how we see our set up

  A group of 8 to 20 people with shared values, vision and strong interpersonal skills is forming together and will purchase a 

farm, or a house with land. 

The house, outbuildings and additional tiny houses will include some communal facilities for cooking, eating, relaxing and laundry etc. And the buildings will also be divided into private units for people’s individual living and working use .

As of Autumn 2023 we are regrouping after our purchase of a great property fell through following the vendor's change of heart.

We are buoyed by having proved the viability of our plans and having gathered 16 residents and purchase pledges of £3.6m.

While we look for a next suitable property we are taking this time to further develop the community infrastructure and financial planning.

  We welcome more people, more energy, more ideas, more change makers, movers, shakers, more capital, more business wisdom, more green fingers, food alchemists... You?

 A property with suitable potential is sought, preferably in South Devon. 

We're presuming to buy something outright but it would also be an option to merge with an existing farm or land owner; 

we imagine an injection of capital and workers could be of great value in the right circumstances...?

We recently made an offer on a property which was a great fit for lots of our criteria. We got close to agreeing terms but the vendors wanted to sell to a family so accepted an alternative offer.

So we're looking again. 

Any suggestions?

  We use a co-housing model where all community members jointly own a company, and that company owns the property. This means we are able to include people both with and without capital. 

Private units will be available in different sizes and prices, and we aim for the cost of each individual housing unit to be less than local market rates; so, whatever size unit you opt for, we expect your costs would be less than other comparable options open to you. 

Mutual ownership also means we have equality of ownership, rights and responsibilities - it is up to us as a community to ensure ongoing financial viability, to maintain our premises, to create a good living environment etc.

We evaluate properties by calculating a value for all the communal assets, eg shared buildings, shared kitchen and lounge, gardens, fields, maybe lakes or woodland etc, That value is then divided by the number of residents and it's added to a second value which reflects the size and desirability of your private unit.

We aim for that total to be between  £80k and £300k, depending on what space you choose.

Where a community member’s initial investment has not covered their portion, a monthly payment is due, and this covers our purchasing loan repayments. We aim for these monthly payments to be lower than local rental rates. 

  You will appreciate there are many different approaches to land management and food production. 

Regenerative agriculture, permaculture and biodynamic principles inspire us. 

Partnering with Nature to nurture ecosystems restores health to the Earth and increases the nutritional content and the flavour of the food grown. 

By structuring ourselves as a community that can accommodate several businesses we create multiple income streams enabling us to grow food without the strain of needing to ensure crops are profitable.

  We’re including another element in how we work and live -

reverence, or heart. 

It is being conscious that who we’re being as we go about our days, and as we attend to the land and plants impacts everything. 

We plan to produce some pretty special food in a really nourishing environment and we’d love some partners who share these 

intentions and abilities.

  This is a model that can actually work on very different scales. 

We could go ahead with a handful of people, a few acres and small businesses, or we could be a larger community and could work with larger businesses, more acres and more ambitions.

We're envisaging options for growing and food related businesses, and for holistic businesses. We're hoping for a space for offering learning opportunities and personal development workshops.  

There are obvious benefits to pooling financial resources for a property that can accommodate multiple businesses, and to those businesses and people being of value to each other.

We invite your proposals, your enquiries, your interest.

 Our vision combines solutions to multiple social, environmental and personal issues, so we know it is of broad social value, and we offer training around the legal, financial and interpersonal foundations needed for others to also form such communities.

And there are many life enhancing skills that are overlooked in normal lives, so we offer a collection of learning opportunities like deepening your access to fulfilment, communication skills, resolving conflicts, how to need less money, building food resilience in your local communities, etc…

Some of this education can be on site and some can be online. Some will be our own courses and some will be independent experts. Some will take time to develop and some are being offered already.

  We observe that people mean and envisage very different things from the word ‘community’, and it is challenging to ensure that a group that forms has compatible wishes. 

Ultimately psychological and emotional maturity prove invaluable for navigating community living. 

We appreciate learnings from sociocracy, non-violent communication and Landmark Education’s curriculum for enabling people and enterprise to thrive.

We do not have strong views on how people should live or interact. 

We would imagine some shared meals and collaborative work. 

As we form further we can look at the logistics of what different people envisage, what agreements to create, and how the use of resources and responsibilities can be optimised.

At the moment we are all couples or singles, middle aged or beyond. Families and younger people will also be very welcome. 

Cultures form people and people form cultures. Most of us grew up within a culture where humans claim dominium over Nature, with the unconscious presumption that the natural world is for us to use as we wish, and where control is seen as progress. 

This, along with the technical and economic outcomes of human ingenuity, has brought us to the point where we have depleted and polluted the planet more than it can balance. 

We look to seed cultural change to one of inquisitive and passionate partnership with Nature, and the forming of societies where people have the health and capacity to focus on supporting Earth to rebalance.

The task of breaking habits that are normalised within society is vast, but not impossible. Our method for cultural change is to create an attractive alternative, live it well, be visible, make it available to others, and add a soupçon of magic, audacity, playfulness and a whole lot of joy.

Some people reading this may presume our lives through the coming decades will continue much as they are now, and some may presume that the impacts of climate change will soon bring significant challenges. 

We’re concerned enough to include in our plans off grid infrastructure for power, water and waste.

We’re aware that we cannot know the future, but one of the values of this vision is that it can be resilient whether we are in times of stability, or change or as crises intensify, where knowing how to grow food and work as a community will be greatly valued.