Commune evolves into modern community with hippie ideals
The Farm near Summertown now boasts permanent housing and businesses — some of which compete globally.
The inspiration for The Farm came from San Francisco State University teaching assistant Stephen Gaskin, who in the late 1960s started a class where hundreds of hippies gathered to ask him such questions as: “What is the relation between perfection and growth?” and “Is it bad karma to beat up a narc?”
More than 300 followed him in a bus caravan to Middle Tennessee in 1971. They settled on land in rural Lewis County, celebrating with a sign that said: “Out to Save the World.”
The Farm eventually grew to encompass 1,700 acres. At one point, about 1,200 people lived there, and there was a permanent camp of hundreds of visitors.
“It was either live in a suburb with my husband and 2.3 kids or do something amazingly different with my life,” said Cynthia Holzapfel.
But communal living caused problems.
People were inclined to do the kind of work they wanted, even if experimenting with alternative energy sources “wasn’t putting bread and butter on the table,” Holzapfel said.
Democratic decision-making led to endless, unresolved meetings.
In the 1980s, interest rates rose, and The Farm found itself close to $1 million in debt. The group could afford to pay only interest on its loans, said Albert Bates, the unofficial historian of The Farm.
With a vote in 1983, the members turned the commune into a cooperative called The Foundation, asking members to pay a fee to support the communally owned land and buildings. Each family became responsible for its own finances.
People left, and of those who remained, some took jobs outside and began commuting to work. Today, fewer than 200 people remain.
“It was really hard to be poor,” said Frank Michael, who runs the business MushroomPeople. “We were working 18-hour days, trying to keep it all together.”
Michael believes as people got older they naturally wanted homes and spouses and children. They didn’t want to stay up until 3 a.m. discussing how to change the world.
Some businesses became privately owned, and all stayed small. Many of them continue to aim to make some positive impact on the world, while striving for a small profit.
But they’ve had to evolve to survive.
MushroomPeople, which began in the 1970s, has outsourced the growing of shiitake spawn and other mushroom varieties. It now operates mostly as a packaging and shipping operation, selling $100,000 worth per year.
The Book Publishing Co., the last remaining business owned by The Foundation cooperative, has followed the publishing industry and got rid of its printing presses long ago. It farms out printing to various businesses in the countries where it sells.
Distributors get titles to growing markets in Australia, England, Canada and South Africa. Book Publishing has 200 titles, mostly vegetarian cookbooks and books by Native Americans, and sells to national chains such as Borders and Barnes & Noble.
The publisher made $1.2 million in sales last year and is building a warehouse next door for added space, right near where some neighbors graze their horses.
“You would never expect to see a successful publishing house in that location,” said Tim Taylor, a sales representative with Transcontinental Printing, which handles some of Book Publishing’s print jobs.
Michael says that rather than proving that communalism doesn’t work, The Farm showed that a hybrid system does.
“We got a lot more practical, but we’re still idealists,” he said.