Maya Creek

Education in Sustainability

History

The Calwood-Fairview Farm

I was born out on the land where I’m now building Maya Creek. At that time the land was being used by a community of friends from nearby Columbia who were part of the back-to-the-land movement started in the 60′s and 70′s.  Nearly a dozen of them pooled their resources and bought the land as a land trust in 1972.

Paquin-Waugh Street CommuneAt it’s height there were nearly 25 people living on the land in school buses, tipis, geodesic domes, all of them using a communal bathroom/kitchen house they’d built together.  There had been an old unused farm house at the top of the hill the first few people initially stayed in, but it was falling apart and was taken down for scrap materials during the construction of the “bath house”.

A number of factors combined led the eventual dissolution of “the Calwood-Fairview farm” as it was known. Roughly half of the residents split off to form another community following the principles of Stephen Gaskin, a founder of an intentional community called “The Farm” in Tennessee.

Other residents got tired of commuting the 35-40 minutes to Columbia every day. Some simply weren’t prepared to give up creature comforts that become untenable in a self-sufficient lifestyle. The final blow to the community was the construction of the Callaway nuclear power plant 8 miles away, which many of the residents were uncomfortable living near especially after the accident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979. The Callaway plant went online in December 1984.

Early 20th Century

The Calwood-Fairview Farm trust bought the property from a semi-famous boxer who used the land for hunting. I believe that he bought the land from a company who logged the land in perhaps the 1930’s, who I think bought the land from a family who lost the property during the great depression. These were the residents of the old farm house the members of the land trust would stay in and use in construction of the bath house.

Native American Heritage

Osage warriorBefore the arrival of europeans the Osage tribe controlled the area encompassing the land and they did so until the Illini pushed them south in the mid 1600’s before they themselves ceded the land to the whites. It’s a common occurance to find arrowheads on the land.

The Osage grew more food than most other tribes and after planting would often travel west to the plains in order to hunt buffalo. They would then return to their untended crops in fall for the harvest. They ferociously protected their lands and are well known for their long bows and war clubs which were typically made from a tree now known as the “Osage orange”. You might recognize them as trees that grow “horse apples”. The wood from these trees is extremely strong and when burned as fire wood gives off more BTUs per weight than almost any other tree.

Across the Aux Vasse creek from the property is relatively flat bottom land that was and is used for agricultural purposes. There is a small road that exists through the property which was once used to transport grain crops from those fields to a mill beyond the property.


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