BEECHHILL COMMUNITY - AUTUMN 2004

The average age of the members was a bit higher than ours and we didnt had a connection from the start. Most people have to earn money outside the community and come and go when they have to. On thursday there is a members meating but we didnt attend it. Some member warned us for it, it could get very late and boring.

Every evening someone prepares a dinner for the rest and people are welcome to join. Some members have guests over and cook for themselfes, its all ok and natural. The lunches and breakfasts are DIY and its nice to be free to eat when you like and what you like (this may sound funny for some people). Sometimes the dinners would be served rather late because people work outside and could be in around six, before they could start preparing dinner. This meant that we had dinner around 9 a couple of times, this was far to late for Evelien.

The working we did was to get to know the community and was very relaxed. We worked half a day in the garden and really enjoyed ourselfs. Most of the time there were no members around or we ended up somewhere else in the garden. We pruned a recently planted orchard and had a go at the old orchard. There was a large garden and you could see that there was not enough time in the world for them to keep up with it. Someone told us they should spend more time doing garden work and specialy building maintenance.

We had a feeling this was a great place to live if you have a job somewhere around one of the surrounding towns. We could do some homeschooling here and also join the Steiner School. We could make our own mix of education that way. But there were not many young childeren around and that would make life a bit lonely for Evelien. The people were very friendly and the gardens were just calling for us, but still we didnt think this would be the right place for us. We decided to look further and perhaps come back for a visit in the new year.

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