yonderfamily web site Home -------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ I am owner of this website. I am also the landowner of a 100 acre tree farm near Jeffersonville in Twiggs County Georgia on which my children have built an intentional community known as Yonderfamily Farm. We are home to some fifty thousand planted loblolly pines and natural hardwoods which provide us with a harvest every other year or so as a thinning proceedure and gives us firewood, building poles, and the local mill lumber to make pallet boards and tongue & groove flooring. Trees are our cash crop and trees are cool. You can come here and hug a tree or you can cut one down and do something with it. Residents here work, live, and eat for free; or if you have money or work off the farm you pay rent. In the early days, before my childern were old enough to take over; i opened my farm to any homeless person whatever to make themselves at home in my woods, to build a shack and live there as if it were their own. At that time, it never occurred to me that my farm would someday be called an :intentional community. I have never sold, sub-divided, or in any other way given up title of my property to another person. No one has ever "bought in" to my property in any way whatever. I have been a tree farmer since the seventies and have always dreamed of someday having my own tree farm; now I am retired here and do not go out to work anymore. I intend this land to be a pleasant place to live for me and my family, friends and workers. Others have come here and built homes and are welcome members of the intentional community; but the community is intentional and under the direction of me and my family. Any attempt to sub-divide and make any portion of my farm into a private estate is not acceptable. Tenants who worked off the property and did not participate in community activities were expected to pay rent if they had an income. Some of these tenants did not pay rent nor support in any way whatever toward maintainence and upkeep of this community, and when my sons and daughters became principals of Yonderfamily Housing and Land Trust Inc., a 501-c-3 corporation to care for the intintional community, it became a part of their responsibility to organize the commuinity activities to further its mission and goals. Most residents are happy to be here and we are happy to have them here but the days of freeloading are over. Yet we still have, care for and work with some of the most unlovable people you can immagine. You have to be a real nasty customer to get kicked off Yonder's farm; either a danger to the community or a threat to other people, or illegal. Things like child abuse, adultry, fighting with others or doing drugs will get you kicked off. If you steal from a store in town you better keep going and not even come back. Some years ago I put up a portion of this land for a CRP set-aside for wildlife habitat; which was to bring us some $3800 per year in federal funding. There was one resident here who had persistantly encumbered progess of this corporation in any way he could, being in direct competetion with my son. He moved into the middle of this habitat and built a two room shack and a small private garden and would not move out; thus putting us in violation of the CRP contract, which cost us a lot of money. He had been for years a tenant at sufferance; and when i asked him to leave, at his refusal he became a tenant in adverse possession. When this man did finally move away it was the unanimous concensus of all the residents here that he should not come back. This is the only person in recent years that has been refused residency, and even he wasn't "kicked out", just not alowed to move back in once he was gone. He sued me in court for trespassing on my own property; the judge dismissed the case but i still had to appear in court. I gave this man permission to remove his things--this was not ordered by the judge; but as there were many personal possessions left behind to anchor his hold on my property; i was glad to let him go in and get his stuff. I am very glad to be rid of this blight on my property; but now we are harrassed by an embittered former occupant who somehow thinks he owned something here and we have wronged him. He has put out some very nasty incriminations about Yonderfamily on the internet. It is my intention in this blog to receive input and answer any questions anyone has about Yonderfamily Farm.