Becky- I am currently in the process of starting a community garden on the property of Valley View Church @ 11501 SE Sunnyside Rd. We are having a planning/organizational meeting Thursday, Jan. 29 @ 7:00 PM that the church has allowed us to meet in their building for. I'd love to be added to your listing, and definitely pass along this info to interested parties. Thanks!

I have a story to tell...our community garden became the war trophy... A community garden became the dream of a single living in public housing in Elsternwick...Elsternwick is a leafy beachside suburb 15 Km's from Melbourne, Victoria , Australia. At that time (4 years ago) Public housing tenants were really feeling the brunt of the fascist/econimc rationalist/capitalist Kennet governement (state). For the first time ever Kennett raised the public housing rents and took away security of life long tenure. Kennett spent nothing on the exsisting stock...reduced spending and was repremanded by our Commonwealth Governemnt for not using the money it had given Kennett for public housing.... Although things were tough, We have a singer/poet called Paul Kelly here who sang a song called...from little things big things grow...it is about the land rights struggle of our Aboriginal brothers and sisters....but we too were stolen, degraded, lacked status, broad based education and monetry wealth and had been left to rot...some of us feared we were becoming the women of the Victorian ghetto's in london... So...with inspiration...Vanessa started lobbying, gathering, and working towards permission to build a garden in the common areas of the public housing landscape...I suppose they thought "its just a bit of dirt and seed...what can come of it?" They eventually said yes....the garden now covers 30% of the landscape...has no fences...some self seeding happens... there are tools, resources, knowledge and friendship to be found there...and if you want to be involved in the political...(the personal being totally political) you meet in the garden...the gardners are multicultural and multi talented...its a joy to see so many styles of gardening in one place...ever one seems to be working... There were many plans that grew from the garden...the garden had always been simply a conduit for communication, breaking down barriers, inproving self worth/opnion/esteem/power. The garden recognised the beauty and talent of the peopele who had little economic status and sought to build them up. It began to lobby for a community room...somewhere to work, have a phone, get serious about self sustainability (we all know the dangers of rely on government funding dont we?. Classes were planned, new garden beds, a sensory garden, childrens groups were run, holiday programs, a community market, partnerships were developed with the wider community, land reclamation was planned and Rainbow Enterprises sought to be an economic outlet, selling handmade wares and delivering small business idea and education to tenants....all for free...all built by the free labours of women.... the guerrilla girls grew out of the Garden Committee...their work saw them to make public protest on housing issues, they dumped a broken down car outside the Port Melbourne Town Hall ...the car was painted with "emergency housing unit 13" and signs were put along the road to highlight the...

I am really sorry to hear about your community. It sounds like you wouldn't want neighbors that short sighted and oblivious anyway, would you? Me, I'd love to have you as a neighbor. :) You are dreaming big but I honestly would suggest you pick a place, move there and rent for a while to see if it suits you before embarking on a homestead project. Since I am currently planning a green home and have been fixing up this rural property, I may be able to help with estimates a bit, but local costs can vary widely, particularly with utility service. So these are just general numbers. On that 80 acres, going off-grid might be cheaper than pulling utilities in if you want to get back off the street a-ways. Providing, of course, you can generate sufficient energy in your location. Out in the boonies, you just need power, and maybe phone and cable. If there's even cable access -- otherwise you'll need satellite internet/TV. And there are always cell phones. You'll have a well and septic system for water and sewage disposal. First, you CAN move homes. Purchasing a small older house is often cheaper than the actual fees moving it to the property. You could use that as a base of operations while building a new home, and then it could be the guest house. The boys can fix it up as part of their free room and board. :) Alternately, people always want someone to come and get rid of an old trailer. Not high class accommodations, but as a temporary home it would be fine. You do want to be nearby while the house is being built to keep your eye on things. In my area, construction costs for stick-built un-energy efficient homes are about $100/sq ft including lot cost. ICF construction with Icycene roof is about $115/sq ft including lot costs. (I don't yet know the raw figures without lot costs, but I just purchased 1/3 acre, unfinished, for $30k and it will be $50-$55k by the time I put a building pad in. FWIW.) Those prices can vary a lot depending on the finish level you want and how much you do yourself or if you act as your own contractor. Which, unless you've done it before, I don't recommend. Or at least get a good consultant. I can't recommend ICF as a construction material enough, especially if you are in a tornado or hurricane prone area. ICF will also work for bermed houses and daylight basements extremely well, and be completely dry inside. A typical ICF home uses less than half the energy of a comparable stick frame home -- and even less if you try harder. SIP construction is another energy efficient building method -- also a premium price over stick frame. Don't forget to look at passive solar home designs. Choose a pro; a poorly designed passive solar home is an uncomfortable nightmare. My chosen architect has a web page at http://www.sunplans.com with many of her plans online for viewing. Passive solar homes don't have to look funky or ultra modern. Digging a well is about $5k-$10k or more, depending on depth. Plus pumps, tank and trenching up to the house. There's no guarantee you'll hit water when you dig but you have to pay anyway. When I looked as restoring my well, the well was good and clean and very wet, but the other bits would cost about $2000. Solar hot water heating is not very effective for radiant heating and when you include the backup systems are usually not energy efficient at all. The people I know that have it have 3 problems -- 1) it heats the house in the summer much better than in the winter, 2) the hot water for showers is never hot and 3) the amount of solar capacity needed to really heat the house is just too much. In most areas, an electric geothermal heat pump is more cost effective and works better. You'll have to do core samples to find out if it's suitable for your land, but you can also lay the lines in a nearby pond even more cheaply. I'm not sure if that's compatible with livestock using the pond, but I would guess not. If you have a PV array to supply that electricity, all the better. Stand-alone solar hot water without the heating, provided you have the proper exposure and required sun, can be a big energy saver. Before getting on the solar bandwagon, be sure the property is in a latitude and climate where solar is effective. Many places in the US are just not good for active solar, either hot water or PV arrays. (Passive solar works anywhere, as does daytime solar space heating.) That goes double for wind power. Unless you have a strong, unidirectional prevailing wind, putting up a windmill is going to be more pain than help, and windmills take a lot of expensive maintenance. They are generally not effective at the home level. Outlying greenhouses are fairly cheap to build if you aren't going to a fancy glass or acrylic one. You do need to replace the plastic every 2 or 3 years. In reality, most climates don't need a greenhouse to produce food all year round. Come down South and you'll prefer winter gardening when there are no bugs. :) Or, design the home with the greenhouse attached (a conservatory) and enjoy the benefits of the plants all year round. Just provide pollination. Making a pond will not be too bad. You just need a local operator. It's cheap to hire a guy with his own backhoe; often cheaper than renting one and attempting to do it yourself and taking twice as long. Call it $500 a day. He'll probably dig a 2nd pond, then at the end, break the dam between them. However, if the pond is fed from groundwater or an underground spring you may not be able to go very deep because the equipment won't be able to operate in the water. Of course, if the water table is that high, a daylight basement is out of the question unless you have a convenient hill. Septic tank costs depend on the number of bedrooms in the house. In most areas, expect now to build an engineered mound system; ~1000g gallons for a 3 bedroom house. $20k-ish. Do consider coming down South. The climate is mild and many people here are not far from their rural roots, if indeed they ever left. Most places are livestock and farm friendly and hunting and fishing are just normal recreation you can do nearby. Land prices are still affordable but unlike what you may have heard, the place is not filled with gun-toting Klan members. (But yes, all your neighbors own shotguns and you will too if you don't already.) It's suitable for solar, and most of the unincorporated areas don't have building codes and inspectors so you can do anything you want provided it clears the health department. I think that's enough for now...

Melanie- I live near a small town, in eastern Washington. Up here, people tend to be pretty independent, which means they don't mind some help, in bad times, but they don't expect it. We're used to being a little more remote, dealing with power outages and being snowed in. In other parts of the country, people have been dealing with hurricanes, tornadoes and other natural disasters...and I think we're starting to realize that government agencies aren't able to do as much, as we may have expected, in the past. As a nation, we've become so dependent on others, that unless we're old enough to remember (or lucky enough to have friends/family who do) what it was like BEFORE all of our needs were provided for, it's going to be hard to take care of ourselves. Food and gas are trucked into local stores, our water, heat, electricity, internet and phone are all brought to our door, the government sends many people money each month, to buy these products and most of the rest of us, depend on other people to pay us money to buy these products. How many of us know how to do it on our own? Even if we stockpile, can we switch over to being more self sufficient, once those reserves are gone? The neat thing about the show I mentioned, in the OP, is that they didn't specify exactly what might happen, just if something did...how would we cope? Where would we get our food? What would we do without TV? Would we have batteries for radios and flashlights? What would happen, when they were used? How much do we take for granted...and how many of our needs are provided for...and would we even realize it, until they were gone? Anyway, I don't mean this to be some 'scary nightmare' but more of a wake up call. I think it's pretty obvious that we can't count on others to always take care of us...we need to know how to take care of ourselves. If you don't already know, learn how to bake, cook, knit, sew, milk a cow, raise chickens, build/repair a fence, basic repairs to a vehicle...and especially...learn to barter! Have/make friends, who know how to do things. Ask them to teach you...or take a class. Learn. Stockpiling is fine, but once it's gone (used or taken) if you don't learn how to provide for yourself, it will be difficult. Also, once you learn, teach others and make sure they know how to take care of themselves, too. If you can't do everything, make sure you know people who will trade with you. As for medicine, that's something I would check into keeping more on hand. When possible (and I know this won't work for everyone) find out if there is an herbal or other remedy that might help, if you can't get medicine. Make sure your tentanus shot has been updated. Like they say in the boy scouts...be prepared.