Sandhill Farm

Sandhill Farm is a non-profit land project organized as individual households collectively caretaking our land, houses, and infrastructure. We are currently composed of 4 adults and 2 youth that live in three houses and a cabin. Many outbuildings, barns, and gardens support our work in tending the 168 acres of fields and forest in which we live. In effect, we are both tenants and landlords, making decisions by consensus. Sandhill Farm was established in 1974. It is rich in culture, history, beauty, and connection. You can learn more about Sandhill’s history in the History section. In 2019 we restructured from a fully income-sharing commune to provide private dwellings for family units, and greater personal and financial autonomy, while continuing to steward the land and infrastructure collectively. _________________________ Culture Most of us are very busy with the work of nourishing ourselves, our careers, caring for our children, and maintaining relationships with our extended family. Yet we are following our passions, traveling, and cramming in creativity, spirituality, and fun where we can. Sandhill is an agriculturally focused community. We grow much of the food we eat; currently focusing on vegetables, fruit and nut trees, meat, maple syrup, and culinary and medicinal herbs. In the past, we also grew field crops like grains, beans, sorghum for syrup, and more. Growing food, or gathering it from the land, is a way we enjoy spending time together, and we seek to draw in those who share this interest. We are American Tree Farm certified and actively manage our forest via invasive species removal, thinning, sustainable timber harvest, and trail maintenance. Our homes, barns, and outbuildings are constructed utilizing lumber sawn from our forest. We’re enthusiastic to continue to find ways to integrate ourselves with this land, to take care of it, and to have it take care of us in return. We’ve got the fields and some equipment; we’re looking for folks to farm! We are actively looking for new members with experience in and energy for farming. Sandhill is active in the communities, organics, and political resistance movements. Core values include cooperation, nonviolence, understanding and combatting systems of oppression – personally and systemically, honesty, good communication and sustainable land stewardship. Our current members hold a variety of jobs; shop teacher/busdriver, woodworker, organic farm inspector, and organic certification director/agricultural activist. We like to keep our lifestyle simple and healthy. We tend to work hard and get satisfaction from providing for ourselves as much as we can while maintaining close ties with neighbors, friends, and other communities. We enjoy regular celebrations and social occasions, including weekly dinners with Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, a 25+ year-old ecovillage, and Red Earth Farms, a 15+ year-old land trust community, both just three miles away. We are also friends with the folks at Bear Creek Land Trust and their local community of sustainable farmers in the LaPlata area, about 35 miles away. We love making music! Singing, playing piano, upright bass, saxophone, trombone, banjo, accordion, jaw harp, flute, shruti box, drums, making electronic music. We like to have dance parties, dress up in costumes, and many of us play ultimate frisbee. We are not straight edge, but we value sobriety/moderation. We are cultivating our own rituals of earth reverence and connection to spirit, particularly in the form of seasonal sweat lodges in which we sing and pray together. We mimic the structure and intent of Native American sweat lodge, but not the content, instead improvising our own prayer and song. ____________________________________ How We Function * A non-profit in which all members of the community are board of members. * Decision-making through consensus – meaning that we seek the full consent of all members for a decision to be made. * Sharing responsibilities for the upkeep of the land, infrastructure, and managerial tasks. *Participating in weekly meetings , and 1 community dinner . Members attend an annual retreat . There are voluntary garden parties weekly, weekly potlucks with the other local communities, and a plethora of optional activities (song circle, ultimate frisbee, sauna, kids’ activities, etc) * Taking responsibility for the general upkeep and maintenance of our homes. * Paying monthly contributions to the non-profit to meet our annual budget, and to cover the expenses of infrastructure, upkeep, and land taxes, and utilities.