here you have a sense of the grandness of the land. You’re part of that. You don’t own it, and you get to be part of it.” Describing the original land purchase for The Farm, one member wrote, “In the Native American sense we felt a mystical relationship to this land we had bought, and our love for it bound us together.” Forty years later, Paul told me that he thinks the most radical thing about The Farm is still the common land ownership. He said, “Like Native Americans, we share a belief that it isn’t ‘ours’ – that we’re just passing through this plane temporarily, and don’t own the land.” Paul told me that the common land is now the core of the community, and that owning land in common, because nobody can or has to pay for the land, is the radical idea that’s left after all the years and changes. As one young man from the second generation put it, “Each individual has a different connection and relationship to the land, but it’s some of the most sacred part of the community.”

Similarly, Richard told me that The Farm “is about custodial. Which means not ownership, but use.” He said, “Ultimately the amazing thing is that The Farm is still here and the land itself is still held collectively.” When Richard returned to The Farm after decades of working professionally elsewhere, he began working to solidify the legal status of The Farm so that it can’t ever be subdivided or sold for a profit. He said that this legal work is his way of leaving a legacy, through The Farm. He told me,  “Ultimately, we’re caretakers, we’re custodians of the land.”

Given the tremendous changes that have taken place throughout The Farm’s history, the community is no longer tied together by shared income, shared subsistence, or shared housing. Now, the land itself is the foundation of the community’s connection, providing what one community member described as “something spiritual.” On The Farm today, there is a large prairie, centrally located, that used to be farmed by the community. Now, this prairie is the only place in the state where one species of bird nests because of loss of prairie elsewhere. Several people mentioned this to me, saying how important this is to The Farm community. After talking about the bird in the prairie, an older woman named Lyla told me that the most important thing my generation can do is buy land and put it in trusts  – not to own it ourselves, but to protect it from private ownership by others. The Farm community has done this through a non-profit organization that has purchased almost 1,500 acres surrounding The Farm’s 1,750 acres and placed it in a conservation trust, protecting even more of the land associated with the community without any private ownership. Lyla told me that this conservation trust helps protects water quality and natural habitat, making The Farm part of a very large tract of forest, which is beneficial to the wildlife. She seemed much more interested in discussing wildlife, and the benefits The Farm provides for them, than in chatting about anything related to the humans on The Farm.

David moved to The Farm at 19 with his wife; they are now both nearing 60. David is an avid gardener and cook; when I met him, he was wearing a tie-dyed button down collared shirt under a tie-dyed apron, busy in the kitchen of his home, an old communal house converted into a duplex after the change over. David is soft spoken but articulate, with deep and intense eyes and a strong connection to what he calls “Farm spirituality.” He told me that despite all the changes on The Farm since his arrival, “The land is still held in common. That’s our strength and our union. No deeds, that involves a lot of trust. And a common understanding of some shared, basic values.”

Other people I’ve met while examining alternative technologies of dwelling have shared this custodial ethic. For example, Nancy built an Earthship in a subdivision that was once based on communal land ownership, where each homeowner owned only the land immediately surrounding their home and all else was owned in common. Describing the required legal change to standard, privately owned lots, Nancy told me, “I’m still kind of wondering about it. I hear what everybody tells me. They say, oh its great that now you have a surveyed lot and you own it. But I’m telling you Chelsea, I’m a white girl in northern New Mexico, I don’t want to own land. This land has been here for so long, this is native people’s land. This is not something I want to own.” Yet at The Farm, this custodial ethic is shared by community members and shapes their practices, decisions, and interactions as a community. For The Farm, this understanding of land as something to be cared for without private ownership represents a radical departure from, and a significant alterative future for, normalized American dwelling.

Yet on The Farm, this custodial ethic doesn’t shape only views of the land; it also orients how people think about other people. What does it mean to have a custodial ethic when it comes to social interaction and individual practice? It means, simply, to care for people while recognizing their sovereignty. The Farm has always held this ethic, and it continues to shape community practice today. Thus, there are two senses in which members of The Farm act as custodians – they are custodians of the land as well as caretakers of one another. Longtime community member Sharon acknowledged this by saying, “It’s not that you moved here because you liked the house, or the school was near by. You don’t choose to live here for those kinds of reasons. You choose to be here because you want to be in community and share your lives with people… because here people care about this property, they care about how we treat the land, they care about how we treat each other.” Similarly, Lyla told me that caring for one another has always been apart of The Farm’s vision, especially caring for those less fortunate. Members of The Farm community have always had “a deeply understood commitment to creating a spiritual community and taking care of each other.” As Richard put it, “A lot of the stuff that reflects what The Farm was originally about, that higher idealism, looking out for somebody other than yourself, looking to better mankind or humanity, still exists here on The Farm.”

Richard himself demonstrates this custodial ethic when it comes to caring for both the earth and one another. Richard installed a solar electric system on his office building located on The Farm. Since all of the golf carts on The Farm are electric, he included a charging station right next to his panels in his installation, and anyone from the community can come over and charge their golf cart batteries with his solar system. David described this as “a nice gift” from Richard, and told me that his daughter – who lives on The Farm in a home near Richard’s – uses the charging station regularly. David also uses it when he goes over to visit Richard. Yet this solar charging station is more than a nice gift. It is just one example of how this community has successfully removed the mental, physical, and/or legal barriers that private ownership often puts on openly sharing both resources and opportunities.

The Farm’s longest-lived non-profit organization, Plenty International, clearly demonstrates how the custodial ethic can shape how humans treat other humans. Like much else on The Farm, Plenty was born serendipitously. Using ham radio in the early years on The Farm as a free means of communication, members of the community heard about the 1976 earthquake that devastated Guatemala, and decided to help. Offering the skills they had learned out of necessity for life on The Farm – construction experience, medical care, agricultural knowledge, and food processing – volunteers were on the ground in Guatemala just two weeks after the disaster. They learned that the Canadian embassy had sent building supplies but no builders, so they got in contact and got to work.

Over 100 people from The Farm went to Guatemala in just four years, and over 100 people from Guatemala came to visit The Farm to learn about their processes of providing for themselves. The Farm helped establish soy production and soy processing facilities in Guatemala, including a soy dairy that still exists today.

Plenty also established an ambulance service in The Bronx for a time when the community most needed it, and has since worked on Pine Ridge Reservation, in Haiti, providing books to children post-Katrina, and in various other places and nations. This was The Farm’s national and foreign policy – looking at something outside itself with a bigger mission to serve. Paul told me that he thought this was one reason the community had survived; they have never been an insular community, they have always been outward looking, they used to actually be encouraged to leave the community for “relativity,” going away for “thirty-dayers” (month’s away), time on satellite communities, or time doing outreach work. Yet they did not simply serve; they taught the communities how to serve themselves so that the benefits would continue long after the volunteers had departed.

There is yet another way that this custodial ethic shapes social interaction on The Farm: the community members share a deep, spiritual appreciation for life’s transitions and a commitment to care for one another through them. David told me that these life transitions – birth, marriage, even divorce, and death – are the spiritual sacraments of the community. While most of the material arrangements in America have worked to remove us from these sacraments (with birth happening in a drug-induced haze in a hospital room, aging segregated and isolated to nursing homes, and death being completely medicalized), members of The Farm seek to embrace these transitions as part of a holistic spirituality of life and to care for all those going through them.

Thus, members of The Farm are witnesses of transition in two important ways. Here, I use the word ‘witness’ in the sense of ‘bearing witness,’ originally a “Quaker term for living life in a way that reflects fundamental truths. Bearing witness is about getting relationships right. The group of Quakers in the eighteenth century who built a movement to end slavery were bearing witness to the truth that slavery was wrong. Yet bearing witness to right relationships is not limited to Quakers. It is something done by inspired people of all faiths and cultures when they live life according to cherished values built on caring for other people and being stewards of the earth’s gifts.” First, the community itself has undergone profound change, yet survived this change and stands as an example of the potential to transform community without destroying it. Their custodial relationship to the land did not falter, even though the organization of the community did. Second, members of The Farm embrace life’s transitions as spiritual experiences and seek to care for one another throughout these sacraments.

Yet it seems as if the part of this custodial ethic that orients thought and action regarding the land is somewhat disconnected from the custodial ethic driving bearing witness to transition. In terms of technology use, The Farm community simply isn’t changing much. Further, The Farm community is fairly conservative when it comes to embracing technological change, even the types of changes that would be good for the land they care about so deeply.

As Richard put it, “When I came back, I tried to push the community, but now I’ve given up…. The Farm is one of the more conservative communities in America, not intolerant, but just a ‘that’s the way we do things’ attitude that can really stifle change.” Several different members told me the story of a family that wanted to move to The Farm, but wanted to build a home without a septic tank, using a method of composting human waste instead. Some community members were skeptical, and one threatened to call the health department if the community allowed them to build. This family ended up buying instead of moving to The Farm, and building their home – composting toilet and all – just outside the community’s boundaries. One apprentice at the Ecovillage Training Center told me that there’s “a whole crew” of people now living in this “just off-The-Farm bubble,” young families who wanted to build radically environmental homes and were either turned off or turned away by The Farm’s conservative attitude towards new technologies and new members.

The most radical technological innovations being pursued on The Farm taking place at the Ecovillage Training Center (ETC), an educational organization founded by a longtime community member and located on The Farm. A constant construction site, the ETC includes a ramshackle collection of about 10 structures that include straw bale buildings, earthen plaster walls, rainwater catchment, a grey water wetland, recycled blue jean insulation, solar electric power, solar hot water heating, living roofs, outdoor earthen ovens, a geodesic dome that now serves as a storage shed, a chicken coup that I am told is the oldest cob structure east of the Mississippi and even composting toilet outhouses. They grow bamboo, shitake mushrooms, and other food in permaculture gardens. There is a small inn at ETC where workshop participants and other visitors to The Farm can stay, built – just like all of the original buildings – out of recycled barn wood and powered mostly by the small solar system on the roof. The ETC hosts workshops on permaculture and edible forest design as well as natural building techniques and environmentally friendly technological systems, bringing in young and enthusiastic participants who are learning important, world-changing skills. Between eight and 15 people work at ETC at any given time, including some Farm members, apprentices who come to live and work temporarily, and people who near the community but are not community members – importantly, because they are interested in radical technological alternatives that are not embraced on The Farm.

The ETC is quite isolated from the larger community surrounding it; most community members have no connection to the ETC at all. Most importantly, the knowledge and skills developed at the ETC have no impact on The Farm as a whole. One community member said, “We’re all frustrated that we’re not further along in living with alternative technology.” Yet even my host, Paul, used the language of “return on investment” when talking about solar power, saying that the “financial incentives just aren’t there.” Paul also acknowledged that “For some people, with the change over, it was like, well if The Farm can’t work economically, what am I believing in, and some people lost their idealism or their optimism. I think the younger folks down at ETC have that they way we used to, but I don’t think they’re really seen or heard by the larger community, and I don’t have any idea how to change that.”

With the community’s ethic oriented so strongly to custodial care for the land and for one another, they have abandoned, ignored, or downright resisted some of the more radical, environmentally beneficial technological alternatives that others embrace when dwelling in resistance.

The Farm Community: Spiritual Networks and Space

The Farm, like the other examples of alternative technology adoption I have studied, illustrates the complicated nature of the relationship between space, community identity, power, and potential. Even for the community members who still live on The Farm, even for those who say the common land is the most sacred bind of the community, the community is not limited to the actual physical space of The Farm.

One of The Farm midwifes told me, “The Farm is not this space, it is a church and a network.” Another community member explained, “We are bound by religion, by language, by institutions, by land, by diet, by this unique experience called The Farm.” Karen was on The Caravan, but then lived in a satellite community in California for years. When that community disintegrated, she moved to Tennessee but lived and worked in Nashville. When she could afford to, she built a home on The Farm, but now she spends about half her time in California, where her children live. She told me, “This is my community, even when I’m not here. We are a tribe.”

Just as the Catholic Church is a space-transcending community, so too is The Farm. Past members who now live elsewhere, as well as people who have never lived there but connect to the community’s spiritual beliefs and practices, are included in the community, even among those who have lived on The Farm since the beginning.

As Paul told me, “A lot of people left with the switch to a co-op, but The Farm community is really bigger than this one place, it’s all over the place, and it’s that community that matters. We have a reunion every year, last year with about 500 people there. A lot of people from The Farm relocated to California, so some parties in the Bay area are really just Farm parties. The community membership, for us, is not necessarily even spatial. We’ve both lived on Farm satellite communities, even an urban one. I still feel more membership to this Farm community than the whole county, or this state, or whatever. And I think I would feel that even if we lived some place else.”

Language is one of tangible example of the spatially complicated nature of identity. The Farm community still has a collective vocabulary, connected to its hippie history and its spirituality. Spiritual Midwifery includes a list of potentially unfamiliar terms and phrases that are used a lot throughout the book, things like “manifestation” (bring about through focused energy) and “telepathic” (connected) and “high” (emotionally, not drug-induced) and “tripping” (struggling, not drug-induced). People on The Farm still use this language. I heard Mindy use the phrase “I wouldn’t cop to that” – where cop (a word listed in Spiritual Midwifery) is somewhat, but not exactly, like the phrase “cop out.” It is likely that people who no longer live on The Farm also still use this language, a connection not only to their past but also their current spiritual understanding.

During my time on The Farm, accents were the most striking example of how The Farm community demonstrates the non-spatially-prioritized nature of identity. Lyla moved to The Farm 28 years ago, but still speaks with the thick Long Island accent she acquired in childhood.

No one on The Farm speaks with the southern drawl one might expect to hear in middle Tennessee. Yet while explaining energy fields and the astral plane (what we often refer to as intuition) as important aspects of Farm spirituality, David talked about ‘splitting’ or ‘sharing’ energy fields and used this example: people from The Farm take on stronger southern accents when they go to the nearest town. Although many of the community members have lived on The Farm for decades, they have not acquired the accent typical in their spatial location, although they have the fluidity (perhaps because of their spiritual recognition of energy fields, and sharing them) to temporarily adopt them when in a more spatially defined environment.

These notes on language simply help to support, and highlight, what community members themselves told me: The Farm as a community is bigger than, and not defined by, the spatial location of the land on which it is located. Further, the actual and potential means of effecting change in this community are not spatially bound; instead, many others who identify with this church or tribe share the ideas and practices embraced by this community.

Conclusion: Technologies of Care as Technologies of More

People who live on The Farm certainly dwell differently than most contemporary Americans. They live in homes without mortgages, avoiding the un-freedom that inevitably accompanies large debts. They live on land that they do not privately own, indicating the potential to reshape neighborhoods and communities to avoid the downfalls of private land ownership and bolster community through sharing common land. They live in a community where there are no streetlights, or police, where people know one another and feel safe even without security lights at night. They live in a community that does not value material displays of wealth, valuing simplicity instead. Many of them drive standard cars significantly less than most Americans because they can use electric powered golf carts to go to work (if they work in the community), stop at the store, and visit a friend.

Begun as a spiritual community and still officially registered as a church, The Farm is held together by a common set of spiritual principles and values. As one female member said, “You don’t have to argue about nonviolence on The Farm. And The Farm is such a school for nonviolence, with midwifery, nonviolence and birth, with the school, nonviolence and education, there’s so many aspects of that… that’s such a strong force for humanity.” These common bonds, described here as a custodial ethic, have survived over four decades and significant organizational transitions. The alternative forms of technological organization on The Farm – from steady-state economics, to common ownership, to alternative energy, alternative birth, alternative education, and alternative death, are motivated by an underlying custodial ethic that has always been part of both spirituality and practice at The Farm. Seeing themselves as custodians, not owners, people on The Farm seek alternative arrangements for living based on their values. The alternative technological arrangements related to care – care for the land and care for each other – are the most significant alternatives presented by The Farm. Yet while this custodial ethic orients the values and practices of the community, it may also contribute to some of the more conservative attitudes toward new technology, and new people, that potentially threaten the community’s future longevity.

No new community buildings have been constructed on The Farm since the change over in 1983. New memberships on The Farm are rare, the population is certainly aging, and many of the younger folks on The Farm today were described to me as “second generation kids with nowhere better to be.” A couple older community members said that these second generation members do not have the motivation or skills to keep the community going without their parents.

Although Paul told me that he felt the community would thrive with more members, others are hesitant to increase their numbers. Further, some potential new members experience a sort of distancing from the more conservative and more hesitant longstanding members in the community. An ETC apprentice told me about wanting to join a weekly dominoes game that takes place on The Farm, and being told that she needed to live in the community for three years before she could attend. Other potential members choose to live outside the community because of their reluctance to accept alternative technologies like composting toilets.

Brian is the one exception to this generalization regarding the lack of new, young, motivated community members. Brian and his partner moved to The Farm to have their first child, and have been community members for 8 years. Brian works at the ETC (which he enthusiastically describes as “action packed theory”) and is incredibly passionate about radical, environmentally sound technology.

He’s been working on the construction of his home, a cordwood and natural plaster building, since they moved to The Farm. He put a small solar panel directly onto his golf cart to keep the batteries charged. He charges the batteries for his power tools using a self-built perpetual motion device.  He describes himself as “a mad scientist.” During our second meeting, when he was showing me his home and his shop, he told me, “We don’t have an energy crisis. We have a crisis of scientific dogma at the institutional level right down to elementary school… thermodynamics assumes the system is closed, but everything has a frequency, some faster than we can perceive. The supply of energy in our society is the lever of control, they powers that be don’t want to their loose grip on energy control, but it’s about control of way more than money…. The question, though, is this: do we want technologies of life, or technologies of death?”

In this last point, Brian sounded very much like the most well known proponent of appropriate technologies, who inspired many of The Farm’s original members, Buckminster Fuller. He told us long ago that we could work with technologies that make less out of more, or more out of less; that it was a choice we as society could direct.

Talking about The Farm community making this choice, Brian said, “We have this great opportunity, and this great challenge, to maintain this reservation for our tribe in a way that allows us to be even more independent from all of the different energy inputs it takes to have a town. So that’s going to be a challenge for everybody everywhere, I feel like it’s the same for us except that with the solidarity of everyone working with each other, we have an advantage I think, if we’re smart about it.

Yet although Brian is a community member, he is a relatively distanced one: he works for an organization that is fairly isolated within the community, and he differs from most community members in age as well as motivational drive and outspoken radicalism. The Farm community, oriented by a custodial ethic, does embrace certain ‘technologies of more’ – steady-state relations to profit mean both more community trust and arguably more community wealth, technologies of care such as midwifing both birth and death help to right both physical and spiritual relationships, alternative forms of education can help students develop rather than teaching them to conform, local and organic food production as well as vegetarianism and veganism are good for the resiliency of the body and the planet, strong family and community connections provide resources in times of change and in times of need.

Yet their focus on shared land, and the sharing of human connection, has distracted them – over the decades – from the potential for more radical orientations to material arrangements, technological structures, and possibilities.

While younger Americans today may be drawn to The Farm’s non-dogmatic and emotionally in-tune spirituality, they may – and have been – turned off by The Farm’s conservatism with regard to new ideas and practices about how to differently dwell for the sake of the planet, ourselves, and one another.

NOTES