My month-long stay here this January was a unique experience of a simple, self sustainable lifestyle offering a wonderful opportunity to learn firsthand all about community living and cooking, food rescue, and everything else that goes along with the transition towards self sustainable homesteading.
When I first arrived here on a winter Saturday evening, I was immediately blown away by the amazing views and stunning forest scenery, a nice surprise compared to the flat farmland of the Sacramento Valley, and I made it just in time for a beautiful sunset.
Considering I had at the time an empty bank account and just enough gas in my car to make the journey, I was happy to safely reach my destination, and could immediately sense what a unique property I had just stumbled upon.
I eventually found the community living area at the top of the property after passing more VW buses parked along the steep driveway than I had ever seen before in my life.
The property owner is a VW enthusiast and collector, who sometimes refurbishes these collectibles before putting them on the market, apparently a profitable hobby for the right skilled person. Also a unique decoration for such a rural, wooded property.
Besides the scenery, I was probably most surprised by the size of the community, made up of a wide variety of travelers who seem to always be coming and going, usually staying for 2-4 weeks on average. To be honest I had no idea what I was getting into, expecting there to maybe be one or two additional volunteers, but instead finding over a dozen people making this their temporary home. I found this particular work/trade opportunity through WWOOF, a network of organic farming work/trade opportunities, while most of the other volunteers had discovered the opportunity through WorkAway, another similar network (not geared exclusively for farm and garden opportunities).
I was also relieved to find a group of humans in California who aren’t overcome by fear of the boogeyman virus - with no masks, isolation or social distancing taking place here. Also no spread of disease, with the only people to get sick at all feeling well again quite quickly, and without infecting any of the rest of us. Such a nice contrast to the fear-riddled, fully masked California society at large.
The owner and head of the operation has set the property up with the shared living area designed to offer a truly unique off-grid style self-sustainable community experience. There is plenty of housing available, but this community kitchen complete with plenty of lounge seating, a wood stove, an array of artwork and an upstairs living area - “The Hippie Temple” - is where everyone gathers to hang around the warm fire on cold mornings for coffee and tea, and for shared meals, which are always fantastic and super tasty.
Being that three cats call this building their home and I am traveling with my border collie Dakota, I am getting to share the house below with fellow travelers, which sits across from a cute little cabin that houses yet others at times. There is also an amazing tiny cabin (8x12 ft.) with a loft for one guest (or a couple). There’s even a van up on ‘the rock’, a large flattish boulder hosting what is probably the best views on the entire property.
Community living was totally new to me, but something I was open and looking forward to experiencing, and my learning began almost immediately. I’ve thought for a while now that community oriented lifestyles hold many of the keys to solving most of our world’s ‘problems’ - by creating self-sustainable, harmonious and peaceful atmosphere and environment, where everyone can work more helping serve each other and less for the consumeristic society’s system, with more free time for everyone involved. This experience is showing me in real life that this is indeed the case, at least in many respects.
Every Saturday the gang heads into the nearest city to pick up a trailer load of reject produce from the market, which then must sorted the next day. Apparently my arrival was also timed to coincide with the first ever dumpster dive, which added even more rescued food to be sorted through. Volunteers make the meals, whoever is feeling like cooking, and others help as needed. It’s a great opportunity to learn all about cooking for large groups, and experiment with delegating cooking tasks to others to speed the cooking process :)
Sunday is the big day off, with the only task being the sorted of the rescued food brought home on Saturday, which goes really quickly with a dozen volunteers!
Even the ‘non-savable’ food is put to good use in the compost pile, with all the human-grade edible food being sorted into boxes to be stored for use, and everything else going to the chickens, providing the six free ranging hens with the vast majority of their feed (they also get much food when they free range, I know from when I raised chickens).
The food sorting is quite the project, but goes quickly with so many workers, and provides about 50% of the weekly food for the approximately ten people staying on at any given time. It feels really good to help rescue some of the many tons of usable food thrown away every week in this country, and this combination of dumpster diving and picking up food from a local supermarket is definitely one key way to begin to create self sustainability, and apparently feed an entire small community at the very same time! There’s never a shortage of fresh produce that must be quickly used at the beginning of the week, which creates plenty of jobs to do over the next couple of days, from making large batches of guacamole to pitchers of orange juice to utilizing recipes to cook dozens of bananas.
We try to cook the majority of all the meals on the wood stove in the winter to conserve electricity and get the full off-grid cooking experience, and the tap water has been set to a very slow flow rate to conserve water, flowing into a bucket rather than down a drain for ease in initial construction and so it can be used to water trees. A big basin of water is heated on the wood stove while we eat to be used to wash dishes. All meals are vegetarian.
There’s plenty of artwork all throughout the property, courtesy of various volunteers, with my favorite probably being a cool painting on the side of the chicken coop...
Most days the work begins around 9am, and wraps up around lunch time, leaving everyone with the afternoon free to enjoy the peace, quiet and gorgeous views. There’s always plenty of work, with most of my work time so far being spent on cutting up firewood, clearing out brush, and doing a few carpentry repairs on the house I’m staying in.
There’s a variety of daily chores that can be done pretty quickly, and then whatever work is delegated to be done for the day. The funnest job so far has probably been burning the brush pile we created, which took all day to burn and still wasn’t quite done!
It’s a good balance between work and free time to relax, with a bunch of us often taking a long afternoon walk in a giant loop around the rural ‘neighborhood’. Dakota loves it here, as it’s a perfect dog property, besides the ticks that is, with plenty of room to roam, people to play with, and a few awesome trails in the area for mountain biking.
I’m surprised there are ticks out in the middle of winter, with so many freezing nights, but this has given me the opportunity to look into and eventually making a natural tick repellent, by mixing apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, neem oil, tea tea oil, lavender and water. Time will tell just how effective it is, but it seems to be working well so far.
A new greenhouse was just completed by some of the previous volunteers to stay, and now has its very first winter plants just introduced, brought over by a friend on Friday as a gift. A second greenhouse will eventually be setup, giving plenty of room for a winter garden to increase the self-sufficiency of the property.
Although there is a working bathroom in the house, two shared composting toilets on the property give it the off-grid feel, and used coffee grounds picked up from Starbucks during the weekly run into the city combined with ashes from the wood stove is put to use in the composting toilet, sprinkled into the toilet after each use to keep it smelling fresh.
At the same time it’s really nice to be able to have a nice hot shower every few days, so it’s a good combination of the basic western ‘luxuries’ including internet and also a more self-sustainable and off-grid experience at the same time. It has also been a wonderful opportunity to meet some really cool souls from all over the planet, including one Saudi Arabian, one Ukrainian, one Brazilian, one Colombian, one Peruvian and one Australian, along with plenty of traveling Americans, probably most of them Californians traveling locally.
The combination of community living in such a self-sustainable manner and being in such a peaceful and beautiful piece of nature seems to be reviving and healing for all who pass through. It has definitely been a learning and growing experience for myself, creating so many new memories in such a short time, with time itself almost seeming to all but vanish in such an environment that forces you to live so much in the present moment.
Like many others who have passed through, I was initially only planning to stay for a week or so, but have now been here for two weeks, and in all reality will probably end up staying another week to be here three weeks. Several of the people who have left in my short time here were only planning to be here 10 days, but ended up staying three weeks to a month, a good sign for newcomers that they will likely enjoy their stay.
The weather is mild for winter, with highs in the 50s to 70s and lows in the 40s down to below freezing on the cold nights, but nothing like Montana! There have been a few winter rains, but also plenty of sunshine in my time here, and the cool/wet weather is ideal compared to the mid-summer highs near 100F and six months without rain.
The night skies are amazing with great views of the stars, and there’s a cool fire ring to have nighttime fires when we wish, which is also a lot of fun.
Definitely a unique experience I would say is well worth having, creating so many memories that will stay with everyone who passes through for their whole life. I know I’m learning things that can only be properly learned through experience of such an environment and have met so many diverse people I would have likely never met any other way. And then in just a matter of time I will be off to the next adventure, embracing whatever new horizons present themselves, and maybe one day I’ll find myself back here. I can’t think of a better, more unique place to have found myself on my very first visit to California, certainly a far cry from the city life of LA or San Francisco that is typically associated with this famous state.
