Women-led communal homestead forming in Mid Michigan: seeking kindred spirits!

Hi Permies community!

I'm the founder of Moonrise Meadow Collective, a forming communal homestead on 11 acres in Mid Michigan (Greater Lansing area). We're in our first year on the land, working toward our goals of food sovereignty and energy sovereignty through eco-friendly practices.

We're looking for 4-6 new members to join us this year. We are also accepting summer stay helpers who just want to join for the warmer months.

Our collective is women-centered, queer-affirming, and focused on earth-based spirituality. We want to heal and grow together as a group, consciously aligning with the seasons and cycles of nature. If that's not your vibe, no harm. I just want to be upfront so the right people find us.

We are a diamond in the rough right now. The communal house is older but in the process of restoration, the land is beautiful but needs real tending, and we are very much in the building phase. If you're someone who gets excited about starting things rather than arriving at finished things, we might be exactly what you've been looking for.

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THE LAND
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11 acres of field, forest, hills, ponds, and marsh in Mid Michigan. We have an existing trail system that we are improving, and a LOT of opportunity to shape this land into something thriving. The land is already giving us autumn olives (which, as an invasive, we will manage with care), wild mushrooms (puffballs in summer!), and the bones of what could be a beautiful food forest and permaculture system.

2026 goals we are starting work on:

- Building new garden beds and establishing a large diverse garden
- Starting our "Three Sisters" planting (corn, beans, squash, honoring indigenous agricultural wisdom)
- Building a perennial medicinal herb and flower garden
- Beginning to design our food forest and permaculture layout
- Building a compost system
- Fencing garden areas from deer (the deer here are enthusiastic)
- Forest management: removing fallen debris, clearing invasive species (autumn olive, Virginia creeper, poison ivy), replanting native species
- Trail accessibility improvements
- Building a chicken coop and acquiring chickens (meat and eggs)
- Managing our local feral cat colony through TNR (trap, neuter, vaccinate, return)

Longer-term goals:

- 75%+ food sovereignty and energy sovereignty (solar, wind, wood)
- Expand into larger-scale regenerative agriculture & permaculture
- Host workshops, skills shares, retreats, and farm events
- Eventually expand to 100+ acres in northern Michigan for a larger chapter, once we learn to be good stewards of what we have now

Read more about our goals here: https://ugc.production.linktr.ee/495195d4-e3f9-4846-a8cb-20bfc6aeb008_Moonrise-Meadow-Collective---Community-Plans--1-yr--5yr--10yr-goals-.pdf

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THE WORK: what you'd actually be doing
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We believe in finding a place for everyone's unique skill set! Even if you're just starting out, as long as you have a willingness to learn, we are happy to teach.
You will get muddy and sweaty, but it is genuinely transformative. The physical work and the healing work aren't separate things here. For us, they're intertwined.

Skills that would be helpful to us:

- Land stewardship, Permaculture design experience
- Gardening, planting, weeding, seed saving, food preservation
- Forest management, foraging, plant ID
- Building, carpentry, eco-building (cob, earthbag, wattle, bushcraft, etc.) We want to use these for chicken coops, outdoor kitchens, workshops, and more
- Trade skills: plumbing, electrical, welding
- Animal care (farm animals, rescue pets, feral cats)
- Cooking, baking, fermentation, canning
- Herbalism, alternative medicine
- Remote work or independent income (not required but very helpful for the collective)

Read more in our "Reality Check doc here: https://ugc.production.linktr.ee/389479e2-a6e9-4fcf-a00c-d890226657ca_Moonrise-Meadow-Collective---Reality-Check--What-Life-Here-Really-Looks-Like-.pdf

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THE COMMUNITY: who we are and what we value
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Beyond the homesteading, we're a spiritually-oriented, earth-based community. We work with the seasons, lunar cycles, and our own inner cycles. We share meals, hold ceremony together, and do inner work alongside the outer work.

Our values: mutual aid, radical honesty, shared resources, ecological stewardship, body positivity, nudity positivity, connection to nature, trauma healing as a group, breaking generational cycles, and what we call "cosmic feminism": a belief in feminine leadership, creativity, and sacred power outside of typical gender roles or patriarchal systems.

We are anti-capitalist in values but realistic in practice. We're working toward food, energy, and financial sovereignty, but we're not pretending we'll get there overnight. Transitions take time.

We're primarily looking for: women and non-binary folks, queer people and strong allies, earth-spirituality-oriented people (pagan, eclectic, open-minded), and anyone who feels genuinely called to deeply communal life.

A little about me personally: 31 years old, queer polyamorous woman. Hippie at heart. Equal parts silly and serious. Deeply spiritual with a practice rooted in re-wilding, earth energy, and communing with the cosmic mother. I have a degree in Animal Science, plus coursework in organic agriculture, natural resource management, ecology, anthropology, and sociology.

Read our Shared Code of Ethics doc here: https://ugc.production.linktr.ee/23c9fc65-a0b6-46bf-9b36-0b766443b1a0_Moonrise-Meadow-Collective---Our-Shared-Code-of-Ethics.pdf

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HOUSING
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Housing Options:
- Space to park your RV, van, trailer, or tiny home on the property
- Space for tents and yurts in the warmer months (May-September)
- Semi-private rooms in our communal house (shared between 2-3 people, each with bed and desk, views of the forested yard)

Communal spaces and amenities:
- Craft Room (we love art and creative expression!)
- Kitchen, Living and Dining Rooms
- Laundry Facilities
- Sacred Space Room: a dedicated space for meditation, yoga, and spiritual practices
- Multiple Outdoor Decks and Fire Pit
- Trampoline (yes, really lol, at your own risk)
- Our library of books (many non-fiction books and a fair bit of fiction too)
- Meme wall, fridge poetry magnets, and other silly things
- Free cuddle time with our cats and dog

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WORK / RENT EXCHANGE
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25-35 hrs/week: Rent-free (work trade)
5-20 hrs/week: $200-$600/month
1-5 hrs/week: ~$700/month

In the spirit of mutual aid: We share what we have. When everyone contributes, everyone is supported.

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NOT THE RIGHT FIT IF...
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- You want a polished, finished homestead with no mess or complications
- You prefer solo or purely private living over genuine communal connection
- You aren't open to doing inner work alongside the physical work
- You hold racist, homophobic, transphobic, or misogynist views. There's no room for that here.

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INTERESTED?
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The best way to connect with us is to fill out our interest form:
https://forms.gle/JHsPUCrsQVh6RG4f9

Want to learn more about our values and goals? We have several documents (Reality Check, Code of Ethics, Community Goals) on our Linktree:
https://linktr.ee/moonrisemeadowcollective

Happy to answer any questions here as I'm able to! There is so much more I could say about all of this, honestly I could talk about this stuff endlessly. 🌱 I tend to not be online all the time though (more of an outdoorsy person lol) but I'll get back to you as soon as I can.