WISH LIST for Green Acres Neighborhood
Back in the first decade of the 21st century, Ann K. landed in Bloomington Indiana when her husband, Jeffrey Joel, wanted to attend law school at IU in the middle of his life. Four months later, after one semester, he died. That was early January, 2003. Ann was now alone in a boring ranch house in a typical American suburb — a life style she had always detested. (Her own life style had been decidedly unusual; prior to moving, they had lived for over a decade in a 20-foot diameter yurt in the Tetons of Wyoming.)
Two years after Jeff died, while attending an intentional community conference in Yellow Springs Ohio, Ann came to the realization that she would need to live in an intentional community if she wished to survive the coming economic and social turbulence.
But should she join one, or should she start one; and if so, where and how? Needless to say, the latter prospect was daunting. While driving back to Bloomington, fearfully obsessing on this question, a small voice whispered, intently: “Just change perceptions in your neighborhood.”
Huh? What did that mean?
Well, she found out.
In 2006 she took the Permaculture Design Course, and from the first eloquent sentence out of instructor Peter Bane‘s mouth, she knew: permaculture is the wave of the future. THIS is what the world needs if humanity is to survive the coming chaos.
Why? Because permaculture can be practiced anywhere, can even regenerate dry deserts, crawl up mountain ridges.
At the end of 2009 she purchased the house next door. In spring 2010, she began to transform its big, sunny side lawn into a neighborhood garden, via permaculture workshops, guided by Peter Bane’s partner, Keith Johnson.
That was the beginning.
Prior to that, for her “practicum” in the 2006 Permaculture Design Course, and at Peter Bane’s suggestion, Ann and two then Green Acres neighbors also in the course, spent five days envisioning a permaculture design for the entire Green Acres Neighborhood (460 homes, mostly student rentals, right next to IU).
Most of the items on the two WISH LISTS below, were dreamed up for the design created during our practicum. Note that our visions were for the entire neighborhood. Some of them, however, have been realized here, in our tiny three-home Green Acres Permaculture Village.
Our permaculture and sustainability goals include:
Short-Term (Now to 3 Years)
- Food buying co-op
- Bike/car co-ops
- Plant/garden sharing
- Seed, tool, and equipment sharing and exchange
- Home-grown food events
- Teaching/learning center (ecovillage links through SPEA and other IU departments to create credit courses for permaculture/community-building)
Long-Term (3-10 Years)
- Food processing center
- Village perma-gardens (food/medicine)
- Food nursery co-op
- Passive solar greenhouses
- Neighborhood windmills
- List Item
- Green retrofitting of homes
- Water catchment systems
- Reuse and recycling of most material goods
- Appropriate technology association
- Mutual lending society
- Skills resource bank
- Clustered parking at three Green Acres gates
- Apprentice/mentor program
- Community greenhouse, community compost and recycling center
- Annual barter fair
- Development of cottage industries (examples: cloth and clothing; leatherwork; basketry and weaving, pottery, welding, engines and engine repair, woodwork, book trades, cooking/catering, soap and cleaning materials, healing arts)
- Educational workshops for the greater Bloomington community, such as medicinal and edible plants, how-to-build bat houses, bird houses, instant mulch garden, swale, water catchment tank, solar panel installation, etc.
To develop the “inner” sense of community we seek, and to develop a safe, integrated, and friendly village atmosphere that meets the needs of all, we create ongoing opportunities to share, work, and play together. Some of the things our ecovillage offers (or soon will offer) are:
Short-Term (Now to 3 Years)
- Community potlucks
- Work parties (gardening, home retrofitting, etc.
- Games, sports, and play activities
- Music jams
- Newcomer meet-and-greets
- Meditation/yoga gatherings
- Personal growth workshops
Long-Term (3-10 Years)
- Establish backyard commons with network of foot paths, ponds, and gardens
- Seasonal and other community events and rituals
- Collaborative childcare, petcare, and eldercare
- Art and craft association
- Permanent gates at existing entrances and new foot bridge over Third Street
- Purchase and establishment of common house/building with community office, small business incubation center, community kitchen, dining/meeting room, playroom, and more
Yes. After a number of false starts, Ann decided to just focus her own property, rather than attempt to organize and educate the entire neighborhood all at once. (A task all the more daunting when most homes are owned by realtors, and most student renters move each year.)
Instead of imagining what the neighborhood could be like if its residents (and real estate owners) paid attention to glorious possibilities for the future, she began to demonstrate that future, bit by bit, at home.
This website attempts to document the evolution of that process.