I just realized I’ve never written, except peripherally, about our household, and that may be the most sustainable, empowering process at Kentucky Street. The Farm part- what I’ve lately come to think of as the growing & planning & learning about handbuilt, out of the mainstream resources for living- is mostly my own interest, with participation from outside our immediate household. The three of us, however, are actively exploring a sort of communism- small group communitarianism, or combinism (from COMbine, the word we’ve used lately to describe our “commune”). We each put in what we have and dispense according to need. QR once said “if there isn’t enough for everybody, there isn’t enough for anybody”. Exactly.We didn’t come together through any formal articulation of principles or goals, although we could easily write it up after the fact. I suspect there’re quite a few households following similar practices, especially in these harrowing times.
The story of how it came together is pretty simple, so I’ll stretch it with some personal history. For years and years, I’ve thought about the future- what skills or resources I’d personally bring forward to some unspecified time when, unwed & child-free by choice, I couldn’t work at all for a living, couldn’t find barter or buyers for my artwork, beloved junk, or miscellaneous skills, or was just plain old tired of struggling through another search for another landlord, new roommates to help carry the cost, another new low-level, low-pay job, or another stretched meal or bus fare.
It was the late 1960s, 70s & 80s. There were plenty of back-to-the earth & environmental groups & communes. There were vital, informed revolutionaries & outside-the-box thinkers. The majority of my parents’ friends, & later my own, were artists & teachers & activists & musicians. Funds for college and living expenses were available to me, thanks to my grandparents & parents foresight & planning; federal school money was easy & abundant if they hadn’t.
Clearly, I had every opportunity to develop an off-grid, out-of-the-mainstream, naturally sustainable, biocompatible lifestyle- but it meant nothing to me, then, even though I was trepidatious about the future. I didn’t have the knowledge or the skills to do something like that on my own, I was on my own, and I wasn’t interested in the communes I knew of.
I was certainly living outside of the American middle-class mainstream, but I was just as certainly living off mainstream crumbs- social services, unskilled jobs, unreliable rental housing. Very lucky breaks gave me occasional paying theater & art jobs, a tiny steady income and a terrific studio for almost 20 years. I never made more than a few thousand a year on the books, but it was plenty enough to keep me going, with constant community involvements to keep my mind & spirit occupied.
The people I knew were either property owners with retirement savings & investments & paying professions, expectations of inheriting a house or money, living with their kids, or people in the same no-equity/no-skill/no-off-spring boat as me. When I asked about what they planned for the future, the usual answers were along the lines of “work till I die” or “ I don’t know & I don’t want to think about it.” Oh, and then there’s the positive visualization, whatever happens is meant to be, and California-style karmic justice hopefulness- another form of expectations of inheritance, really.
There were friends who liked my dream of “circling the wagons”- trailors or RVs or apartments we owned, or safely mortgaged, all together- a circle of shelters where we’d grow older & older, together. As one friend said, “ If one of us lost our eyesight, & another lost their hearing, together we’d equal a 30 year old!”
But the interested friends weren’t interested in doing anything practical toward that goal. By now, they’re all healthy & independent & alone.
The only thing I could imagine doing personally was more of the same- and the only thing I could see at the end of the same was growing older & older in an atmosphere of a diminishing social security benefits, rising energy, food & health costs, tighter & tighter rental housing, and final ruin.
The dread got stronger sometime in my mid- or late 40s. I noticed I was careening into elder-hood without a paddle, so to speak. Or a boat, for that matter. I knew that my main job, funded as it was by private and government grants, was pretty precarious, and that I had no other means of providing a living for myself, outside of pumping cappuccino or clerical or maid work- the province of much younger people these days.
So I went to school and became a registered nurse. The decision, while quite far from any of my previous experience or dreaming, was easy. In nursing, it doesn’t matter how old you are, you can always get a wide variety of jobs, it takes only two concentrated years of training, it pays well, and it’s a personally meaningful job.
Once I had a regular income, I wanted a house of my own more than anything else; I didn’t- and don’t- want to face an older age under the roof of a landlord who could throw me out if they wanted to. Or could die before I did, or have to sell the place, or had kids who wanted to move in, or wanted out of the landlord business- forget it.
A fortunate confluence of events- a good credit rating, low prime interest rates, parents who’d (thankfully) cover the closing costs, and a bank-impressive job title and salary, let me take a low interest fixed-rate mortgage with nothing down on my dream houses: three one-hundred-plus year old houses, one of them habitable, on one lot near the aging downtown of my bankrupt city.
I continued – and continue!- to want to share the wealth and the labor, if not my Dream. My beloved mate- we’d married each other by then- is no more competent at building and gardening and resource planning than I am, which is not all, and a lot less interested than that.
So, over the first four or fives years here, I invited three different people to come on board. In words, we shared similar visions. In practice- well, not.
Two people left after high-speed falls on part of my bottom line: feeling bad or angry or whatever isn’t an excuse for antisocial behavior or personal insult- although it might be a reason, which we can work with together. One of them left dollar and material debt; one a persistent bad taste. One- a Treasurer- kept common house finances, like the mortgage for God’s sake, on his list of Things We Don’t Talk About. One turned from helpful participant to flat-out thief, and was dispatched in short order; a fourth- not a full invitation, but a short-term well-defined trial this time- turned out to be a sexist, vulgar, incompetent, desperate, lying, well-read fraud. I booted him in even shorter order. I’d known two of them pretty well over the years; we had common history and cohort.
Then, over a year ago now, came Patian. She’s our current treasurer. She’s grown in to a much expanded position: she runs the functional household, pays the bills, stocks the shelves, directs the Middle House (Patian’s House) building, finds major goods and materials we need- free or very, very cheap- and keeps the car and truck running.
I’d known her for a month or less when I made the offer. We’d shared an immediate sense of knowing each other, recognizing something essential. She said, “you know, our dreams aren’t the same, but they’re similar- I think we could help each other.” She was right.
Another farmer’s joined us, too, although he lives at the river and has outside jobs. T. He's a heart-felt communitarian, with the skills we don't have- he builds & mechanics & notices what needs to be around here & does it. He’s a Finder like Patian- he brings food & furniture & lumber & firewood & appliances and knowledge, plus a big dose of creativity. S is another: we became great Friends, sharing many common interests, including cultivating herbs & food & singing the Old songs- now we practice garden sharing, labor and harvest and knowledge.
The central three of us pool our available resources- P & I all our cash, Q an agreed sliding-scale dollar bank deposit every month. We’ve made a lifelong oath- to stay on board with all we’ve got. I’m the only one of us with outside employment, and the only one of us really interested in the gardens or my fuller dream, although Q & P support me theoretically. Sort of.
The marvelous thing is that we’re doing it. We’ve fallen heavily on each other’s various bottom lines and pulled ourselves up and worked it out. We’ve reached a sort of balance regarding house/garden tasks and common holdings. I can work part-time without stress about bills and payments and budgets, time left for art and science and exploration. Q’s left alone to his musings and arts and writing, and Pash has a place to live and care for. And, of course, whatever happens, we have each other.
