The Farm has become a model of what types of business and skills can fit a rural lifestyle.

The EXCEDE internet service now delivers speeds of 7-12 megs for $50 a month. Our businesses can now get access to T1 lines.  

Bottom line: You can make it work if this is what you want, but since The Farm changed from a “commune” to a collective in 1983, earning a living remains one of the primary challenges facing people who want to become residents of The Farm..

http://www.thefarm.org/lifestyle/kerntext.html

I found it so odd that these guys – I remember them as really cute, hemp-wearing types that were young, in their early 20s – with all of the things at The Farm that might have appealed to college students – proselytizing the rhythm method. It was particularly odd given that the early 90′s was the height of the AIDs crisis, before they had developed the antiviral drugs they have today. At that time, getting the HIV virus meant you were handed a death sentence. On campus there was a strong message advocating the use of condoms. 

I have since then grown to be a supporter of midwifery and give a lot of credit to The Farm midwives for what they have done to teach and promote midwifery. I can see how the idea of birth control that was “natural” and “free,” would be a part of their ethic, but I also believe that women having control over their reproduction is necessary for women to have equal standing to men. I felt like what these young men were promoting was naive and well-intentioned, but harmful to women’s health and social progress.

These were my observations.  Others who visited may have seen something else.  My guess would be that since we weren’t famous reporters and we stayed longer than just a couple hours, things didn’t look so rosy.

personally, i think that many intentional community members, particularly those at The Farm, wanted their community to “prove” that other styles of human social organization and inter-relationship were possible. i suspect that they would have included some notion of “for the long haul” in that ideal. in this sense, almost all intentional communities have failed – there are almost none that have existed for even as long as a typical US town.

of course, that doesn’t mean that they didn’t still accomplish things for both their members and for the rest of tus.

This is not a farm.

Next you’ll tell us that Andy Warhol wasn’t really a Factory foreman.

This is not a farm.

See how the T and the F in The Farm are capitalized? That means that it’s a proper noun — a name.

They also grew their own food. That’s called subsistence farming, a term which you may note contains the word “farm”. Just because it wasn’t the same kind of farm on which you were raised doesn’t make it not a farm. In fact, it’s kind of sad that you define farm in such a way that it excludes family farming. I’m sure that agribusiness would feel the same way about your farm.

Carry on. I apologize. I was out there.