Visiting our friends from the ‘60s at The Farm community

My posting is behind as we spent a week in Baltimore, Maryland, then when we came back I read all the interesting posts my blogging friends had published on their blogs. Now I am continuing the narrative of our visit at the Farm community in Tennessee where we visited our friends from San Francisco – see my last post here.




We had not seen our friends in many years – it seemed so long ago but at the same time just like yesterday. I came over from Paris in the summer of 1961 and we left San Francisco at the end of December 1969. Many have demonized the decade of the ‘60s – mostly conservatives and corporations. The Right has been campaigning misinformation about the ‘60s and the general public has come to believe it. But something significant happened in the sixties. We did not want the drab conformism and materialism of the ‘50s, we had hope, enthusiasm and the desire to make life better for everyone.

Collage graphics from free fractual wallpapers

The Vietnam War was a tragedy with 67,000 American casualties (58,000+ killed in the war and 9,000 as suicides) and up to 5 million Vietnamese casualties, not counting the millions in Laos and Cambodia. We walked against it, many, many times. The Right would like to erase the memory of the half million US deserters or the more than 100 underground antiwar newspapers published by soldiers. Even repentant Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, architect of the Vietnam War, later said that it had been “a fatal mistake.” So we wanted peace, unity, understanding, kindness, economic and social equality.

Peace buttons and flowers were everywhere. We became more concerned about our health and the environment. The environmental movement gained popularity and organizations like the Sierra Club became popular. After reading “The Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson we joined cooperatives to buy healthy and organic food – you had to join a cooperative to find healthier food then as it was considered “subversive” not to eat regular or junk food. Ralph Nader published “Unsafe at Any Speed” which created the consumer movement. The Peace Corps was also created in the ‘60s. We just did not want to live; we wanted to experience life with all our senses.



The sixties were a decade of change and they had lasting effects. There were some excesses but much general good has resulted. Students coming from the complacent and comfortable ‘50s created the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (1960-66)in North Carolina and worked very hard to bring civil rights to the US South (you can read about it here: “Black is not a Vice nor Segregation a Virtue.” We had great ideals, and we worked on them. The growth of the women’s movement started then because women felt they should do away with the rigid subordination to men (The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan was published in 1963.) We questioned racism, the government, religion, dress codes and dull popular music.




We were married on 17 June 1967 (called the Summer of Love) and went to the Monterey Pop Festival on the 18th as a honeymoon, where we saw Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, the Who, Ravi Shankar, The Mamas and the Papas, Buffalo Springfield, Simon and Garfunkel, Hugh Masekela, Otis Redding and watched Jimi Hendrix smash his guitar while singing “Wild Thing.” The June 1967 Monterey Pop Festival was one of the greatest, if not the greatest rock concert ever.

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace. -Jimi Hendrix, American Musician, Guitarist, Singer, Songwriter, 1942-1970

Joan Baez singing “Where have all the Flowers Gone?”

As I mentioned in my last post The Farm is no longer a commune but a cooperative intentional community. They have dues and laws just like an owner’s association. In addition to many gardens outside their homes, there is a large community garden on the Farm. Also, as a community, they tend about an acre of blueberries and 6 to 7 acres of apple and pear trees. They also have multiple businesses. During the Caravan travel from San Francisco to many states in 1971 several babies were born in buses. Women on the bus helped with delivery and some became professional midwives. They published a book “Spiritual Midwifery” by Ina May Gaskin which has been sold to almost ½ million readers. Along the years they have helped deliver 3500 babies and never lost a single one. You can read about it here.




The public can come to The Farm for “The Farm Experience Week-end” which takes place several times a year. The few days we were there everything was quiet and we encountered hardly anyone. Our friend took us to the Farm Store. It stocks a good variety of groceries, vegetarian snacks, books, etc.




Then he showed us a large domed structure where they hold meetings, concerts and other entertainment.

Click on picture to bigify

We toured the Farm in his electric golf cart. We saw the prairie which is a wildlife habitat,




and the eco village area below -



Along the way we saw some of the old buses -






In the early days additions had been built on some of these buses and vans as housing

Some of the previous residents who made careers on the outside are now coming back and building very nice “green” houses, energy efficient and built in a more sustainable way. We went to the creek which has an adjacent beach in summer.




We came back and took another walk with our friend’s dog, looking at flowers on the way and breathing the pure country air.




The next morning it was time to return back home and we were sorry to leave our friends from the ‘60s. But happy that, as many of us from that decade, our friends and us have not sold out. Some of us took regular jobs but carefully, like my husband who received a masters’ degree in environmental planning and made a career in the protection of wildlife. We followed a life of simplicity and recycling, keeping our radical ideas of equality with us. We made friends with people of different races, religion and cultural ethics and tried to help whenever we could.




We traveled frugally and kept our fuel efficient small car. We did not adhere to the “me” generation of the ‘80s and ‘90s but kept our non materialistic ways. The ‘60s never died for us, we are still rebellious and refuse the new general apathy to the polarizing and more oppressive ways of our government. So we left the old buses painted with flowers. But then… in Baltimore my little grandson unexpectedly showed me his new little car … well, you may say I’m a dreamer…

“You may say that I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one”
– John Lennon, 1940-1980 “Imagine” lyrics

“…the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”
-Edward Kennedy, US Senator, 1932-2009