Red Earth Farms

A week ago Saturday, the visitor's group I'm in at Dancing Rabbit went on a tour of the nearby community of Red Earth Farms.  The relationship between DR and REF reminds me of the relationship between Twin Oaks and Acorn.  (See my posts on Update 2: The Acorn Community, 9/14/12, and Update 6: Life at Twin Oaks, 12/4/12.)  Dancing Rabbit and Twin Oaks are both large sized communities that are high on structure and policies, where Red Earth Farms and Acorn were much smaller and more into individual freedom and figuring it out as they went along.  The big difference is that where Twin Oaks and Acorn were both income sharing communities and very strong on sharing everything, DR and REF are both much more individually oriented--while they both share a bunch (particularly DR), at DR there's a strong sense of  'this is mine' and 'I need to make sure I'm being paid for what I do', and REF (which is a homesteaders community) is divided into individual sites with the expectation that each site can pretty much do what they want (although they're all pretty committed to sustainable, ecological living and most of them live rather simply).

On the other hand, the REF homesteads are quite interesting.  Since there
are no rules about what anyone can do or can't do, each of them is pretty
different.  One in particular had a house that was very old fashioned and
obviously hand built.  Several people said that when they entered it they
had the sensation of going back more than a century in time.

And it's important to note the back and forth between DR and REF--I've
seen a bunch of folks from REF hanging out at DR from time to time and
people at each community will say, 'I built this with the help of
so-and-so at ...' the other community.  This interconnecting of the two
communities also reminds me a lot of the relationship between Twin Oaks
and Acorn.  But both communities here have a strong interelationship with
the third community in Rutledge, Sandhill, which is also the oldest of the
three.  I'll write about that next.

Quote of the Day: "Red Earth Farms is an intentional community of
homesteads sharing a 76-acre land trust in the rolling hills of northeast
Missouri. Our community’s mission is to creatively explore and evaluate
sustainable ways to meet our needs in accordance with our guiding
principle: 'Love the land; love your neighbors.' " - from Red Earth Farms'
website