Hello New England
Permaculture, Homesteading, and
Intentional Community Enthusiasts!
Sirius EcoVillage has space opening up for new resident-members. Currently we are looking for candidates who can bring skills and
experience to key areas where we would like to grow. We're looking for people who are able to bring professional skills in fundraising, building maintenance, non-profit administration, business entrepreneurship, outreach, hospitality, carpentry and other trade skills, as well as forestry and farming.
We hope you will consider coming to live with us as part of our Exploring Member Program! This program is for people interested in trying on village-scale ecological living and can be a pathway to becoming a full member of our EcoVillage. Please read this summary of community life, check out Siriuscommunity.org, and fill out our application! Please send completed applications to
exploring.membership@siriuscommunity.org. Current openings for January 1st, others on a rolling basis. The residency fees for rooms available on January 1st range from $500-800. This includes all utilities and
firewood. Thanks! About us:
The What: Sirius Community is a cooperatively-run, residential community and educational non-profit that was founded in 1978 on 90-acres of
land in Shutesbury, MA. We are a spiritually-grounded and spiritually-active community that honors a diversity of traditions and paths. We locate ourselves within the intentional communities movement, as a member of the Global EcoVillage Network and the Foundation for Intentional Community. We are also a place of hospitality--we regularly host individuals and groups for weekend and week-long retreats and workshops. We are a host site for WWOOFers (World Wide Opportunities for Organic Farms). Ours is an experiment in “re-villaging”. We are engaging the challenging task of learning how to live together as 30 people who come from many different cultural experiences, bring many different gifts, and all wish to leave the world a more resilient place for future generations.
At this particular juncture, we are a community that is reinventing itself while honoring where we came from. The majority of us are still relatively new to one another--though there is a growing sense of care and commitment to one another. We are still learning and shaping our shared values, shared culture, and shared hopes and purpose. We engage this process while also striving to honor the complex legacy of this community and this land--of its elders and ancestors. We continue to adapt and design systems that we hope will meet the needs of current and future residents of the land--human and more-than-human.
It’s hard to describe a community of 30+ individuals, but we will try to paint a picture with words:
Sirius sits on a quiet and windswept hilltop, amidst a dense woodland dotted by pockets of wetland. There’s no sound of trucks or traffic here, just some roosters crowing and squirrels scolding here and there. In a small corner of our 90 acres, there are five community households, one beautiful old community center, and a dormitory for seasonal interns. The buildings were lovingly constructed by community members and apprentices in the 80s and 90s, much of it with White Pine harvested from the land and neighboring woodlands. We still run a sawmill and practice ecological forestry, and we tend a few acres of polycultural gardens and orchards. We, as a community and an organization, collectively hold and steward the land and all the structures--in this sense, we live on a commons and we are commoners. From September through May you’ll find community members chatting quietly or singing loudly in the community sauna. Smoke occasionally rises from our
cob oven, as does the smell of wood-fired pizza. In the summer months, someone is waking up early to open the
greenhouse and
water the plants. Others are sweeping rooms for coming guests. On Saturdays, we form long lines to pass and stack wood--silently, talkatively, or in song <3 If someone is sick in bed, someone else is busy making them a plate of food. In the summer months, we inoculate
mushroom logs, push wheelbarrows of manure, and rinse off dirt and sweat with a swim in our small spring-fed
pond. There are small shrines and places for meditation that await the occasional bow or offering. Trails wind through the woodland and extend into neighboring timber lands, which stretch for miles. The land is mostly Oak-Pine Woodland, and those with eyes for
trees will tell you that we live in the most abundant understory of witch-hazel that one might ever see.
The How: To be awake to the interconnection of this world, is to know and feel the grief of these times, in which no one is without struggle. Some bear the injustices of our world with more burden than others. With humility, those of us living at Sirius strive to model how a person can manage and even feel connection, ease, purpose, and joy in their life amidst these realities. We have a sense that “re-membering” how to live in village-scale kinship is a powerful and dignified response to the global systems that threaten all life. This task is as full of complexity and challenge as it is full of joy and liberation. At Sirius, we’re learning about how to care for one another, how to find the balance of collectivity and autonomy, and how to move together as an egalitarian body. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail. We hold unfinished legacies of love and land, of harm and repair, of hope and care, independence and mutuality, hurt and healing. We keep looking at ourselves and we keep learning.
Our governance is currently a consensus-based process and we are learning and experimenting with iterations on the governance system known as Sociocracy, in which small interconnected circles of people take on key aspects of community and organizational systems (e.g. Education Circle, Green
Energy Domain, etc.). We see this as a route to the further decentralization of power and decision-making, and cultivating more shared holding of responsibility. All our meetings have a contemplative element and we invite slowing down and silent attunement when encountering challenging moments and decisions. There are core agreements that we make with one another regarding the amount of time we dedicate to the collective wellbeing--to our community systems and to our tending of the land. For Exploring members this base agreement is around 6 hours per week and for members it is closer to 10. This includes all-community meetings (twice monthly), participation in circles/domains, and our weekly Saturday community work morning. We put in a lot of effort: for the non-profit organization to function, for the land to be lovingly stewarded, and for our relationships to grow in trust, care, and mutuality. And for most folks this is in addition to working a regular job. As such, we aim to make the work of community feel supportive and purposeful for one another. Nonviolent Communication, and other frameworks for healthy interpersonal relating, are core practices in our community. We strive to be non-dogmatic and open to new ideas about all community practices. We cook lots of meals for one another and most of us (on most days!) will tell you that life is actually made easier by sharing the labor of home-making. We are working toward a culture that centers regenerative and restorative practices, playfulness, mutual aid, and being together in ways that promote vulnerability, care, and honesty.
The Where: Sirius EcoVillage sits at 1200 feet in the hilltown of Shutesbury, Massachusetts, on traditional lands of the Nipmuc Nation and Pocomtuc people. We have the privilege and responsibility of stewarding headwaters of Amethyst Creek in the Connecticut River Drainage Basin, part of the Monadnock Ecoregion. We are a 15-minute drive or 30-minute bike ride from the town Amherst and the Five-College System. The cities of Greenfield and Northampton are ~30-minute drives. Within this radius there are grocery co-ops, hospitals, endless swimming holes, and an improbable number of used bookstores. Western Massachusetts is a hub for ecological farming and forestry, queer community, and rural progressivism. The region has a vibrant dance community (from Contra Dancing to Contact Improv), hosts numerous ancestral skills gatherings and music and arts festivals, and has a legacy as being an epicenter for spiritual communities, revolutionary movements, and alternative lifestyles.
The Who: Currently the community consists of about 25 resident-members and a revolving (vibrant!) handful of seasonal interns, as well as neighboring associate members. We are quite evenly spread intergenerationally, and we come from many geographies, cultures, and walks of life. A few of us work onsite, most work offsite, and some virtually. We are farmers, educators, craftspeople, parents, students, elder and child care workers, artists/musicians, mental health professionals, hospitality workers, lay clergy, lawyers, body workers, retired people, carpenters, regenerative design professionals, and permaculturists.
The You: We seek new members who are passionate about living in community in an intentional way. We’re looking for financially stable individuals with skills in fundraising, building maintenance, non-profit administration, business entrepreneurship, outreach, hospitality, carpentry and other trade skills, as well as forestry and farming. We wish to grow opportunities for more members to be paid for the valuable work they perform for the community and the organization.
We’re looking for people who realize that living in community requires a lot of effort and also generates a lot of wellbeing. We are no utopia, and people need to know we encounter many of the challenges that exist in society at large. We intend to be transparent about those challenges and invite your inquiries. Encountering those challenges is the important work of our time, and we invite those who see these challenges and opportunities of community living as integral with their path of spiritual growth. We’re excited for those who are energized to join us in making our community a healthier and more resilient place, and to promote village-scale living as a more accessible lifeway for more people. We hope to be a place that can allow the gifts you carry to be nourished and flourished.
Accessibility: Please let us know if you have access/accessibility needs. We recognize that accessibility can take many forms, including but not limited to physical accessibility. We will do our best to give you a clear sense of how access needs are currently met in the community and in what ways we are still working towards making our community more accessible. Among other accessibility concerns, we strive to be a fragrance-free space.
Thank you! Fill out the application digitally:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uvzndXorE_CBCSSuLA6mM6tjcLOzcmFC/view
and submit by emailing it to
exploring.membership@siriuscommunity.org
Or, feel free to pass along the message to individuals or groups who may be interested!
- Sirius Housing Team
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