Member Intro – Peter

The entirety of my adult life – ever since my Junior year of high school, if that counts as adult life – I have envisioned living within a community that is built around the concepts of equitability and mutual support. I haven’t always had the words for what I envisioned – those have come more readily and in finer detail with time – but the vision has been clear and steady in my mind.

There have been a number of false starts – communities that I explored as a potential member that didn’t line up, land purchases that we couldn’t raise funding for – and a few close successes with rental houses with a large group of friends. In all of those cases, time, class, money, and life circumstance (the act of surviving within our Toxic Capitalistic culture) have prevented the foundation, growth, or continuity of the community in question. Sometimes it was external circumstance and, at other times, internal conflict brought about by differences in the things mentioned above – most notably, Class.

I have a hobby of sorts to go look at interesting properties when I see them – land, commercial buildings, residential houses that fall outside expected norms. When I saw the Craigslist post for the 60 acre plot in VA, I didn’t think much of it – it was undeveloped land. It’s hard to say why I felt like calling the number, but needless to say, I did. And after a series of calls over a few months in the summer of 2021, I was out visiting three adjacent plots totaling 205 acres.

I fell in love with the land immediately, and I only walked a few acres of it. Even as I write this, I have only walked through maybe half of the land in total (within visible sightline). It’s a lot of land. A lot. Shortly after my first visit, I brought three friends out with me. At that point, we were still considering a single 60 acre plot. The original three decided that life wouldn’t allow them to lean into the opportunity/challenge that this presented, so I posted on Facebook looking for collaborative owners. Within a week, we have 9 wonderful folks stepping in as interested and committed owners. A few weeks later, we were at 11 (the number of owners/members we have as of the moment that I write this) and within 3 months of my initial visits we were signing the paperwork to purchase the land. It only took 3 months to make it work, but it took us nearly 30 years to get here.

Today, we are working on governance, expansion to new members, housing/infrastructure, and longer term projects on the land – and I am excited that you are here!