Charlottesville/Ivy Project: Companion Farm

What:

Companion Farm in Ivy, Virginia will become a vibrant center, institute and working farm. The project will support, network, and train people and communities working together to solve problems affecting themselves and others. People will come to learn and strategize around big picture goals. Because the farm is so beautiful, it will also provide a space for relaxation and recuperation from burnout. It will be a place for celebration of victories and culture.

Ideally, this project will prove to have long-term relevance, thus requiring its organizers to think in terms of decades as often as they do in days. It must also maintain an appropriate role in the communities and movements with which the project’s staff and supporters works. The components of this vision are subject to drastic altering or elimination depending on assessment of relevance and need for the project in parts or whole.

This vision has five basic parts:

1. Movement retreat center and educational program
2. Working farm and model of sustainability
3. Site to support local and regional organizing and community activism
4. Site for green technology and experimentation
5. Center for celebration and cultural production

Programs and structures that would fulfill the five-part vision draft might include the following:

• Dorms and meeting space for organizational retreats, meetings, and trainings.
• Staff that could provide translation, facilitation, and workshops on a range of skills
• Resource center and library
• Working organic farm to supply meals for visiting organizations, and provide food for local and regional consumers and organizations
• Educational programs on organizing, movement building in the south, sustainable farming, etc. These could be weekend, summer-long, or 6 month/year long educational internships. Programs could target children, youth, or adults.
• A guiding plan for large-scale social and political change.

Major guiding questions:

• Most appropriate first steps in project (based on local/regional need and available resources)
• Best structure, process, and group of people to begin project and move it towards final vision
• Legal limitations of current zoning on land
• Need, cost, and processes of rezoning minimum acreage (2 acres)
• Ownership of land (private or incorporated into a nonprofit)



Possible timeline:

October 2007-February 2008 : Build interest and ownership locally, gauge local and regional interest and need, network nationally (visit similar centers, gauge national need and interest, and develop list of interested folks and possible advisory board), and research legal processes surrounded zoning of land and process of building on farm.

February 2008- Weekend meeting of interested people (local and national). First steps are decided upon.

March/April 2008- Break ground for organic food production (done together with Charlottesville and other Virginia organizations interested in local food and food education. Quality Community Council in Charlottesville, etc.) Build small structure to house two to five people (core group) living part or full time on farm, or live in town and commute to maintain farm. Tools purchased.

March-November 2008 – Core group farms and does fundraising and networking for development of retreat center/institute. Folks not living in Charlottesville assess how they can best contribute (fundraising, traveling, advising, etc.) Trips are made to similar projects and regional organizations of interest. Plumbing, electricity installed on farm.

Winter/Spring 2008-2009 – Project, local/regional/national needs are assessed, funds raised, and additional structures are designed and center/institute programming developed. Organizations begin to use farm for retreats.