Living Energy Farm community in Louisa, VA, changed our lives.
They did this by simultaneously articulating the global situation we’re in and modeling a solution upon the same ground.
They gave us a place for our hearts to feel the depth of the danger and loss we are living through while immediately then being able to use this new way of seeing to apprehend the beautiful solution they were growing on the ground around them.
I want to honor the work they did by sharing this to me profoundly helpful publication about the life-support systems they use to live within the limits of the earth. Please read it:
http://livingenergyfarm.org/raff20.pdf
The critique I often share of renewables (e.g. solar & wind) does not apply to LEF’s approach. This is because they adjust demand to supply; in other words, they live with the earth’s rhythms.
Even so, and very importantly, they live with a great degree of what I would call comfort – defined by having coolness in the summer, heat in the winter, clean water, healthy organic food, many tools of convenience (e.g. power tools for building), and even hot showers whenever they want.
LEF does this by bravely looking at the reality of living within limits and designing solutions that elegantly accept that reality. These solutions are skillfully designed. As a result, the seeming polarities of “comfortable life” OR “ecological life” are dialectically synthesized into an AND – a comfortable, ecological life.
It’s important to note that they could NOT achieve this life within limits by just living in a big house as a nuclear family and adding tons of solar panels. To understand why, see their publication and my previous post’s link to low-tech magazine.
In other words: living ecologically does mean living differently and sharing more, but on the home / community / village scale, it definitely does not have to mean living miserably. An abundant life within limits is possible if we have good design. LEF is a shining light of of one way to make it through the present and coming darkness.