Ecovillage

Ecovillages are intentional communities with the goal of becoming more socially, economically and ecologically sustainable. Some aim for a population of 50-150 individuals because this size is considered to be the maximum social network according to findings from sociology and anthropology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecovillage

I would like to start an Ecovillage. Now let me clarify this a little bit. I have told people that I want to do something like this and they thought that I was a tree hugger or crazy and even thought I wanted to start a cult... But the truth is I just want a place that I can learn, grow and raise my family in a good environment. Another thing is I don't want to be a hermit. I want to be somewhat close to a town, under 20 miles. And the only reason I want to be that far out of town is one for zoning and two for the cost. Land near towns cost more and I want quite a bit of land. For the whole Ecovillage I want at or over 150 acres.

I would love to have my whole family live there. This would be cool for many reasons but mainly because it would just make everything easier. Think about off the grid power. Say in one house I set up solar power and I get 20 amps and only use an average of 15 amps. Now this means I can only use 20 amps at any given time. But say there are 10 homes and we are on a local power grid. Now the max amps are 200 with an average of 150 used at any given time. Now we have a larger peek range from 5 to 50 amps. This is just one small example of how life is made easier.

Other things that are nice about this is that you are not alone. You have shared resources like tools and such. We could buy in bulk to save money. Have a public warehouse "Grocery Store" where bulk foods are stored. This can also be where we put our food that we can. We all have different skills that would benefit the community. I for one like computers. I know how to do networking. I would like to network everyones homes for both Internet and phones. We could share our movies across our network so we could watch them at any home or even a "Movie Theater" :)

Now one other concern came up about one family or house would feel the burden of the community because of get togethers or whatnot. Well I think that in conjunction with the warehouse we would make a community center. This could slowly happen over time as more people moved there and the demand for additional services came available. The first thing I would want is a kitchen/rec area. This could be a place to get together, do our canning, play games, watch movies "Movie Theater", have cook outs, and do whatever. The next thing I would like to do is make a work shop. A wood shop, auto shop, welding, crafts and more... I would like more ideas of what you would want.

I have talked about canning and that is because I want to have a garden. I want it big enough so that it can produce enough for everyone in the family. We could have some greenhouses and some other garden plots. I would like chickens and even rabbits. If others wanted other types of animals we could do that too.

In closing this blog post I just want to say that I know that this is a lot of stuff to do. The only reason I say all of this is because I don't want to waist time and money moving and redoing stuff. We could start slow and modest and move from there. But with a plan we are more likely to do it right. If anyone has any ideas comments or concerns let me know so that we can make our plan better.