How I Joined A Conscious Coliving Nature Community in Southern California - Village Builder Insider #3

And tools to help you find the community of your dreams

A Bird Needs a Nest

Writing to you from Wild Seeds, my new nest.

It’s my favorite community I’ve lived in so far.

I’ve been traveling to communities and just internationally traveling nonstop since 2021. I landed here over a week ago and I could not be more relieved. All I want to do is become moss on a rock here and have a home base for awhile.

Choosing this place was about finally feeling at home. The people here laugh as loudly as I do, are quick with their wits and quick to share food.

We’re situated in a rural area 30 minutes outside of San Diego, in Dulzura (Spanish for “sweetness”). Here’s some high level stats about the community:

• 4 acres

• 11 awesome long-term residents

• 17-bedrooms + 1 tiny home + 1 mini cabin + RV/vanlife/camping hookups

• 3 community kitchens (1 outdoor)

• seasonal creek

• woodshop with shared tools

• art/sewing rooms

• solar panels + tesla batteries

• food gardens

• 2 outdoor baths and koi pond

• outdoor event space

• a private dog park for resident’s pets

• right next to BLM lands and open trails

• too much to list here

This is why I recommend village builders to consider turnkey properties like this one. Wild Seeds has only been around 3.5 years, but a lot of the infrastructure was existing, so it was easier to get off the ground.

The community is for eco-preneurs, creative professionals, social impact artists, and spiritual activists. Our current residents are so interesting — from a retired filmmaker to an e-waste company founder to a mixed media artist and fashionista.

The owner, Jordan, is building a shared ownership model, and he wants to create more community spaces just like this.

I met him in Berlin at the regenerative urban hub, MOOS, during a Cohere residency. I visited Wild Seeds in May, and my Regen Tribe colleagues visited there in June to teach their regenerative neighborhood agent program.

Despite all this and more, the project is still a great work in progress and I would love for people to come join us. There’s high potential and I feel an exhilarating amount of freedom to nurture my creative pursuits.

Our life here unfolds pretty organically, and every day is different.

I am happy I finally found a community I am excited to live in long-term.

How Anyone Can Find Community

Not everyone wants to build a community. Most need to join.

Even me, as I’m nerdily collecting all the resources I can find about village building and designing a smart village in Italy, I’d much rather live in community now than in the future.

I see a lot of village builders delaying their community life until they feel ready to make this “big leap”. It doesn’t have to be so drastic. They are plenty of collective spaces to join.

Communities like Wild Seeds have plenty of room for the creativity of builders like me to come in at a formative stage. Plus, it’s easier because there’s already infrastructure and some people.

Here are my favorite tools to find community:

Group Chats

Most people are sleeping on the power of group chats. Being part of a whatsapp, telegram, discord, or facebook group chat for ecovillage builders can alert you to the really grassroots communities that don’t (and might never) have a website.

You can find these easily by searching, but if you need recommendations, you can message me privately and I’ll provide them (linking them here leaves them vulnerable to bots/spam).

Directories

Check online directories for listings of projects to discover existing and emerging communities you can join. Cynthia Tina has the most comprehensive article on this, 21 Intentional Community Directories to Expand Your Research.

You can also browse for modern coliving near you and find some more watered down versions of community (in LA for example, there’s Cohaus, LivingQ, and Common).

Also, I would search Regen Tribe’s regenerative neighborhood profiles and Cabin’s list of Cabin locations. If you have any other directory recommendations, please comment below.

Matchmaking Services

There are a few matchmaking services out there. Cynthia Tina offers matchmaking and the Community Finders Circle, and I’ve done personalized matchmaking in the past and I’m opening up matchmaking again for the next 3 months only.

My Own Placemaking

Dropping a callback to my article on regenerative placemaking, I want to share my intentions for integrating into this community and the local area.

Even though rural dynamics are often much different from urban ones, California feels culturally relevant to me and a place where I feel right at home. I feel I can be engaged in local politics much more than I could when I was living in Mexico or Costa Rica.

this is coming home

What I intend to do for placemaking:

Visiting neighbors — Good old fashioned showing up with snacks and getting to know the local community is high on my list. Per my experience, it's key to have neighbors on your side when you have an experimental project.

Case in point: a neighbor’s horse got loose and the caretaker was frantically trying to rope it up, but it wouldn’t come near. I walked up, put the rope over my wrist, put a carrot in my hand, and slipped the rope over him nice and calm.

The caretaker was so grateful that he offered to come teach us welding, which 4 of us had decided that we wanted to learn just the day before. The magic of making relationships.

Supporting First Nations — I’ve attempted to email some university representatives of the Kumeyaay tribe (the original stewards of this area) without luck yet. It's important to me to figure out how this community can also support any land back or indigenous culture initiatives.

Apparently someone named Max, half Kumeyaay, rents our woodshop occasionally. I’ll dialogue with him to start the weaving.

Making alliances — Gathering ReFi, regen, and web3 folks from the local area is my way of catalyzing our local relationships. We already have certain pop-up events like a farmers market and open mic connected to the community. I’m toying with more ideas for events that invite resonant people to show up.

Tomorrow we’ll go to an event for community builders at Emerald Village Oasis, a nearby intentional community. We’re building a directory of local allies that we can support and be supported by in our community building journey.

Communion with Nature — Sit and listen.

We did a land blessing ceremony on Tuesday. We gave offerings to the land, sang medicine songs, and spoke about our experiences of the sacred here.

Spending time with the Arhuaco taught me that there is — without a doubt — an arcane natural world we have disconnected from full of incredible phenomena that are the closest thing to real magic we know.

now the spontaneous mother to a lost kitten that wandered onto the property on Tuesday. She was hiding out in the English vines, so we named her Ivy. She'll snuggle with anyone, she was born to be a community cat

“Regenerative Interventions” — I want to find out the regenerative potential of the property and the local area. Whatever the most pressing issue is — lack of biodiverse plants, drought, etc.— it’s my intention to get behind any local efforts to solve this.

Community engagement workshops will midwife what wants to be born Inside and outside of the ranch.

Consulting for Community Members and Builders

Two months ago I started helping the Global Ecovillage Network develop and launch their new consultancy platform. Now I am the soon-to-be Marketing and Communications Director as my colleague goes on maternity leave.

In the consultancy, village builders will be able to receive advice directly from their mentors. While the consulting program is still underway, I’m excited to help share the wisdom of GEN.

If you can’t wait, I also offer personalized consulting for village builders and seekers. While I’m still building my expertise in comprehensive village design, these are services I’m proud to offer for your existing or emerging village.

• Documentation Review — Send me your vision document, pitch deck, business plan, and any other documentation and I’ll review them for you and give feedback based on the copious amounts of presentations, manifestos, etc. that I’ve seen. I provide examples of other projects you can use as reference.

• Business Plan — I help you build financial projections based off of real village projects that I’ve worked with.

• Community Culture Design — Together we design your community’s culture and rituals. We examine how you enforce behaviors and create community cohesiveness.

• Onboarding/Offboarding & Recruitment — I help communities build their onboarding and offboarding processes, as well as strategize their community member recruitment tactics.

In addition, I research and refer my clients to the regenerative service providers they are looking for.

If you want personalized consulting for finding or building a village, reach out to me.

One of my affiliated partners, Community Finders, run by Cynthia Tina, offers services for people seeking ecovillages or building ecovillages. I highly recommend you join one of her courses to uplevel your ecovillage journey.

Use the code TERRENITY for $100 off your ecovillage tour.