Quaker Intentional Village-Canaan

We are currently a community of about 10 households living close to the land on 135 acres of mixed woodland and pasture. We range in age from toddler to 90’s, with more than 15 adults, a number of young adults, and an abundant handful of children. We are on land in the gorgeous Hudson Valley and Capital Region of upstate New York, and in the foothills of the Berkshires. East Chatham is in Columbia County and by car is 35 minutes from Albany, 2.5 hours from NYC/Boston, and 10 minutes from our local Quaker Meeting in Old Chatham (http://oldchathamquakers.org/) as well as the Powell House Conference Center (https://powellhouse.org) of New York Yearly Meeting (https://nyym.org). We are thriving in a range of green homes that use technologies including plastered strawbale walls, slip-and-chip walls, stick-building, timber-framing, passive solar design, solar hot-water systems, and wood heat; many of us built our own. Many of us garden organically, raise chickens, and eat increasingly more from what we grow. We join together in our big farmhouse or around a campfire for potlucks, occasional community dinners, workdays, committee meetings, spontaneous game nights and tea times, presentations on topics of interest, monthly community business meetings, and extended weekend retreats. We use Quaker processes in our self-government, including a form of consensus that seeks a spiritually led way forward, individual and corporate discernment, and the clearness process. We value equality, simplicity, and diversity of experience and viewpoints. We are currently seeking new members! We regularly have (a) home(s) and rooms available for rent or purchase. We also have one house building site available. Our membership process starts with a mutual getting-to-know-each-other time, during which the potential member or member family gets involved with the community in various ways and gets to know us (and vice-versa). This often takes up to a year. The goal is to come to a sense of clearness, for the applicant as well as the community members, about whether the fit is a good one. More about our membership process can be found on our web site (https://community.qivc.org/faq-qivc#Participation). We believe conscious culture creation in community can be a means to advance our intentions to: * live in worship, increasing our mindfulness, spiritual focus, and God-centeredness by intertwining our daily lives with others who share these intentions * create a village setting that values and engages participation by people of all ages, expands our experience of family, and supports our expression in the world * create wealth that embodies integrity and Truth by carefully examining our engagement in the current economic order and stepping away from its destructive elements * live in unity & harmony with the earth by considering the near and far environmental impact of our actions while striving for thrivability * include a good measure of joy, fun, creativity, and service in our lives QIVP (https://qivp.org) believes that our communities’ successes in achieving these five intentions will be aided by memberships diverse in race, age, ethnicity, sexual preference, and economic situations, and therefore it is our aim to gather communities whose members are diverse in these ways as well as others.