It’s Beautiful Here

Two years ago, my dream was to find a large parcel of land that we could buy; at least 100 acres, on which we could live, and share with several other homeschooling families. Where we could have communal veggie gardens, and fresh water, and forest land, and everyone could build their own houses from straw-bale or cob or whatever, and we’d all live together and raise free-range children.

At the time, we didn’t quite have the cash capital to manifest that dream, at least not without mortgaging ourselves to the limit and having to live off instant noodles for the next 30 years.

By accident (quite literally by accident – I crashed the car here), we stumbled across the village we now live in. It’s not a community in the commune sense, but it’s surely a community in the unity sense.

We live in an awesome village – there’s 5 or 6 families with children in Littletree’s age-group within a 5 minute walk from our home. Most of the people in this small village are very like-minded; no one looks at us oddly because we have bare feet or dreadlocks or children in public out of school hours. There’s an organic store a few minutes walk from our house, and many communes and organic farms in the area.

There’s a wonderful sense of being a part of a functioning community. It seems almost every day there’s some kind of activity, many workshops and classes available in the village hall (like yoga, dancing, singing, drawing, herbs, tree-planting, wild foods, permaculture, meditations, etc), live music shows every week, a farmer’s market, a craft market, a book exchange, a cafe, a herbal medicine store, free complimentary therapy clinics, homeschooled kids, an arts collective, regular jam sessions… and on and on.

There’s always some friends hanging about in the village, someone playing music or crafting something, someone to talk to.

Lately I was hanging around the village green after the farmer’s market; loads of people were about preparing for the village festival. Heaps of kids were running about freely, a small group of people were working on various art projects

some were making a sculpture from recycled tea bags

a few folk were weaving elaborate stuff

there was a group of musicians together for the usual spontaneous jam

Of course, the small village lifestyle isn’t for everyone, but I love it! This is my home :)