7 friends built restoration ecovillage. Outcome 50 years on
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Published 2022-02-06
One of the first actions taken in the founding of the Sowing Circle community was an agreement made by all partners that each owner’s “share” in the company that owns the land would not be linked to the land’s market value.
The group worked with the previous landowner to create the first Organic Agricultural Easement in the country which protects in perpetuity the organic gardens and orchards from any development or any use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Today their Occidental Arts & Ecology Center (OAEC) is one of California’s oldest organic farms and their Sowing Circle one of its most-enduring intentional communities. At the start, they wanted to put to practice their ideas of permaculture, water management, and wildlife restoration.
The idea was to live like the land-based communities that predated them- like the Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok-, much like an old-growth forest. “Until recently, the majority of human settlement has functioned much like an old-growth forest,” writes OAEC kitchen manager Olivia Rathbone. “Humans... have long had the skills and knowledge to actually increase the biological carrying capacity of the land rather than deplete it, to render the concept of 'waste' obsolete.”
Today, their kitchen waste is composted, either directly or via their chickens. Their human waste is sent through one of three commercial-grade composting toilet systems - one of which involves mycelium - and which are being monitored by the county and state as testing grounds for more widespread use. Tree clippings (for fire management) become mulch. Their greywater is recycled in the gardens and even their seeds are saved in a very extensive heirloom seed library.
There’s a long history of land-based communities here, after the Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok cane Italian and Portuguese homesteaders in the late 1800’s and finally, from 1974 through 1990 the Farallones Institute established their Rural Center here (a counterpoint to their Integral Urban House in Berkeley) where scientists, designers, and horticulturists lived together and experimented around appropriate technology and sustainable design. Their cluster of 5 300-square-foot passive solar cabins (financed through the state’s Office of Appropriate Technology in the seventies) called “Solar Suburbia” is still the main residential cluster, though they have been enlarged to 700 to 900 square feet.
Brock Dolman moved here in 1994 as one of the seven founding friends of the Sowing Circle. His advice to those hoping to start their own intentional community or permaculture practice: listen to your predecessors rather than trying to follow trends or recipes for design. “It’s really taking our cues from what is the genius of nature that has been in that place for eons and eons and eons.
It has adapted to the conditions: temperature, moisture, soil, availability, slopes, aspects, the traditional ecological knowledge of indigenous people's interacting with that landscape over time. Why we would disregard those clues and impose an idea that we happen to make up because we think we have a better idea. I think our sense is that that's just human hubris and folly."
oaec.org/
On *faircompanies: faircompanies.com/videos/7-families-got-damaged-la…
All Comments (21)
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I only skimmed through this (it's quite interesting), but just had to say this guy is one of the most well-spoken, educated-sounding-but-not-pretentiously-so guys I've ever heard in a YouTube video. He has almost zero verbal filler. Seems like he'd be a great educator for the students who visit this place.
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The variety of videos and stories we are being told through this channel is incredible.
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This is how we should all be living.
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Wonderful community. My wife and I bought 8 acres in Kentucky, and over the last 7 years have been turning it into our own little permaculture paradise. We have a meld of appropriate technology and human labor, since it is just the 2 of us. We like to think that we are the force for LIFE here, and really do make a difference to the soil.
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As a Registered Nurse, with a degree in Psychology, who was raised on a row crop industrial farm, the most important phrase of the whole video is: "We're all about life, not death". Unless and until a significant number of the world's population -get it-, no policy or government, or anything else will make the worldwide change we need. While yes, life comes from death, that does not mean health can come from poisons, diversity from reduction, or abundance from mass extinction.
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I love everything about this, particularly their acknowledgement and honoring of indigenous knowledge and relationships to the land. We need more of this in permaculture everywhere, but especially in places like North America and Australia - recognition that the stewardship of the original inhabitants of these territories provides for the standard of living that we enjoy today.
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Kirsten your videos fill me with so much joy
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This reminds of another video you did a few months ago called "Rundown apartments reborn" where people decided to live communally as well and plant their own food. Obviously not on the same scale as this, as they lived in the city of Portland in an apartment complex, but they managed turn their parking lot and surrounding grounds into gardens. Quite inspiring.
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Spent many hours there touring, learning, field trips with homeschoolers, plant sales, ... we moved away years ago... this was a great trip down memory lane. THANK YOU!
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Thank you Kirsten your channel has transformed my worldview, I will be rewatching a lot of your videos to use the methods and technologies to apply in my own life
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So happy to see this place still thriving! I toured Occidental annually from 1999 through 2006, and then moved east, but have never stopped thinking about it, and planning my return some day. Thank you for sharing this story with the world!!!
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This man is a genius. From the 29th minute until the end is such an important message, although the entire video is so important. Wished I lived in this beautiful place....
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Would love to live in a community like this
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I have been envisioning myself purchasing some land and building a permaculture homestead for the past couple of years. Seeing properties like these that you show us gives me even more inspiration to follow this dream. Also, I was born in Santa Rosa, CA and I lived in Forestville until I was 8 years old. Seeing the area again brings back those childhood memories. Thank you so much for sharing.
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Imagine the legacy we can leave behind if we get started today putting these kind of projects up all over the world! Love this so much
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Farallones was one of our inspirations when we were 70s back-to-the-landers. It's good to see this happening there; a 50-year take on a place has real value.
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This was an amazing introduction to this village; its mission and philosophies. I'm blown away by all of it.
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Please feature more of these communities. I wonder if there are full time workers amongst the residents, how does the upkeep work? How does one apply to move into their place (they have a waitlist, i'm sure). It takes a special group of people to collectively live and work together.
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I love these kinds of videos. I wish it was a bit longer and dove into more questions like the housing situation, how they support the business,does all the produce go to the residents etc.A lot of questions left un-answered.This could of easily been a 45 minute video with so much to cover.
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The knowledge coming out of these communities makes me hopeful for the future. Imagine if all of humanity understood and implemented these simple, priobiotic perspectives... Imagine technology and automation that operates to cultivate life and biodiversity...
