No, we are more like a family-of-choice. We have no leader, no doctrine, and no brainwashing. We value independent thinking and sustaining relationships with family of origin and friends.

As a community, we only buy vegetarian food, and our community meals are vegetarian. You can bring meat into the house at your own expense without being shunned.

We value spirituality, and most of us are engaged in soul work of some sort. For some of us, that involves a religion; for others, it is a spiritual group, path or practice. We like it when a member can teach us their own spiritual practices or lead us in ritual or “prayer”.

Before our meals together, the cook offers a blessing, which is often thanks for all those workers involved in growing the food and bringing its abundance to our table. 

We sign a lease each year, so the commitment is from July to June.

We like it when people stay around for a long time. Some of us have been here over 25 years, but we find that many people move on after two or three years.

By consensus. Everyone has to agree to a proposal, or at least be willing to live with it, before we adopt the proposal. If someone believes that the proposal is not in the best interests of the community, we will spend more time considering options. If eventually someone is still opposed because they believe it is against community interests, then the proposal dies

I wish I knew. We each have chores which we rotate every few months, but we make our decisions together.

A few hours per week. Shopping, laundry, cooking (once or twice per month), cleaning… We run a small guest business, so sometimes you will sign up to greet guests or set up the rooms.

We rent from the Quakers. Everyone pays rent for their bedroom (cost varies by room size, the largest is about $600) , and then we each pay $150/mo into the common fund for food and utilities. We also pay for two weekend retreats each year ($100-$150).