From Stage 4. Late Adolescence – The Wanderer in the Cocoon
Our band was based in Santa Cruz in 1970, called the Potter’s Wheel, attending Stephen Gaskin‘s Monday Night Class in San Francisco. In early 1971 I left the band to join the Gaskin-led Caravan of 250 people on about 60 converted school buses, that had just completed a tour of the US. Stephen said they would be leaving again in a week looking to buy a piece of land to settle on, and I jumped aboard. We ended up in Tennessee purchasing a thousand acres and became the founding members of the largest commune in the country, known then and still known simply as The Farm. I lived there for the first year of its existence. While there I apprenticed to a master carpenter and learned some great manual skills. Forty years later the Farm Community seems to still be doing well.
When the Caravan returned I went to see them at Sutro Park on Sunday February 7, 1971. Stephen announced they would leave for Tennessee the following Sunday. If you wanted to come along, show up. I did. A spectacular cross country Caravan of 54 reconverted school buses. Clearing the way with machetes onto the first farm. Peyote meetings and bonfire when we landed. Working with large harvesting and carpentry crews. My apprenticeship with Peter Hoyt building the sorghum mill. Leaving to follow my inner voice. Vowing that whatever I did next I would choose for the long haul and hang in when the going got tough.
#3.6 of SA3. Bands and Farm
Here’s the section I wrote about Communal Farming for my Antioch Portfolio in 1976.
For psychedelics while on the Farm, see Addendum – 31 Trips (Trips #30-1).
Forty Years on The Farm documentary 58:35
For almost the whole time the feedback was that whenever you believed in the agreement of the community you were OK. There was total validation for agreement. Only toward the end, when I started to want to honor my own inner voice, did I start to get negative feedback. Stephen’s partner Michael told me that I wanted “infinite elbow room.” Stephen told me that he could see me as two people, one who I thought I was, and another, an astral body hovering nearby, that was lying. I was told to leave the Farm to pay off a debt I had incurred, and I was put on the road in a ten degree Tennessee winter with no money and a pair of old overalls.
Excerpt from Communal Farming section of Antioch Portfolio