Traveling to The Farm in Tennessee

 We have been planting many petunias and impatiens in pots in our backyard. I took a picture of the pots facing our kitchen window – the pots look good.




Then this morning some of the pots had been dug out and turned over again – this has happened several times already. We do not know which critter does this maneuver on our pots. In our backyard we have seen rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, possums and chipmunks many times – but which one is the culprit? I post this hoping that someone will tell us what we should do to prevent the responsible animal from hurting our pretty planters.

Click on collage to enlarge, then click on the pictures to enlarge again

Last week we came back from Tennessee where our friend and his wife live in a place called The Farm Community where they have been since 1972 when it was started as a commune. We had met our friend in San Francisco, California, in the mid-sixties. My husband attended San Francisco City College part time and our friend attended San Francisco State College (now university.)

Picture of San Francisco with Golden Gate Bridge taken with my 35mm camera in July1967

We spent many hours talking – about everything and our friend was an usher at our wedding in June 1967. My husband and I left San Francisco in a truck across country with our newborn baby girl and all our belongings. We arrived in Marietta, Ohio in January 1970 where my husband could finish his degree at Marietta College.

Picture of my husband and infant daughter one month or so before we left San Francisco

Our friend left San Francisco too, but with a caravan of buses, which became known as The Caravan. The picture below is from the back of the book The Caravan by Stephen Gaskin (copyright the Book Publishing Co.)

At San Francisco State College (SFSC) our friend had started to attend lectures given by an English professor named Stephen Gaskin. My husband had gone to a couple of the lectures but he had to attend his classes in the evenings. Stephen Gaskin, a former US Marine, started giving the lectures in 1966-67 in a SFSC hall. The lectures became so popular that he had to move to a church, then a theater and finally the rock hall The Family Dog. Up to 1000 to 1500 young seekers attended the lectures – a variety of high school, university students and hippies from the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco. The teachings were discussions on politics, love, acid, peace and a blend of eastern and western religion.



In 1969 a group of theologians attending a convention in San Francisco went to the Family Dog on a Monday Night and heard Stephen’s high energized talks. They invited him to speak at their churches and colleges. Later that year, on Columbus Day 1970, our friend joined Stephen Gaskin in a caravan of 20 to 30 converted school buses that left San Francisco to tour the country and visit 42 states.

From the Web – Caravan Buses, picture copyright The Farm ( photo Gerald Wheeler, Cliff Figallo and John Coate)

At that time we were in Marietta, Ohio, where my husband was finishing his Bachelor of Science degree.



Some of the buses were as old as the 40’s and all the roofs were painted white so as not to be mistaken for regular school buses. They stopped at many congregations and colleges for Stephen’s speaking tour and picked up more people who wished to join the Caravan. A year later when the Caravan returned to San Francisco it counted more than 100 vehicles made up of 60 buses, a dozen step vans, VW campers, bread trucks and an assortment of bright colored painted vehicles.

From the Web – Caravan Buses, picture copyright The Farm ( photo Gerald Wheeler, Cliff Figallo and John Coate)

"You're either on the bus or off the bus."

-Ken Kesey, American author who wrote One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest -1962

At first the returning group wished to buy land in California but it was too expensive. They decided to pool their money and return to Tennessee with the buses and buy land somewhere close to Nashville for a permanent utopian community. In December 1971 they were able to put a down payment on a 1050 acre farm in Summertown, about 1 hour south of Nashville, where they created a commune which they called The Farm.

Graphic - Utopian Farm Land (reworked from free Solis,NZ)

Two years later they purchased another 750 acres. There was only a building or two on the property so they really were like pioneers living on the land. The group of hippies had to make do without running water, electricity, etc. They farmed the land, built shelters (some of them as addition to their buses), built a sorghum mill, pooled all their resources and energy to make the commune survive and it did. By 1982 1200 members (half of them children) lived on the property and received up to 10,000 visitors. They created a band, soy dairy, a midwife center, a book publishing company and other businesses. They even created a nonprofit organization called Plenty International to help people in other countries. You can read more about Plenty International here.

Below is a picture of some of the books sold by The Farm that I have

However, in 1983, because farming had not brought in enough funds and also because of the recession the settlement was reorganized; they called this “The Changeover.” They went from being a commune, where everything was held and shared in common, to a cooperative. The land is still held in common now but the members pay monthly dues for general expenses. Many left the Farm Community and now the population is stable at about 200. The businesses are doing well although they no longer farm their land.




There is a lot more I could tell about The Farm but this was just to give you background information on our visit to our friends who live there. You can also find more on the Farm on their own websites: http://www.thefarm.org/ and http://www.thefarmcommunity.com/ .In my next post I’ll have some pictures of our visit.

Love is but a song to sing
And fear's the way we die.
You can make the mountains ring
Or make the angels cry.
Though the bird is on the wing
You may not know why.

C'mon, people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now.

- Everybody Get Together, lyrics by Chet Powers,
early 60s, member of Quicksilver Messenger Service
Collage graphics from free fractual wallpapers

Addendum: Just received an email from my friends at The Farm - they are on high ground and did not get any flooding, unlike many people in Tennessee.

Note: This is a pre-programmed post. If your comments take longer to be published, it is because I could not get close to a computer while on this trip.