Cohousing-L Mailing List: SW Washington Cohousing

[Thomas Lofft (tlofft]

On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 1:31 PM, Mary Baker, Solid Communications <mary [at] 
solid-communications.com> wrote:

  We're looking at lifestyle choices for my 88-year-old Dad. He's lived on this 
farm all his life but can't take care of it anymore. Ideally, he would like to 
stay here, but we want to consider other options too. Frankly I'm bored and 
lonely here, so if he does decide to sell, I'm thinking a cohousing might be 
the best choice for both of us. Mixed-age cohousing with senior care or 
amenities would be ideal.
  Suggestions?
  Mary
  _________________________________________________________________

Mary,

I am thinking one option is to solicit interest for developing your father's 
farm as a new cohousing community, to bring in 30-40 new communitarian 
households to take over care, maintenance and management of the farm and 
property while they move through the rigors of new community development, 
presuming that such may be possible in that location.

Among many examples I might offer are Blueberry Hill Cohousing in Vienna, VA, 
where the family developed a cohousing community on its organic vegetable farm 
and built homes for four family members, kept the best agricultural land for 
maintaining the farm, sold homesites to several other joiners and close to 20 
years later, it's still a thriving intergenerational cohousing community and 
very active agricultural enterprise.

http://www.potomacvegetablefarms.com/

Potomac Vegetable Farms<http://www.potomacvegetablefarms.com/>
www.potomacvegetablefarms.com
Organic farm offering subscription shares. News, recipes, and a description of 
their produce. Vienna.


Another example is Liberty Village, MD which acquired a 27 acre rural area 
historic homestead, the last remaining remnant of a 600 acre land grant from 
the 1600's, financed it as an improved property instead of raw land, and 
created a partnership of 23 households to co-develop the property as a thriving 
cohousing community which now has 18 multigenerational homes, and several 
younger newcomers who have moved in to join the remaining seniors of the 
original settlers, revitalizing the community with 24 energetic youngsters. All 
families are welcome here and we're moving forward to build another ten new 
homes. Lots of space for gardens and wanderers.

Tom Lofft

Liberty Village, MD