eco village vs non ecovillage living?

i have noticed that the communities movement is picking up. my question is will there always be places were people that dont want to live in community be able to still live more secluded? also what do you people think about small second home getaways?

Wesley johnsen wrote:i have noticed that the communities movement is picking up. my question is will there always be places were people that dont want to live in community be able to still live more secluded? also what do you people think about small second home getaways?

Yes, loads of people do this. I appreciate Diane Leafe Christian's attempts to pin down definitions for "ecovillage" "intentional community" "commune" etc. But I have seen that in practice the lines can get pretty blurry, sometimes people wanting a holiday home buy a house in an ecovillage (if they aren't there 90% of the time can they expect to be fully involved in decision making?). Sometimes people with a weekend home declare themselves to be communities or even ecovillages! Some are optimistic, have high hopes for the future, some have delusions of grandeur, some are making a financial investment by attempting to push up house prices in an abandoned village

It's fine to have a second home getaway, but any permaculture you do there will be fairly hands off, low maintainance, low production. Fruit trees etc. It's also good to recognise that living full time on the land may not be practical for everyone. Some clever entrepreneurial people may be able to sell enough vegetables, work online, organise festivals, sell PDC's (ikk!) etc. to make the money they need to invest in chainlink fence, solar panels, tools etc. but others might find taking a job in the city for a time is a more reliable way to make money. Having more people involved does help a lot here, allowing someone to leave for work or vacation time while others take care of animals and gardens.

John Seymour once said something along the lines of "use the land as productively as you can or get out of the way and let someone else do it". A country house and land used purely recreationally is elitist. If there is a long term plan, being semi absent is justifiable in the first few years, while harvests are still relatively low and sporadic. Many people around the world regard country houses as places for retirement, and spend their active years working elsewhere but investing in the place which will feed them in old age.

No man is an island. If you get a place for yourself, you will probably have at least some neighbours, and they will probably interact with you in some way.....maybe we need a concept of an "unintentional community"

I interpreted the question differently than Peter but enjoyed his response nonetheless.

I want to have a village but to be able to hide in my land separately. I want communal buildings et al in the village square, but I don't necessarily want anyone to know where my house is nor where my 2nd house is for that matter unless I want to share that information with them. I want to have the choice to do that and when to do that. I think the design of a village can be dynamic but has to have core elements that sustain it. I am a novice yet on this topic. Once I absorb some of DLC's work I'll have more to say, but this is what I need: space, privacy, freedom, choice &... the watershed above me... so a mtn... that's all

i am also wandering the old days like in the 1800s small towns were like? did they all have jobs? did people still own land that was private? how was this system structured? any books on this? last do you think the ecovillage life will be mandatory or choice? i like the idea of private land but having community through farm visitors and csa. they do have conservation easements that say farm or get out to prevent farms become rich estates. how do we employee people if the smaller amount of people are farming land owners like what do the people in the town do for a living?