Re: Sustainable ag and cohousing
From: Joel Woodhull (jwoodhulligc.apc.org)
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 14:41:01 -0500
 
King Collins brings up a topic dear to our hearts, involvement of
the  co-housing movement as consumers of sustainable agriculture. 
Although we can't help with the direct question of possible
interest in the Minneapolis area, I'd like to give a brief report
of our progress in Sonoma County, CA.
 
Last September, in response to a query on getting around rural
zoning, I posted an idea intended to strengthen urban boundaries,
called the Urban-Rural Dipole, in which farms just outside city
limits would be tightly linked to cohos within the city limits as
both consumers and grower participants.  An anticipated obstacle
to that idea was the difficulty of a cohousing group reaching
agreement on two sites when it was so difficult to establish a
single residential site.
 
When the topic came up again in March of this year, my wife and I
were still living in Pasadena, but had joined the Jewell Hill
group in Sonoma County that was negotiating on the Jewell Hill
site within the town of Sebastopol, CA.  We were also in escrow
on a 9 acre parcel just outside the town boundary, where we could
establish a farm.  The two sites were just 4 miles apart.
 
Alas, by late May when we arrived in Sebastopol, the coho site
negotiations had come to naught, and another site was being
pursued that was 3 times as far away.
 
Although we stayed with the Jewell Hill group, primarily because
of friendships, it is becoming clearer that rigid linkages
between a single farm and a single cohousing group may not be
workable.  We are continuing in our personal efforts to establish
the farm because it seems just the right place to do it.  But now
we think that linkages to cohos will be more feasible if they are
made on an opportunistic basis to any cohos that happen to spring
up in the nearby area, as they undoubtedly will.
 
A brief experience with a CSA has given us some healthy
skepticism of that mechanism, but it may be that some variant of
the CSA will prove workable.
 
Joel Woodhull
Sebastopol

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