The Quaker Intentional Village-Canaan is currently made up of six member households (eleven adults and nine resident children) and two prospective member households living on the land together. (Well, almost. Anne and Milo expect to move in March 1, 2013.) Here is a little information about our households. For more on our vision, how we got started, etc. see our FAQ.
Sandra and Carolyn: Sandra and her daughter Carolyn live in a modular, green, two-bedroom house made by Blu Homes and unfolded on-site in September 2010. Sandra hopes for a future of gardens and orchards, running races and completing mini-triathalons, and lots of cutting firewood with her new chainsaw to heat her house. Carolyn is away at Westtown School, enjoying soccer, pottery, and her friendships. Sandra works in development and fundraising for the local public radio (classical music) and television stations.
Jens and Spee and three children teen and older: Spee's passion and paying work is international humanitarian work, which she does on a consulting basis for Save the Children and others. Jens is very involved with the Alternatives to Violence Project internationally and with food production and preservation right here at QIVC. Among their many projects are bee-keeping, shepherding, orcharding, soil improvement, and natural building. They have lived and worked in many countries around the world, including Ecuador, Palestine, and Costa Rica. In 2009, Jens completed building their three-bedroom First Day Cottage house, which is heated with wood.
Dee and Paul: Dee is in the process of expanding her psychology practice to include mediation. See more about this at Common Good Mediation & Family Services. She is passionate about Nonviolent Communication and sees it as a whole-life tool for increasing her capacity to “walk the earth responding to that of God in everyone.” Paul’s lifelong passion is organic gardening which has recently expanded into the discovery of nutrient-dense soil-building. One of his current creative outlets is landscaping the hill around their house with rock terracing. A political radical, Paul is known as “Captain Catastrophe” and sees his work in the community as the most creative expression of "collapsonomics." Paul and Dee live in their passive solar, wood-stove heated home with Butch, their elderly and much loved, deaf cat. Their two adult sons (1980 & 1982) enjoy visiting and participating in community work and celebratory events.
Another household has three active, young kids, a stay-at-home dad and a professor mom, a farm dog (in training) and an indoor cat, living in under 1500 square feet. This family built their own house (First Day Cottage), heated with solar exposure and wood with a radiant floor for back-up. Good and local (as in grown right here) food is very important to this family, and they would like to produce the majority of their consumed calories on site. Well, except for the sugar in all the jam in the pantry! When not at home reading, knitting, or building, they are often gardening or about the land exploring, cross-country skiing, hiking, and birdwatching.
Eric and Ellen and two children (1998 & 2001): Eric is a self-described "coding geek." His passion is creating the infrastructure for an economy based on wealth as thriving living systems, which he does as part of the MetaCurrency project. His other interests include, collective intelligence and social architectures, the open-source revolution, and renaturalization (Jim Corbett). He also makes excellent scones. Ellen is a Certified Professional Midwife and part-time Web developer (she and Eric create Web systems for gathering birth-related research data). She listens to many audiobook novels during long work-related drives in one of their two veggie-oil-powered cars. She used to edit science-fiction novels and her ambition is to become "copy-editor laureate" of the United States, with the power to correct any punctuation errors she finds on trucks, signs, and cereal boxes. Their two boys are interested in drumming, reading, drawing, unicycling, snowboarding, outdoor survival skills, and Minecraft (an open-source computer game). They live in a three-bedroom strawbale house built with local craftspeople, heated with a masonry heater (wood) that is the center of family life in the winter.
The Michaud family lives in a self-built three bedroom First Day Cottage heated with wood and solar-heated water. They enjoy living both on the inside and the outside of their cozy little house on the uphill side of the land, where they have a view of the beauty and love that abounds. Emilie-Anne is dedicated to her family and her work as a pediatric psychiatric nurse practitioner. Her main drive is supporting her children in their growth and struggles with disabilities and chronic illness. However, under-girding all this activity and work is her conscious noticing and holding of the mundane moments of life, thus allowing the Light to emanate. Dan works as a social worker. His greatest interests are in existential spirituality, outdoor sports (running, mountain biking, kayaking, camping, snowboarding), growing, raising and cooking food, and spending time with his children. Elon (1994) has a passion for nature and animal care, especially her two horses whom she rides on the land. She enjoys music and literature, and inspires others with her courageous fight for recovery from tick-born diseases. Simon is four years younger than his sister and has a passion for history, music, drama, singing bass, social media and snowboarding. A grown son and daughter-in-law live San Diego.
