Maya Creek Ecovillage

The Plan

The intention of our ecovillage is to forge an environmentally sustainable community that not only aims to be mostly self-sufficient but also performs outreach to the mainstream consumer "throw away" culture that pervades our world today.

We are not cutting ourselves off from the rest of society, nor are we regressing to a difficult primitive lifestyle. Outreach to the local community and broader society at large is a core goal of Maya Creek which we accomplish by holding workshops, giving tours, as well as working in the local community to foster better relationships with our neighbors. We aim to have a standard of living that is comfortable, healthy, and constantly improving with a reasonable amount of hard work and well thought out planning.

There are various phases and aspects to the plan and these are constantly in flux as we incorporate new members, ideas, and discuss and research the various options. Nothing here is set in stone, it is simply the way we have invisioned it working from research and visiting other ecovillages as well as our own personal preferences and ideas. We welcome new input and ideas.

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Phase I: Community Building

As it stands now there is only 1 member at Maya Creek, Tao Weilundemo, however there are currently 2 people in the process of becoming members. We are currently looking for new members to join our burgeoning ecovillage project. We are lucky enough to have a land trust with 310 acres of wooded land willing to accomodate our ecovillage. The land was originally bought for an intentional community that split up in the early 1980's. The missing ingredients for the new ecovillage are motivated like-minded friendly people. Read more about who we're looking for here. Please visit or e-mail us if you think you might be interested in visiting and/or becoming a member.

Apart from finding new members we are working on a straw bale building that will eventually become a visitors' lodge, an area for camping visitors that will include several composting toilets, solar hot water showers, a kitchen, hangout room, a small solar power station, and a screened-in porch. Here are the basic construction plans for the Visitors' Lodge here. There will also be a small road improvement project and a garden that we will be working on next year as well.

During this time we hope to have potential members, friends, and other interested people out to participate in some of our projects. Visitors will be welcome to camp and use the very simple facilities that we will have available such as a composting toilet and solar shower. Everything else will need to be provided by the visitor. Please contact us before coming and make arrangements.

Decision-Making

We would like to use concensus decision making until the size of our membership makes this too unwieldy, at which point we will move to some as-yet-undecided percentage majority. This will be determined by the members when it is deemed necessary.

Community Hours

Much of the way Maya Creek will be set up to run is going to be decided when we have more members, yet we have come up with a basic framework we wish to begin with. A major part of this framework is how ownership and community will function. In order to avoid dues and monetary exchange we will have a set number of community hours per week to exchange for rent and communal expenses. The idea behind this is to avoid excluding people based on finances as well as to avoid property disputes.

We have not determined the exact number of hours required, but it will likely fluctuate with work needed around the ecovillage, whether it be construction and expansion, or day-to-day workings and maintenance. As the typical person usually spends 1/3 of their income on rent and utilities we will start the weekly hours at 14 hours. While this may sound like a large number, the majority of hours may be spent working on one's own home. Property ownership will be discussed in the following section.

Some hours each week will be necessary tasks that need to be done for the ecovillage, such as road maintenance, maintaining the composting toilets, water systems, solar/wind power systems, etc. Once all of these tasks have been taken care of, the remaining community hours may be used in a variety of ways such as on one's personal home. We imagine that these mandatory hours would be somewhere around 3-5 hours each week, but that is pure speculation at this point. It will depend upon the amount of work needed and the number of members.

If a member is putting in more than the weekly number of hours, which will likely occur during home construction, the extra hours will be saved and can be exchanged for free time or vacation at a later date. While members may have large numbers of accumulated community hours, unless they are completely on vacation all members will be expected to participate in mandatory hours each week in order to keep the basics of the community functioning.

Property Ownership

We believe we have come up with a way to avoid divisive property disputes. The main reason all time spent on home construction is creditted as community hours is because all homes built on the property will be considered community property. This does not mean that you will have your home taken away from you or be forced to share it, it will be your home as long as you choose to live in it and you choose to follow the ecovillage guidelines.

Although this will not be a requirement we highly recommend that anyone who plans to make Maya Creek their permanent residence and build a home of significant size, that they become a voting member of the land trust. We are currently working out an arrangement with the land trust, and all land use issues will be voted on by them. Becoming a voting member will give ecovillage members more power and say in their investment. Currently a voting share is $12,134.00 but this cost will only go down as more members join the land trust and each member will be reimbursed so that all have paid the same amount.

Any approved expenses for your home can be converted into community hours. For example, if you were to install a $3,000 dollar solar power system into your home and a community hour was valued at $10/hr then you would be creditted with 300 community hours. The purchases that convert to community hours will need to be approved by a committee or group meeting, the specifics of this will be worked out in the future.

We recognize this issue has the potential to cause conflict and we are still contemplating problems that may arise with this way of dealing with property ownership. For now we believe it is a reasonable approach.

Community Fundraising

Because no direct money will be taken from members we will use community hours to hold fundraising events when money is needed for community projects such as equipment, construction materials for a community building, etc. These events will likely be workshops and classes teaching sustainable living techniques. They may also include the sale of arts, crafts, or food produced by members with their community hours.

Personal Finance

Members will be in charge of their own personal finances. It will be possible to commute to nearby Fulton, MO and potentially possible even to commute to Columbia, however we encourage our members to find ways of generating personal income that do not involve travel or use of petrochemicals. The internet has allowed the tether of the workplace to be broken and it is now possible for many people to telecommute. Another option is starting your own business that sells products or even services that the community will help be sold through the Online Store on this website.

The Commons

Members will be given sufficient space around their home plots to have large gardens that should sufficiently cover most if not more than enough of members vegetable needs. We will also seriously be considering growing our own grains communally as well as growing an orchard or edible forest garden and communal livestock facilities. The harvests of the grain and orchard would be split equally among members, and those preferring more fruit or grain could take more of one and less of another provided sufficient supplies remain.

Another very important common member facility will be the main Community Center which will be used to house many of the shared resources of the community such as internet and computer facilities, a large kitchen with canning and food processing equipment, message boards, etc. It will also have a large dining room that will be used for community dinners and group meetings. It will also be the eventual site of the Learning Center's workshops, classes, as well as other events held at the ecovillage.

The area surrounding the Community Center of the ecovillage will likely be allocated for members who wish to live alone to build simple small dwellings that only provide shelter from the elements and heat in the winter. These members would share the facilities in the Community Center such as hot water showers, composting toilets, kitchen and dining area, which those members in the area would help maintain in particular.

Future Goals

After the construction of the Visitor Lodge during the Spring, Summer, and Fall of 2009. We will fundraise and plan out the next year's projects during the Winter of 2009 and likely begin work on the road to the Middle Field early the next Spring. The Middle Field will be the future home for the majority of buildings and members of the Maya Creek Ecovillage. We will also clear and prepare the field for future construction and gardening. Time permitting we may even begin some initial site prep for buildings.

Phase II: The Learning Center

The Learning Center will serve as both a way to perform outreach and spread environmentally sustainable techniques as well as to raise funds for communal projects. The center will hold workshops and classes on a variety of homesteading and self-sufficiency skills, whatever we feel capable of teaching to others.

This section will grow as we approach this phase.

Chronological Plan Details

• Fall 2008: Site exploration and analysis

• Winter 2008: Fundraising, research, and visitor center planning

• Spring 2009: Visitor lodge foundation, road grading, and garden planting

• Summer 2009: Visitor lodge walls and roof, garden maintenance