Cohousing-L Mailing List: Gray and Green Farm Community in Vermont

[Dan Hurley (dan]

The Gray and Green Farm Community is being organized in northeastern Vermont
around an existing organic dairy farm and is negotiating the purchase of an
adjacent dairy farm. The primary organizers are the owners of the organic
dairy and a semi-retired agricultural journalist.

 

We have an informal group of potential residents and are attracted to many
aspects of cohousing. We are just beginning to actively promote the
community.  We need people and good ideas.

 

Gray & Green Farm will be a green, mixed-income, intentional community
primarily for people over age 55, committed to preserving an active,
sustainable dairy. 

 

Out-of-state baby boomers are buying up --- for what they consider a song
--- farms and forest land for second and retirement homes, distorting
property values and taxes, increasing pressure on Vermont agriculture,
making decent housing too expensive for many people with low and middle
incomes (especially the rural elderly) --- and threatening the social and
natural environment. 

Gray & Green has adapted the notion of a retirement community to a rural,
mixed-income community in northeastern Vermont --- where residents will
share an enlightened, compassionate lifestyle, as stewards of an organic
dairy farm and the surrounding, magnificent natural environment. 

The community is combining two farms. The lower 60+ acre dairy farm,
straddles a small river, just before it empties into the Connecticut River,
which separates Vermont from New Hampshire. This farm is certified organic.
The other dairy farm is well over 300 acres.

There's been a rapid decline in the number of Vermont's small, working dairy
farms. It  still boasts more than any other New England state, but forces
are building that could wipe them out completely--- the skyrocketing price
of farm and forestland (set off by the second and retirement home boom),
milk that increasingly is treated as a commodity, a federal price support
system that penalizes small northeastern operations; a continuing steep
climb in the price of feed, fertilizers and chemicals (aggravated by the
swift, absurdly-subsidized emergence of an artificial market for corn-based
fuel) upon which most commercial agriculture is dependent..

 

There's a severe shortage of affordable housing for the rural elderly, who
are particularly affected by the weakening of small towns' traditional sense
of community. The elderly may be the local residents most affected by the
economic and social disruption resulting from the influx of wealthy boomers
buying properties for retirement and second homes. 

 

We will use the second/retirement home phenomenon to preserve an active,
sustainable farm and help finance an economically-integrated, green
community for active, older adults. It would consist of two residential
clusters and a common-house on unproductive, non-agricultural land. Some
expensive residential units in each cluster will be marketed as retirement
homes to wealthy baby boomers who dislike the prospect of a purposeless life
in exclusive, gated golf-and-tennis retirement communities, but who would be
attracted to a supportive rural farm community dedicated to a sustainable
future, and who would help subsidize the less expensive housing.. 

 

The new community will be organized as a condominium, on the co-housing
model, controlled by resident members, who would own their own dwellings and
be bound to preservation and stewardship of the farm operation and the land
by deed and contractual restrictions. 

 

We envision a community of up to 30 households where residents share a
comfortable, compassionate lifestyle, while they operate an organic dairy,
develop other sustainable farm enterprises and protect the natural
environment. 

 

We'll practice sustainable land management-organic farming, ecological
forestry, and minimization of waste. We will maintain the natural contours
of the land and encourage biodiversity through responsible stewardship.
Intelligent management and careful planning can assure the farms' future.
The community will protect wildlife, soil and water. All homes will
incorporate green construction and "universal design" principles to
encourage both aging-in-place and sustainable living. The community will be
economically integrated --- no rich or poor neighborhoods --- all households
sharing equally in common facilities.

Purchasers must subscribe to certain basic principles, like environmental
conservation and active farm preservation, and so-called "green" values,
like energy conservation and sustainability. Whitelaw Farm would have no
particular ideology or political stance, but be sensitive to the diverse
needs of individuals in the community. 

To contact the community's organizers for more information, or to share
ideas, go to www. grayandgreen.net. Or just respond to this email on the
mailing list.

Dan Hurley

Barnet VT