Another Family Seeking a New Home :)

Hello everyone!
Like so many others, my family and I (wife and two teenagers) are searching for a new community of like-minded folks to live a more meaningful, fulfilling life.

For the past several years, we have dreamed of creating or living on an educational permaculture farm dedicated to helping foster children heal from trauma and learn about growing food. If our dreams could become a reality, we would be among a community of people dedicated to this mission. Though perhaps oddly specific, we’d like to live in a northern area with a cooler climate, bio-diverse forests, undulating mountains, and an abundance of snow during the wintertime. It would be the closest thing we could hope for, having lost my ancestral home and community to the ravages of coal mining and natural gas fracking.

A little (or a lot) about us:
I was a fifth-generation underground coal miner turned environmental and social justice advocate. My wife Elizabeth is a New Jersey native who has dedicated her life in service to others. We have a couple of teenagers who we hope to get settled into one area so they can put down some roots to pursue their dreams. Our daughter wants nothing more than to be self-sufficient with a little subsistence farm and where she will live and do her artwork. Our son is on the autism spectrum and hopes to find opportunities in blacksmithing or other such skilled craft labor that compliments his neurodivergency. We all identify as non-binary, but for simplicity’s sake, we ascribe to the typical labels of father, mother, daughter, and son and aren’t offended if people get pronouns wrong.

Though we haven’t had extensive farming experience on a production scale, we have at least had enough experience, knowledge, and understanding that we aren’t complete novices. Elizabeth and our daughter worked on a small vegetable growing operation, and I worked for a small heritage breed cattle operation. I also grew up raising gardens and have spent time working and learning about permaculture in my undergrad studies. We are all three certified to run tractors, and I am pretty handy and can do just about anything mechanical, electrical, and construction (except masonry). After I departed the mining industry, I went back to school and now hold a BA in communication with minors in Appalachian Studies and Sustainability and Environmental Studies. Elizabeth’s BA is in theology, focusing on service and childhood education with some experience in the Montessori method.
We are hard workers and enjoy the physical and mental benefits of outdoor labor and, well, everything outdoors. We have WWOOFed before and are unfortunately aware of some of the more exploitive situations in agricultural apprenticeships and work trades. We also have deeply held beliefs in altruism and egalitarianism and their reciprocity. We believe in the humane treatment of animals, are staunch labor rights activists, and have a low tolerance for exploiting land and people for personal gain. Elizabeth and I are also Virgos. We extend ourselves and our hearts, and we can become critical of those who take advantage of us and others. We are also critical of ourselves and strive to create meaningful relationships through open communication.

We consider ourselves agnostic and appreciate indigenous understandings of life, balance, and nature. We hold very dim views of agriculture but understand it is necessary with so many people living today. Nevertheless, it must be accomplished with local ecology in mind.  We also believe that the more people try to control nature, the more work it makes for everyone, so balance is essential.

As much as we would like to disconnect from the system entirely, we still have grid-tied, materialist families whom we still love and visit. Various needs also keep us tied to the grid, such as orthodontics and dental care for the kids. Over time, we want to ween ourselves off the grid and into the new lifestyle, hoping to become 90% off the grid and significantly reduce vehicle use. We aren’t ruling out urban areas and urban farms, but we would certainly appreciate being closer to the rural.

If you think you might have an opportunity for us, please moose me and we can set up a time to talk. Sadly, we don’t have much in the way of financial resources, but we do have everything to outfit a house, including various tools, kitchen items, etc.

Thanks!
Nick

Hi, Nick

I have seen your topic in the zero replies several times. I will be happy to try to bump this thread so maybe you will get some replies.

Though perhaps oddly specific, we’d like to live in a northern area with a cooler climate, bio-diverse forests, undulating mountains, and an abundance of snow during the wintertime.

Have you a region you would like to live in? Or a certain state?

For the past several years, we have dreamed of creating or living on an educational permaculture farm dedicated to helping foster children heal from trauma and learn about growing food.

This sounds like a worthwhile cause.  Is fostering kids, not an option where you currently live? Or are you already doing this?

Anne Miller wrote:Hi, Nick

I have seen your topic in the zero replies several times. I will be happy to try to bump this thread so maybe you will get some replies.

Though perhaps oddly specific, we’d like to live in a northern area with a cooler climate, bio-diverse forests, undulating mountains, and an abundance of snow during the wintertime.

Have you a region you would like to live in? Or a certain state?

For the past several years, we have dreamed of creating or living on an educational permaculture farm dedicated to helping foster children heal from trauma and learn about growing food.

This sounds like a worthwhile cause.  Is fostering kids, not an option where you currently live? Or are you already doing this?

Hi Anne!

Thank you so much for offering to help us! Here are our very belated answers

Have you a region you would like to live in? Or a certain state?

We would like somewhere in the East/Northeast so we can remain closer to my aging family in southwestern Virginia and Elizabeth's family in Northern New Jersey (if possible). We've been considering the Blue Ridge Mountains in southwestern Virginia and western North Carolina, the Shenandoah Valley and northern Virginia (but not in the DC commuter areas), Pennsylvania, western or upstate New York, eastern Ohio and to some degree Vermont though that puts us a little far afield from my family. When it comes to Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio, we'd like to avoid areas where there's been coal mining, steel production, and natural gas drilling. We might even consider western New Jersey. There are some nice places there. We did spend a bit of time in Maine, but at this point, we have had so many bad experiences trying to get settled there that we can't find the strength in our hearts to try it again, especially as far away as it is.

This sounds like a worthwhile cause.  Is fostering kids, not an option where you currently live? Or are you already doing this?

Fostering is an option where we currently live, but farming isn't. What land was passed down to me from my great grandfather's farm is all hillsides, has extremely poor soils, and no water. A mountain top removal coal mine turned our family spring into acidic mine drainage when the company cut the mountain in half (along with the aquifer), lowered the ridgeline, and backfilled against it as they filled in the adjacent valley.

There have been underground mines all around us as well and all the aquifers down our hollow are resupplied by the creek which is contaminated with runoff from various surface and underground mining operations, coal hauling down the highways etc. We've thought about looking for another place in the region, but mining and natural gas drilling have wrecked it all. Studies came out in 2011 indicating the negative health impacts of living near active and inactive mining, impacts such as being twice as likely to get cancer, having a 70% increased likelihood of developing cardiopulmonary illnesses, 60% increased chance of developing kidney diseases, and a 40% increase in birth defects. Those same longitudinal studies also indicated that these impacts are cumulative, meaning those figures will only get worse with time. The National Academy of Sciences was working to provide an even clearer picture of these issues, but the Trump administration shut that study down. When I attended the last meeting, they were already uncovering all the shady science and coverups from decades of corrupt state officials and environmental departments. In other words, despite having ancestral ties here going back 10 generations and 200 years, we are now environmental refugees.

It is also important to mention that fostering is what we would like to do eventually, but realize it's not something to be jumped into lightly. My own kids are growing up and we have a lot of friends who are foster parents and have seen the joy they bring to those kids' lives. We also work with kids from bad situations in the public school system and understand the need.

We devised a rough plan if we could get access to affordable land. If possible, we would like to do as much of this with other like-minded folks to build a community/village and distribute the workload so no one is overwhelmed with childcare and chores, both of which can become taxing, especially with kids that have more needs. We are also open to joining an already established community if one exists. It may also be worth pointing out that although we are primarily monogamous, we consider ourselves polyamorous as well. We just haven't had the time or energy to focus on other relationships in the last few years. Anyway, the rough plan...

Phase 1: Our 1-2 year plan includes getting meaningful jobs either with the local government or within a local school system to supplement our income as we familiarize ourselves with the land, address immediate infrastructure needs, and get to know the local community. During the spring, summer, and early fall, we will grow as much food for ourselves as possible, slowly increasing production to market garden scale, and if things go really well, perhaps build into a small CSA but we don't want to end up as production farmers. Phase 1 will also give us time to learn the ins and outs of the state foster care system for phase 2.

Phase 2: Hopefully, we will gain enough stability by years 3-5 to add a community educational facility aimed at inspiring foster children to become future permaculture farmers while providing them with essential life skills including cooking/food preservation, sewing, carpentry, mechanics etc. We plan to diversify our income streams to include fundraising, grant writing, hosting workshops on permaculture/composting, and building small ecologically designed structures that will be utilized for sleep-away summer camps for other foster kids and perhaps WWOOFERs or other guests.

Phase 3: 5 years+ Depending on how things go, we will slowly transition away from off-farm employment and may consider making the educational facility into a small nature-based charter school specifically for foster kids in the area.

Unfortunately, COVID and previous attempts to find a new home have completely drained what few financial resources we had. We also need affordable temporary housing to get established wherever we end up. We keep running into the catch 22 of needing an income to apply for traditional rental options but also needing a local address because out-of-state resumes and applications are often overlooked by employers. We can rough it for a little while so long as we have a decent area to prepare food, a place to bucket shower, sawdust toilets for humanure composting, etc. The only hitch is that our youngest is a junior in high school and will probably need a study space with internet access for schoolwork and such. They also have braces.

We don't desire much, just a healthy living situation with a good work-life balance for ourselves and a small community with the ability to help kids in need. We are used to living a low-income lifestyle, so starting small, staying out of as much debt as possible, and growing over time is what we aspire to do. As much as we are goal-oriented people, we also realize life is organic, and our goals are too. We are entirely flexible, except when it comes to pretentious, self-interested people who aren't willing to grow, understand the issues other people face on this planet, and change to become more generous, loving people.


Thanks,
Nick