Earning a Living – excerpted from The Farm Then and Now

Earning a Living – excerpted from The Farm Then and Now by Douglas Stevenson

No matter where we are or who we are, every society must have ways for its people to generate income in order to function. How this is accomplished in many ways is defined by the culture and values of the group. For the Farm this has been at the core of its evolution and continues to be one of the most significant challenges to sustain its existence.

Going all the way back to San Francisco, the residents of the Haight were basically on their own while experimenting with the early stages of collectivity. Some people worked at “straight” jobs like the post office or bussing tables. Others took advantage of the liberal welfare policies and food stamps program present in California at that time. The term “crash pad” was born, with houses and apartments opened up to the ever expanding population of idealistic youth pouring into the city, providing a floor, a couch, a mattress, a bit of warmth and a dry place to sleep. Communes and collectives served as loose structures to keep the cost of living down to nearly nothing, so that a young person could exist on little more than a bowl of rice and music.

When Monday Night Class, the weekly gathering of up to 2000 expanded minds, transformed into oddessy known as The Caravan, the dynamics had begun to shift. Buses would need gas every day. People living on the road needed food. Buses would break down and need new parts. All these things took real money, and as the mobile community began to crystallize apart from the support system that had flowed so easily in the city, the connection between work and sustenance was seen as a vital relationship on the path to enlightenment.

Although The Caravan benefited from a few folks that had small inheritances and savings, whenever possible after entering a new city, groups of people would head into the surrounding area to knock on doors seeking work of any kind, basically day labor. Young, eager and with only a short commitment, the enthusiastic workers were able to experience the fruits and rewards of their labors, gaining the understanding that work could be seen as the expression of love and that money could be transformed from the root of all evil into the material manifestation of energy.

Right Livelihood
Settling on the land in Tennessee was an even greater shift. Almost overnight the vision went from how to get by another day to how do we build an existence that can sustain us over a lifetime? What does it take to build a town from scratch? What form does this become when you have rejected the established routes as set in place by the greater society?

In seeking the raw essence of what this meant, Stephen put forth the Buddhist concept of Right Livelihood, defined as work that is seamless with your ideals. A person’s daily toil should not compromise their principles, but serve as a tool for the expression of their beliefs and outlook on the world.

In the first years of The Farm there was unlimited opportunity for each person to discover how they could contribute. With so much need before them waiting to be fulfilled, it seemed logical to begin with the basics and go from there. To feed the people we would grow food. The community must have water. The buses would serve as immediate shelter, but it was clear that buildings of all types must be constructed. The sick must be cared for. Children must be helped to learn. These elements of daily life became the foundation for what was truly important and thus defined the work to be accomplished each day and the goals for the foreseeable future.

In certain ways the economic structure of The Farm became its great strength and its weakness. The spiritual truth that resonated in all hearts was that we are all one. Under this spirit of unity we would care for each other, using the Book of Acts from the Bible as a guiding principle that could be understood by all who joined and by the greater society outside The Farm. No one held personal money. All income was shared and used to support the whole. This shared economic responsibility also left the role of earning money in an open and nebulous state.

It was believed that for a person to find true fulfillment in their work, they should choose a task that resonated completely with who they were as a person. This would allow them to put forth all their energy without holding back, achieving joy combined with material results. People were allowed and encouraged to find the work that suited them best, often trying out various types of tasks and endeavors until settling in on a field or career path that felt right.

Because no one used or needed money for their life on The Farm, the concept of starting or running a business did not enter most people’s minds. They worked at things that needed to be done and if this also provided a way to generate revenue for The Farm, so much the better.

It could be said that The Farm’s name comes from what was identified as the clearest form of right livelihood, growing food. As all gardeners have discovered, it is easy to grow more than you can consume, and selling extra produce to Tennessee neighbors became a way for the Farming crew to generate the money needed to buy seed, to put gas in the tractors and cover other expenses in the formidable task of feeding several hundred people.

Early on The Farm was introduced to sweet potatoes, a staple of the south. Every spring seed potatoes from the previous year are spouted and those sprouts planted to produce that year’s crop. Tennessee’s rural population in the 1970’s still raised home gardens and the Farming Crew discovered there was a demand for sweet potato spouts or “slips.” This became one of the first commercial ventures on The Farm, a “crop” grown specifically for income. Unlike other crops which may take many months until harvest, sweet potato slips achieve their state of readiness rather quickly, over just a few weeks. Sold in the spring just after the last frost, their sale brought in money to The Farming Crew when it was needed most, the busy planting season.

Gaining Skills
During these early years money earned from working outside The Farm was almost a side benefit to the actual purpose: training. Being green city kids who had never done much in the way of actual work, members of The Farm had to start learning real skills, and quick. In order to gain knowledge about building, some folks rented a house in Nashville, about 70 miles to the north, and got jobs doing construction. They learned how to swing a hammer and basic framing, how to properly construct a roof and put down shingles so that the roof won’t leak. From laying the foundation to finishing the interior, every aspect of building had to be learned by someone so that those skills could be brought back to the community and used to build our town. The Nashville house became a small commune of its own with a revolving set of families and workers, as people became anxious to gain the skills acquired through this hands-on apprenticeship.

The Book Company
As a way to disseminate Stephen Gaskin’s spiritual philosophy and outlook on the universe, Stephen’s lectures at Monday Night Class were recorded on tape and then transcribed into text. This text was then edited and turned into a book of the same name, printed and distributed by a small San Francisco publishing company called Book People. To capitalize on the new age mysticism emanating from San Francisco, Random House picked up the distribution rights to Monday Night Class and published a second book of edited transcripts from Stephen’s talks from the national lecture/bus tour, entitled simply “The Caravan.”

The prestige and excitement of acceptance by this international publishing powerhouse became quickly diminished as it grew clear that Random House was not going to put its advertising mite behind the promotion of these esoteric titles. Disillusioned and with the youthful bravado that exemplified The Farm at that time, the community took back the rights to the two books after the contract ran out and made the correct assumption that it could do a better job of promotion than a relatively disinterested giant corporation.

The Book Publishing Company was formed as the first real business on The Farm. Assuming it would need to manage every aspect of production, a few folks were dispatched to Nashville where they found jobs in the printing industry. Following this same hands-on approach that had worked so well for learning construction, the folks engaged in this work studied the craft, became familiar with the machines and the many steps necessary to convert raw paper into the printed word.

Within a few years The Farm had acquired an array of printing presses, including the equipment needed to put out beautiful full color covers and interior illustrations. The Book Company set up the means to produce the aluminum plates used by the presses. It established a dark room for a team of photographers. Every aspect of publishing, including an office staff along with people to do sales, gave The Farm a better understanding of what it would take to start and manage the businesses it would need to move beyond skilled and unskilled labor and into a fully functioning community economy.