Agroforestry and cohousing in the making – an invitation or inspiration to live together with more people in the countryside

Quercus is a funny word! What does it mean? It’s actually the Latin word for the Oak family of trees. You could draw so many metaphors to that name, history, wisdom, family, and ancestors, and let your roots take a solid ground. But, it’s also a project that this couple has spent a lot of hours creating. They are breeding oaks to get sweet, edible acorns that will grow in Scandinavia. And now they also want to start a cohousing community that grows food together. Here is the text they wrote with their vision for their community. All are welcome to join! 

A few years back Lauren and Jouke met at a WWOOF farm in southern Sweden. Lauren studied gender and colonialism at Harvard before she went WWOOFing. Jouke is a part-time fireman from Friesland, the Netherlands who breeds oak trees and is into permaculture. They met and settled down in the midst of Småland in the Countryside. They bought a farm and started welcoming other WWOOFers. They had two children. Now they are planning to move away from their farm and create a cohousing project. 

Quercus X Ecovillage Vision Statement

A place to live where we can have a beautiful and fulfilling life in the countryside, without the isolation and vulnerability that often come with it. A place where children always have many playmates, where adults who don’t have offspring of their own can still interact with children, and where the sick and elderly can live rich social lives at home. A place where we can hear birdsong and frogsong, where we can walk in nature and feel at peace.

A place where we can eat fresh healthy food that we grow, but still take vacation and do other things with our lives. A place where music flourishes because people have the time and mental space to sit down with one another and improvise. 

There will be flow and exchange between the cohousing community and the surrounding inhabitants and society. Non-residents will be welcome to participate in our agricultural projects, for example by participating in garden workdays and taking home a share of vegetables. Non-residents will also be welcome at events organized within the cohousing community, for example harvest festivals, lactofermentation parties, acorn preparation workshops…

We will create a vibrant Cohousing* neighborhood of mixed families, with 20-35 adults and however many children are attached to them, where each family has their own fully functioning independent home and also access to shared spaces and resources. Residents will have their own private economies and income streams — the community will not provide significant jobs for residents. The only shared economies will be those surrounding the explicitly defined community projects, or projects agreed to between individual residents (i.e., two families decide to purchase a car together). 

Homes may be freestanding houses, rowhouses, or apartments. With any of these options residents can have a private garden (or larger private farm). People may own or rent but all will have equal voting rights in community projects. 

All will pay a monthly or yearly fee to cover maintenance costs of shared spaces and projects. Shared spaces can include: a common house with a common kitchen and dining room where residents may partake in optional dinners each week; one or more guest rooms; a children’s play room; a teen hang-out room; a communal workshop; a laundry; a hobby/craft room; etc. Residents will plan together to decide what shared spaces to create, and will then manage these spaces through optional monthly meetings. One shared project will be agriculture: see below. 

Common management:

• Keyline water design. Try to regenerate groundwater, not overexploit 
• Organic fruit and vegetable land will be as follows: Keyline rows of trees with nitrogen fixers in the row; wide rows between trees on strong rootstock; low-till vegetable growing between rows of trees
• Nut orchards undergrazed as appropriate by geese, horses. Incorporate nitrogen-fixing shrubs between nut trees. 
• Woodland management: consider coppice management or continuous cover forestry as appropriate 
• When grazing larger areas: consider holistic grazing
• Private gardens and farms: should follow rules of organic agriculture; should not overexploit water; should not threaten other gardens or infrastructure by erosion
• Allow /support mutually beneficial Regenerative Agriculture practices by third parties on common land 

Property parameters

We are searching for a property with the following characteristics: 

• At least 10 hectares of land suitable for agriculture (åker eller bete, field or pasture); additional forest is welcome but not necessary.
• No more than 15 minutes’ drive from a preschool and school
• No more than 45 minutes’ drive from a hospital 
• No more than 45 minutes’ drive from a town with at least 15,000 people 
• In swedish climate zone 1 or 2: https://svensktradgard.se/tradgardsrad/zonkartan/digitala-zonkartan/
• More than 15 meters above sea level
• In an area with at least some forest nearby. Most of Sweden has some forest, but southern Skåne does not and so we are not looking there.
• Has at least three living units present or enough living space to divide into three units (ie, a large main house that could be divided into two apartments and a separate guest house). Or, if we are more parties involved, enough living space to house all parties