Care Home Farm 1; The community

We started by thinking about people. Here's what we think.

Hi, Welcome to our first deepdive blog post into the Care Home Farm community that we’re designing and building. If you haven’t heard of us before, we are a couple (a couple of life partners, a couple of artists, a couple of amateur clowns) who have been researching the polycrisis and various responses since we knew what research was, and are now working towards what we believe is a viable response; A Carehome situated on a Farm with an onsite community of carer/grower/makers who are testing the possibilities of inter-sufficiency, hyperlocal supply chains and land carrying capacity. Chris Smaje very kindly published our vision blog last year, and you can read it here, if you want to know more about our background and the bigger picture of what we want to achieve.

This year we’ve set ourselves the goal to explore some of the working parts of the model and write about them in a series of monthly blog posts. And to develop a community, through monthly meetups where we can compare research, iterate ideas and think seriously about who our community might be and how we get this thing off (or actually- on) the ground.

The first post is about The Community. The people. We first started visioning this project through a spreadsheet, lol, which tried to make rough estimates at land usage (meeting calorie needs, meeting heating needs, clothing needs etc) against sizes of households, broken down by ‘life stage’ (kind of age, but more tailored to caring responsibilities and pretty clunky so bear with the lack of nuance). This means that (once the spreadsheet is finished) we can potentially alter it to different size plots of land and different numbers of people depending on what’s in store for us in the future. Obviously it will never account for all the variables in the real world, but it’s meant to be a starting point. And arguably its a slightly odd place to start, because the group of people that we will ultimately co-create this vision with will emerge of their own free will, and like all things in life won’t fit neatly into any preconceived ideas that we have. This breakdown is more a way of mapping different sets of needs, of describing and exploring intergenerational community, and is completely flexible to become whatever its going to become. At this stage we hope to describe and strategise an openness to different financial positions and the ways we’re thinking about building equity in a deeply unequal world.

Everything we’ve learnt so far about regen ag, points to bigger communities operating farms. We’re convinced by the theory that industrial farming has replaced human labour with petrol and fertilisers, making savings in money terms, and freeing up a workforce to work in industry and now the service industry, but with huge environmental and social cost. We also heard from many sources, and experienced in our own time on farms, how all the activities to meet human needs ‘stack’ onto the land. I.e the straw from your grain crop is the bedding for your overwintering animals, and then the compost for your market garden. The sawdust and woodchip from managing your coppice, is the carbon material in your compost toilet. The feathers from your geese are the filling in your thermal jacket or your pillow etc etc. But contemporary farms struggle to utilise this stacking because each ‘object of care’ requires a different skill set to produce it, which takes time to develop; The Self-Sufficiency dream of the 1970s maybe isn’t the dream after all, maybe humans have a unique set of capabilities and passions that can be better utilised in structures more like villages, where the same piece of land is supporting a huge range of different practitioners to gather their raw materials and produce objects of care. 

We also noticed the mental strain of providing Care for relatives with additional needs, within the current system. So many of our role models were struggling with trying to meet the needs of ageing parents whilst working so hard to be self sufficient. We see the provision of Care to those with additional needs as an opportunity. By building a Care Home on site we can distribute the burden of additional Care amongst a community of people without the exploitation of wage labour. It can also provide a source of valuable income, if places are offered to the local authority but without profit compromising the quality of what we provide. It would also offer the many documented benefits of intergenerational relationships to our community, increasing the quality of life for members, rather than reducing it.

We are currently working with a breakdown of 150 people (the dunbar number obviously). That we imagine might roughly end up like this:

15 cared for in residential care

20 living in ‘unretirement housing’

30 ‘parents’

40 young people aged 18- moving into family units

45 under 18s 

Some key things about these numbers; 

Young People; By having young people onsite, who do not have parenting responsibilities, we are hoping to create a bigger ratio of members needing care, to members providing care, whilst we establish infrastructure and systems; as well as providing opportunities for young people to have access to the work and resource benefits of the community. 

Taking responsibility for these young people means that the enterprises on the farm should create at least some surplus income, which can allow these young people to build up the means to progress their own life plans (travel, settling down, splinter communities etc). These opportunities are becoming more and more scarce for young people so we believe this relationship can have a meaningful reciprocity.

Key Question- Would young people be able to start families and stay on the farm?

Answer (at this stage with not much evidence either way)- probably. Intentional communities that already exist experience a natural flow of people joining and leaving, and we believe this should be seen as a benefit. Our community numbers are highly speculative, carrying capacity of the farm would need to be continually iterated anyway. On the other hand, the aim of this farm is to create a working model that, if its successful, could be adapted by other groups, and therefore we would hope that our young people would be developing the skills to make better versions of our first experiment, with all the experience and skills they would develop.

‘Parents’; This is a slightly odd term, tbh it refers more to people living in separate family units rather than in group housing, because that requires different sets of resources for building and heating houses on The Spreadsheet. The number of people in this group also dictates an estimated number of children, which links to various calculations on acres of potatoes etc so we hope that makes a bit more sense! We want to live in a socially accepting community- Joel and I don’t expect ‘parents’ to be in heteronormative couples, or even have their own biological human offspring. We hope to be the village that can raise children, and we have deliberately worked the numbers to be an average of more than one child per parent. This allows for different configurations of children to adults and also the possibility of inviting children from the state care system to grow up on our farm, if their needs can be properly met.

Unretired People; I hope this phrase isn’t too gimmicky. Offering housing for People who have grown out of the wage labour system, and who want to use their capital to have an environmental and social legacy, is one way that we could potentially finance the project (i.e selling houses that stay as a market asset specifically to this group). It's pretty obvious that having unretired members in our community would be a huge benefit, particularly if they are willing to lead our extensive ‘therapeutic coaching’ programme! (a programme that we see as vital for healing all the levels of trauma that industrial capitalism has exerted on all of us, and which prevents us from having the kind of healthy, trustful and relaxed relationships that this kind of community would require). Aside from that, we are really going to need all the expertise and experience that our elders have built up.

Cared For Members; 15 residents in the Carehome is perhaps a little bit ambitious (but when I checked The Spreadsheet), the total community members was 145 so I bumped the number of care home residents haha). Providing the Care for this group is probably the biggest time input out of all the different activities we have considered. We have run our estimations based on 1 member of staff per 5 residents 24 hours a day (in 7 hour shifts), which is a total of 504 hours per week labour. With 70 working age adults in our model, this would mean every adult takes one 7 hour shift or two 3.5 hour shifts in the Care Home each week.

Mapping the labour is complicated in a kind of fun way. This is a nonexhaustive list of ‘enterprises’ that we would hope to have on the farm;

Necessary for Meeting Community Needs;

Market Gardening

Animal Husbandry (Sheep, Goats, Cows, Pigs, Geese- (chickens/ducks/rabbits are perhaps best kept as backyard animals)

Bakery

Dairy/Cheesemaking

Construction (Electrics and Plumbing to keep everything maintained)

Mechanic

Forestry

Brewing

Teaching (more on teaching further down)

Admin (legal, budgets, payroll, scheduling)

Quality of Life Benefits and Income Generating;

Furniture Making

Fibre Processing

Weaving

Tailoring

Tanning

Cobblers

Blacksmiths/Forging

Catering (canteens for Care home and school as well as on site cafes/pubs)

Basketmaking

Bodywork

Soap/cosmetic/candlemaking

I’m sure we’ve missed some crucial activities! Joel and I see the above activities as being autonomous ‘businesses’ with osmotic boundaries. I.E individuals take responsibilities for developing them and meeting the relevant community needs, but they remain accountable to the wider group. In practise- the economy is negotiated, community members float between activities in order to gain insight and empathy, land use and time use is negotiated. For these horizontal structures of autonomy and accountability we would lean into Commons theory. We certainly don’t want to live in a community that’s smothered by bureaucracy and meetings, but we are also conscious of how inequality and free rider behaviour (perceived or real) can destroy trust and goodwill amongst coworkers. This bit requires a good deal of internal work, ability to learn, flexibility and kindness which leads to the next ideal- minimising the burden of commitment.

Ideally we would hope to keep the working week for each member down to 3 days (probably with fluctuations at peak times) for the following reasons-

Low stress levels

Time to meet other domestic needs

Time for civic engagement

Time for community building outside of the farm

Time for making music

Time for personal creative growth

I know it gets written off as snow flakey, but evidence seems to suggest that humans are currently working too hard (especially given the technological progress of the last few centuries) and we’re seeing the effects of this in our mental health, and maybe also in the health of our relationships and communities. Part of the healing that we’re seeking from this way of life is healing our relationship with productivity; Finding a balanced quality of life that allows us to express all the facets of being human, without exploiting other humans or the natural world.

We can make some fairly educated guesses about how much time needs to be allocated to some of the activities I’ve listed. Some are much more nebulous timesuckers that will probably need to be fitted in around the non-negotiables, this exploration should also give us some clues as to appropriate scales of machinery. I.e; spinning fibres by hand seems to be an endless task so there’s a few routes that we could explore- does hand spinning become a leisure activity and provide well being benefits when done a lot? Do we need small scale spinning machinery, like the kind fantasy fibre mill are developing, to be able to meet the communities clothing needs? Is it more appropriate to have onsite cooperatives for some industrial processes, and can they be run from our offgrid power sources?

Briefly touching on teaching and knowledge sharing, we believe that engagement with a wider community who visit and experience the farm, but aren’t permanent residents is very important. In our current lives, teaching and knowledge sharing are absolutely crucial activities for community building and models of behaviour change. Commons theory suggests the importance of immersion in land stewardship activities in order to foster the desire to steward. In the COM-B model for behaviour change, the C is for Capability; without the capability to behave differently, noone can be expected to behave differently. Not to mention certain teaching models being highly lucrative (hello boujie craft workshops). In many ways the farm we’re designing is a place for active learning in its entirety and in our imaginary it is completely embedded in its region, with an open door, osmotic boundaries and a flow of other creatives, locals, visitors and future community founders. We’re not sure how this works with the Dunbar number!

This is where we’ve got to with initial ideas around the community and the labour distribution. We’re interested to hear others thoughts and to develop our thinking further.

If you got this far and you want to join us for an online discussion, you can email us (care.home.farm at gmail dot com) to get the zoom link. Date for the meet-up is Wed 12th February at 19:00 GMT.

This is our proposed schedule for the rest of the blog posts this year, but like everything its flexible and vulnerable to outside influence;

February -Buildings and Houses (with a view to getting drawings from an architect!!)

March- Power (can we get any calculations on KW output from a Keyline water management system with integrated hydropower harvesting??)

April- Food (Land use for regenerative food systems)

May- Clothes and Culture (Land based aesthetics and comfort without elastane)

June- Embeddedness in a region through Trade

July- Embeddedness in a region through Education

August- Finance

September- Labour Modelling

October- Governance

November- Well being

December- Festivals