EcoVillage and Community Living: Surviving the New Economy

Have you ever considered community living or ecovillage living? Perhaps you have no clue what I'm even talking about. The idea behind ecovillage living and community living is to live amongst other people, and learn to work together to live off the land. As we see our country's financial situation getting worse with each given day, many people are starting to turn to these not-so-new styles of living.

My husband and I have recently been looking into the community type living situation. Our big plan is to find some other families who would be interested in going in with us to purchase a large section of land. Ideally, it will be a sprawling piece of land that is great for hunting, has fertile land for farming and have some water sources on it. Our plan, if it works out, is to have several houses on this piece of land, whether they are pre-existing or built from the ground up, to house each family.

As with any community or ecovillage living situation, the families will all work together to farm the land and provide for one another. As we watch our economy deteriorate, it becomes apparent to us that we need to learn to be self-sufficient. Not only for food but also for work. My husband has a terrific job so finding a self-sufficient job for him will be difficult. On the other hand, we are working to become completely debt free and would like to buy this large bit of land with cash when we do it.

I have spoken to many people in our community as well as in other parts of our country who are very interested in the idea of community living. It's almost like we're going back to the days of 'Little House on the Prairie', but it does make sense if you think about it.

Many of us are already so spoiled. We live in nice houses with pools and spacious backyards. We have access to the internet, fancy cell phones and go out and spend gobs of money on groceries and other luxuries. In a way, I think that I would miss that kind of lifestyle, but then I realize how free I would be from the worldliness of the world if I left it. Being able to farm and hunt will provide a much healthier eating lifestyle due to the fact our family will not be consuming all of the processed foods out there. Without the spoils of technology we can pick and choose which elements of technology we want in our lives and will be able to better shield our children from some of the unnecessary gore that is out there. (Note Brittney Spear's new 'If You Seek Amy' song.) I think it would be nice to be able to live and work alongside some of our closest friends and family, knowing that we are no longer a slave to society, at least not as much, as we used to be.