Close yours eyes and imagine a dream ecovillage near the base of the mountains where the weather is not too harsh. The sheltered climate and flat river bottom land is ideal for orchards and gardening. A small group of ecology-minded natural builders has cooperatively bought an old family farm with a good sized fruit orchard.
The new owners have built mobile tiny houses in strategic areas around the orchard. The group decided to build mobile houses to avoid building regulations, save money on foundations and make it easy to move their home if they ever wanted. The ecovillage has chickens, dairy goats, sheep, pigeons, guinea hens and well stocked fish pond. A large organic garden, in addition to the orchard and livestock, supplies most of the community’s food supply. Miscellaneous items are purchased in a nearby small town about 25 minutes away. The ecovillage is surrounded by hard working, environmentally concerned farmers that have handed down their farms from generation to generation. The air is clean and there’s no crime to speak of.
In an attempt to become as self sufficient as possible, the ecovillage has invested in solar panels, solar water heaters, a wind generator and a biogas plant. There’s a shared laundry facility inside a tiny house. They’ve also built an earthbag and strawbale kitchen and meeting room for group dinners and canning. At harvest time, everyone pitches in together to can as much fresh produce as possible. The farm also has honey bees, a pasture, two wells and some hardwood trees along a stream. A fiber optic trunk line just happens to run along the county road next to their land, which makes it easy for everyone in the group to run online businesses. This saves lots of driving back and forth, so only one vehicle is needed for the ecovillage. Working from home builds a tight knit community. There are always extra hands available when needed, and like minded friends to spend time with. Complimentary skills within the group (versus everyone having the same skills) means they can take care of most everything they need.
Global Ecovillage Network (use this site to find a real ecovillage that matches your dreams)
Image source: Motley Mothering
Image source: Planet Forward
I decided to leave out the hot spring, timber frame workshop and giant rose garden because they didn’t sound believable – too far over the top.
This is a great idea. I would love to join or co-create a tiny home permaculture rv park on Vancouver Island! Anyone else thinking along these lines? contact me corinne_segura@hotmail.com
That’s my #1 or #2 favorite place in the world! My face was practically pressed against the window as we drove through. It’s super, super beautiful. And I had a great time during my short stay in Vancouver. I still fondly remember the lochs, fresh baked bagels and (herb?) creme cheese.
Somewhat off topic for this particular blog post…
Here is a heads up about a documentary video for Owen’s, Kelly’s, and others’ enjoyment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8vz5i8giwM
The Hakka Earth Buildings of Fujian Province, China.
For some strange reason the video runs for the first 12 minutes or so, then starts over and reruns the first 12 minutes, then continues on. Additionally, the audio gets significantly out of sync with the video. Feel free to skip the part that gets repeated.
If you can ignore the problems with the large video file, and focus on the buildings, It’s a fascinating story of earthen buildings in China, as well as the people who built them going back several hundreds of years.
I’ll take a look, thanks.
Owen, a similar idea has been sitting on my mind for the last year. I see a group of nomads purchasing land via land trust around the country where they would set-up small holding type permaculture farms and a “plugin” setup for tiny homes. We’d cruise from one place to another every so often. Many of us are nomads at heart and want to explore the world. I don’t think we would burn too much gas travelling because we would move only once in a while…hey and maybe we could make our tow vehicles bio-diesel driven.
Good idea. Another alternative is to stay in campgrounds. Some have septic, water, electric, Internet, showers, swimming pools, trees to park your RV, tiny home or van. I know of one company with dozens of campgrounds like this and yearly discounts to members. This cuts the cost to about $5/day. I can track down the company if anyone is interested.
I like reading the Mobile Kodgers site: http://mobilecodgers.blogspot.com/
Are you thinking of Escapees? I belonged to them for quite a while, though I didn’t have an RV – they have an excellent mail forwarding service, and I travel for work. Still intend to get a van camper and sign up with them again.
I have thought of this kind of idea, too. This concept floated around a yahoo list I’m on earlier this year (mostly nomads) and I really like it. I had kind of given up my “20 acres and a fort” idea after a health scare in October, but I still really want a farm… Maybe an ecovillage is right for me after all. I could still have the fort in the center – just have villagers around it. :-)
I didn’t have any particular group in mind when I wrote this. It was more like a list of things I’d like to have in a dream ecovillage.
Escapees.com http://www.escapees.com/
Looks good. Maybe I’ll do a blog post about them.
where is this eco-village located?
It’s just a story I made up to get people thinking about different possibilities. The link at the bottom allows you to search for real ecovillages.