Cohousing-L Mailing List: Farming as a ecomonic community endeavor

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

 Utah valley commons is setting up a community farm as part of their
community design.  What I would be interested to know is the scale of the
farming vs. the actual mortgage cost of housing. Most communities that try
and set up agricultural elements find that the income from agriculture is
far too low to support the costs of living for more than one or two members
of a community, and that seems only work if you have substantial
agricultural facilities, or very low overhead housing and living conditions.
For example, there is a thriving small farm business down the road from me,
intensively farming 15 acres and the family which owns it works 16 hour days
growing and filling vegetable subscriptions and they take home less than
$2,000 a month from two full time plus one part time child worker. They have
no health insurance, and a growing debt.  I would love to see farming
actually financially work but, having been in that business as a youth I
know that one bad season can take a decade to recover from.  This is not to
say that growing food is in any way a bad idea, but depending upon income
from farming is pretty difficult in most places. 

Rob Sandelin
Former FFA member
Sharingwood Cohousing
Snohomish County, WA