Sophie Marie

We are re-forming community on a stunning 1/2 acre established orchard/foodforest with 8-bedroom strawbale house, mixed energy systems and room for your projects and skill-sharing. The house is secluded with 20min free bus access to a small downtown. The land is owned by Living Energy Farm, an impressive established rural offgrid appropriate-technology community 40min away (https://livingenergyfarm.org/). Ideal candidates are skilled, interested in supporting LEF's work, and want to live in a social/outreach eco/urban environment.

We enjoy being a group of strangers to mainstream american lifestyle, with many pluralistic experiences and ideas to bring together to build our own intentional culture and lifestyle. We enjoy being a group of women & afab nbs with high emotional intelligence, conscientiousness, cooperativeness, advanced intercultural communication skills, and good sense of self.

This is an early-stage project. Cofounding members contribute skills, energy, and modest finances. We're interested in both short-term skilled collaborators and long-term core members. There will be seasonality to who lives at this hub, as we have connections both north and south. Current residents are preparing the space for what comes next. Since it is a small community house (8 bedrooms) and we make decisions by consensus, we are curating for excellent social fit. We envision demonstrative ecological lifestyle culture-building through education, wellness, spirituality, and arts outreach, and space for passion projects. Do you want to co-create in this sandbox? Talk to us on phone/video and come visit for a week (& tour nearby projects).

A guiding principle is to live relationally with the complexity of beings and systems around us. We also consider ourselves to be re-indigenizing: being in relation with our ecosystem for long time-scales. We are elders-in-training.

If you don't fit what we're looking for, realistically I'll be too busy pulling out invasive vines to write back. Apologies in advance for not being much tech-savvy or online.

Before duplicating efforts, I would wonder what this website or service would add to the world of permaculture singles that this forum is not already satisfying! Personally, I like the simple and accessible design of this website, and the integration of the singles forum with the many permaculture message boards.

Here are some ways that are working for me so far:

- Getting mobile. Being flexible and mobile for chunks of time allows for in-person visits, getting-to-know-you time, deeper relationships, and those long meandering conversations that lead to more leads (including those that don't have online presence).

- Using ic.org to find communities I'm interested in, plan routes, and reach out. Proactively contributing to work and being pleasant to have around.

- Visiting a variety of communities with the gentle goal of learning more about myself and what I want. There are lots of people out there living in lots of creative and intricate ways. Narrowing down what I want and don't want, but being open to changing my mind.

- Attending the Communities Conference in Virginia over Labor Day weekend (https://communitiesconference.org/).

- Making friends who have similar lifestyle desires to mine and getting introductions to their friends who they think I'd really like, and so on... and sharing what we learn as we explore networks of people and ideas.

- Personal work. Cultivating myself to be the kind of person that people I want to be around want to be around.


I've observed that some intentional communities (groups of people living together, often alternatively)  have online presence, and some don't. I think that groups are more likely to have online presence if they are (a) large (b) recruiting and (c) more techno-typical. I've observed lots of groups of people living together with no need or desire for online presence.

Hello, permies. I'll add here that I was recently traveling nearby and met up with Sharry at her current land project. In our brief meeting I felt that she has a genuine heart and hardworking persistence.

Hi Timothy and all,

I'm new to the forum and not engaging with it much, but I'm watching this region as my mother homesteads outside of Stamford NY. I myself am eyeing the mountains of West Virginia for my next home.

Sophie