Page 8 RAIN June 1982 Sometimes The Magic Works Alpha Farm Ten Years Later Alpha Farm by Caroline C. Estes In the early 1970s a group of people in Philadelphia, along with many others throughout the country began to have a strong “leading" that they should start a land based intentional community somewhere in the United States. All of them had been involved in some kind of social activism, and were aware that there was something else drastically needed to change the direction of our social order. At that time they wrote a prospectus stating — "The renewal of the social order, we now see, must begin with ourselves . . . We seek to change our basic assumptions and patterns of daily living, to accomplish this we must alter our patterns of thought. We must live ourselves into the future we seek." It was felt that a rural, holistic community was needed and — within one short year of the initial vision — land was found, funds raised, like-minded people gathered and the community life begun in rural Oregon. As though by divine design, the name for the community became known: the old homestead had once served as a tiny post office named Alpha. And so. Alpha, the first letter of the Greek alphabet — meaning the beginning — was the community name. Our feeling concerning land ownership was that it involved a responsible stewardship and that the owning of land was a privilege. Each plot of land has a sense of “place." Each has its own function and cycles and those living on it need to always learn how to tune into these cycles. In all cases, the land must be treated — along with everything else — with care. Such different sources as the American Indians, biodynamic agriculturist Rudolf Steiner and our friends at Findhom Community in Scotland have influenced our learning of an appropriate harmonic role in relation to the earth. We garden and farm biodynamically, raising most of our own vegetables, grains, fruit, honey, eggs, and dairy products. Our diet is primarily ovo-lacto-vegetarian and dinners have become a family ritual. But self-sufficiency on the land is mostly still a "dream" for us, and it is necessary to have other economic endeavors to meet our many needs. Along with keeping up the homestead, we run a local cafe/bookstore/craft shop in a nearby community. This has allowed us, from the beginning, to interact with our neighbors, and to become active in the concerns of our area. Beginning the store at the same time we started Alpha stretched us, and in some ways too far. But on looking back, it was very important to our being able to stay together and to begin fulfilling our basic desires in coming together. It gave us a necessary day in and day out opportunity to express to others our concerns and our dedication to renewing the world — and the specifics of how we saw that being done. Also during the first year we bid on, and were awarded, a contract for rural mail delivery with the U.S. Postal Service. This has been a steady source of income and has again allowed us to get to know our neighbors over a thirty mile area. It also required us to be constant and diligent in our work — since "the mail must go through" — and it has, through all the types of weather Western Oregon is prone to having. This has been an important factor in our acceptance in the community. Ten years ago it was a different social climate than today, and it would have been easy to have been dismissed as "those people up the road" or as "laid back hippies." The store and the mail route allowed us to demonstrate that we were serious in our commitment to the community, and allowed others to have a chance to meet us in a business way. It is important to remember that the early 1970s were a bit more hostile to new ideas than the early 1980s. Much is now taken for granted that was new at that time. We also perform seasonal contract work for the Forest Service, mostly treeplanring; engage in some construction contracting and custom tractor work; and from time to rime have had small-scale cottage industries, most recently sandal-making. Our most recent economic happening has been the opening of a hardware store in the same small community where our cafe/bookstore is. It appeared that this was a need the area had and we were
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