Update 7: Living Energy Farm

I've now been to Living Energy Farm (LEF) twice.  Once for a few hours on a Saturday when I was at Acorn and again for a few hours on a Saturday when I was at Twin Oaks.  It's a fairly desolate place.  The land had been clearcut a couple of years ago just before they bought the property and things are slowly growing back.  There wasn't much on it to speak of so they are building the place from scratch.  When I went there in September I pulled nails out of old boards they were hoping to reuse.  When I went in November, I helped shovel mulch into a pickup truck so they could use it for fruit trees on another part of the property.  They are trying to use as much cheap and recycled material as possible.

The goal at LEF is to be fossil fuel free and they have given themselves three years to build the infrastructure (using fossil fuels as necessary) before they plan to completely give them up.  Meanwhile, things there are sparce and spare; it's quite the contrast with Twin Oaks, for example, that's so organized and developed.  Then I think about how Twin Oaks probably looked forty years ago when they were just starting up.  The people working at LEF have a long way to go but they are pretty committed.

Living Energy Farm is one of the places that I'm thinking about putting some energy into.  It's a community with a good mission that's in a very early stage.  After working with Alexis (one of the principle organizers of the community) who was explaining that he appreciated all their interns and the help he was getting from them but also concerned that most of them were pretty unskilled, I asked him how he'd feel about having someone for an intern that was not only unskilled but old.  He looked right at me and said, "I'd take *you* as an intern."  I thought that was a really sweet thing to say--and I do hope to do an internship with them at some point and be part of building this fledgling community.  It will be really interesting to see what this place looks like in a couple of years.


Quote of the Day: "The Living Energy Farm is a project to build a community, education center, and farm that demonstrates that a fulfilling life is possible without the use of any fossil fuel. Our mission is to serve as an example and actively promote lifestyles and technologies that are truly sustainable, and to make these sustainable technologies accessible to all persons regardless of their income or social position." - Living Energy Farm's Mission Statement