One Tree Orchard Sustainable Community

“Let’s start at the very beginning: A very good place to start”

Oscar Hammerstein

In February 2008 I began the process or researching and developing a community subdivision design for a large piece of family land In rural New Brunswick. Since then I think it’s safe to say I’ve been though a wonderful personal transformation. To be sure, I’ve always been very vocal of my disdain for resource plunder and grandeur for the sake of status. But until now, I’ve never really had my idealism and world view put to public scrutiny. I realise now how difficult it must be for old school builders and community designers to change their paradigms. We don’t even really use the metric system in New Brunswick yet. I know from the onset that my ‘intentional community’ expedition will be steep. I hope that my sense of how a community should be built will stand up both socially and financially. Only time will tell I suppose. Mainly, I realise that I can’t possibly continue to bitch about the choices of others in this field if I can’t do any better.
This journey, despite it being still in its early days, has been an enormously formative experience for me. I can’t even express the gratitude that I feel to my parents for giving me the opportunity to manage this exciting process. I’ve never been interested in real estate or other speculative profit games. In fact I might be so bold as to say that even the concept of land ownership in it’s current form is a little bit absurd to me. Life has truly dropped this amazing opportunity at my feet.

This experience has been, primarily, a journey of self discovery. Don’t get me wrong, there has been a huge amount of book learning ,research and networking, advice seeking and pandering for favours, etc. But the real magic has been the relationships that have been born out of this dream. People from many different walks of life have stepped up to offer help and support in a variety of ways. To some the idea of designing a ’subdivision’ is boring as hell. In theory this is the case for me. Like I said I have never been interested in being taking part in the plunder of natural resources that tends to take the name ‘Land Management’. Since my father took ill, my parents had two options: Sell this land or develop it. I asked to take this project on because I believe that I will do a better job of ‘developing’ it than anyone else. Again, only time will tell.