Maya Creek Ecovillage

The Food Plan

With food prices doubling even quadrupling over the last few years and the environmental impact of oil-based monocultural agriculture, the impetous for growing our own food could not be greater. While those factors may be pushing us towards locally grown food, the pull of homegrown food is the general satisfaction at providing for one's self as well as knowing that the food is free of pesticides and other harmful chemicals.

While we will likely never grow all of our own food at Plan B, will still strive to grow the vast majority of it and buy locally whenever possible. Members will be responsible for their own vegetable gardens and be given adequate space to grow most, if not all, of their own vegetables and herbs. We will likely have a community orchard and possibly even community grain fields if space allows as those types of agriculture are more easily managed with community equipment and labor.

Vegetable Gardens

Vegetables have evolved a high dependance on humans to provide them with rich soil, reduced competition, and lots of moisture. The high level of attention needed leads us to believe that vegetable gardens should be located as close to member residences as possible. Also, because people will desire to grow different kinds of vegetables in varying quanities and varieties we believe members should be responsible for their own vegetable gardens.

Edible Forest Garden

The community orchard will be much more than just an orchard. It will be what is sometimes called an "Edible Forest Garden" and contain not only fruit trees, but many types of bushes, vines, perennials, flowers, bee hives etc and use many techniques used in Permaculture. All or most of which will be edible and arranged in such a way that it mimics a forest structure. While it will appear to be fairly chaotic the plants will be grouped into mutually beneficial guilds and will have been heavily planned before planting.

We imagine the forest garden having many winding trails and hidden nooks and benchs, a sort of secret garden. Right now we are toying with the idea of having the garden next to or incorporated in the ecovillage center. This will be discussed more when we begin the process of designing the ecovillage layout.

Because this will be a place for all members to enjoy not only as a quiet retreat but also to share in the harvest, community hours will be spent maintaining the garden and harvesting it's rewards. Everyone will be free to nibble on whatever is ripe, and when a large number of fruits, nuts, berries or anything else become ripe and are harvested for storage the proceeds will be divided equally among the members who will be free to trade between themselves.

Food Storage

We have not yet decided whether members will be responsible for storing their own food or whether the community should come together and build a large root cellar to store all of our food. It's possible that it could be some combination of the two so that during the cold months members would not have to leave their home regularly to get food, but could store a small portion in their own small storage area and refill it from the large community one occasionally.

Given a large enough demand we could forsee having a medium sized top loading freezer inside the community root cellar for more sensitive foods run by exapnding the Community Center's solar power system. This is all speculation at this point.

Equipment for canning and processing food for storage will be available in the community kitchen inside the Community Center for whoever needs it.