The Green Parent

By The Green Parent

29th August 2018

We meet two residents of cohousing projects and find out what it’s like for both adults and children to live in a close knit community

The Green Parent

By The Green Parent

29th August 2018

The Green Parent

By The Green Parent

29th August 2018

Opportunities To Grow

Diana Mason is a member of Postlip Community, Glos where she lives with her husband and two sons aged four and seven. Here she tells the story of how they came to live in this cohousing arrangement.

Unlike a lot of people who choose co-housing, we weren’t looking for it - or at least we didn’t think we were. We knew we didn’t want to live in a house next to a bunch of neighbours we didn’t know. We wanted our children to have the influence of other people of all ages to encourage well-roundedness. I am American and most of my husband’s family has emigrated to Australia, so we don’t have much family around. Our community serves as our extended family. Living here means that our children, who are four and seven, have a caring group of people of all ages, from three to 73, to look up to, seek advice from and share their lives with. It also happens to be a gorgeous property placed in one of the most beautiful parts of the country, which helped.

Living at Postlip has given us a wonderful group of people to share our lives with, many of whom come from different backgrounds, who we simply wouldn’t have had the opportunity to get to know if we’d stayed where we were.

The children love it because there is a growing gaggle of kids to play with. It is also not uncommon to walk into Postlip’s Great Hall and encounter opera singers, artists, and musicians. It’s not every kid who can walk out of his back door and be invited to listen to an Italian aria or try out a full sized harp. If sharing Christmas with four people is great then sharing it with 40 is extraordinary (and requires a lot of roast potatoes!).

There are plenty of opportunities to learn new things from others; I recently planted onions and potatoes, which as someone with a phobia of worms is remarkable. My husband has taught himself to weld and he now fixes everything from tractors to windows.

We eat together informally. You’ll often see the kids picnicking together on the lawn or a group of neighbours having coffee in the courtyard late morning. We eat together as friends do. One weekend and one Saturday a month, when we work around the grounds and in the garden together we share organized meals. Usually covered in mud from the garden, we have lunch and dinner together, interspersed with cake and tea. Those meals are all vegetarian, but we, as a community, are not. We serve vegetarian fare during our working weekends because we welcome wwoof-ers (willing workers on organic farms) and we want to cater for all tastes, but everyone who currently lives here is omnivorous - aside from one pescatarian. We rear pigs and lambs for meat and chickens for eggs.

We also have an amazing organic garden and we all try to eat out of that as much as possible. It’s almost strawberry time; I’m so excited. I don’t do a lot of gardening, but I do pick.

People tend to do what interests them. I look after the chickens, the website, and social media, but I’m not a great gardener. My neighbour could spend her life digging in the garden, but couldn’t care less about Facebook. My husband does some of the mowing, fixes our machines, welds bits of metal together and is the Chair of the Postlip Housing Association. We all have different backgrounds and interests so it tends to work itself out organically, but if there is a job to be done and no one is interested then we all just pitch in and get it done. We take great pride in looking after Postlip and the 15 acres of grounds and gardens. We feel like it is a privilege to live here and so we all have an attitude of willingness to do what we can.

It is accepted that there is an ebb and flow in our lives. For instance, those members who have small children and work away from home may have less time than someone whose children are older or someone retired. The community is very generous in that respect. There is an acceptance that everyone is doing what they can at any given moment and if, for whatever reason, you can’t work as hard as your neighbour then that’s fine. You’ll do more when you can.

Whether you are lifting a table or helping someone through one of life’s challenges, guiding a child or planting potatoes, it’s about creating a supportive and cooperative place to live and supporting the longer term vision, which is to leave Postlip a better place for those who follow.

We are blessed with some outstanding schools in this area and all of the children go to local schools.

Aside from the retired among us, all of the adults work, at least part time, but most people work at least part of the time from home. I recently went back to work part time for an animal rights charity, after spending nearly seven years at home with my boys. My husband works for a bank, but works primarily from home. I think it’s rare at Postlip for both parents to work full time. That’s certainly true now, but even historically, I think there has often been one parent home with the children. It’s hard to know if that is by design or just good luck, but having adults and children around throughout the day certainly adds to the richness of the place.

Expanding Worldview

Tom Lelyveld lives with his wife and their seven-year-old son, at Lancaster Cohousing, a project with private homes, community facilities, workshops/offices/studios and shared outdoor space. Just outside Lancaster, the site is located on the outskirts of the village of Halton above the river Lune.

A combination of things inspired my wife and I to live in community. Partly it was the lure of the location – by a river, near the lakes and the sea and with good train connections to Manchester and London. The greatest motivator was our thinking about what would be the best environment to raise our son. His school in Hackney was all hard surfaces, large classes and a sense that he was being pushed academically when he was too young. Lancaster Cohousing offered a riverside location, with a pedestrian street, offering a safe location to play out, as we had when we were growing up.

Our son has far greater independence than he would have had living in London. He is able to play out on the street with the other children and gets to explore his surroundings in a safe and familiar environment. He has been able to develop friendships with younger and older children and with adults that are not his parents. These intergenerational friendships include a range of skills that enrich his worldview, including joiners, musicians, artists, a magician and one massive Tintin fan.

The community has a shared tool shed. Our neighbours, with a range of tools and skills, have been very willing to lend tools, help or advice on building, cooking etc. I was one of 10 residents who took part in a two-day stone-walling course to ensure we had the skills to develop and maintain the landscape around the site.

Living in a super insulated house is very comfortable. We hardly have any need to use the heating. Moving from a draughty damp home there has been a noticeable improvement in my partner’s asthma. And the community is very supportive. When my partner broke her foot and was on crutches for nine weeks the offers of help with the 20 minute school run by bike, car or bus to and from Lancaster were incredible.

We all live in private houses with our own kitchens, dining areas and lounges. The number of communal meals a week ranges from two to six and not everyone will typically go to all meals. As a parent, having child friendly food served from 5:45pm is great and frees up the evening for some time to play before bed. Communal meals are vegetarian or vegan and range from a selection of summer salads to full-blown Sunday roast dinners complete with table service or full fry up Sunday brunches. Some cooks source their ingredients from a local veg supplier. Eggs are often bought from the free-range smallholding in the village. There are no facilities for cooking meat or fish in the common house although these can be bought in to the dining area (such as for a fish and chips night, or a supper club sourcing local game). Food is paid for by a simple donations system that covers the cost of ingredients. There is a sign up system for cooking and washing up, normally 2-3 adults for each task for each meal.

In fact, we have a combination of voluntary sign up sheets to take turns cooking and cleaning and a series of service teams tasked with different roles. Our land service team co-ordinate the gardening and organise work parties for a few hours on a Sunday to focus on some of the bigger tasks. Gardening outside with neighbours on a Sunday afternoon has been a good way to get to know each other, and is always followed by cake.

The children here range from a newborn baby, all the way through to young adults living away from home at university who return for holidays. There are toddlers, pre school, primary and secondary school children. Most children of school age go to school whilst others are home educated. Parents pretty much cover all the options – There are working mothers and stay at home dads, working dads and part time working mums, both partners part time. Some parents commute by car, by bike and/or train and many parents work from home or from the hot desk and office space in the refurbished Mill building at the end of the pedestrian street.

The physical attributes of living in this community - the shared facilities such as the common house, children’s play room and guest bedrooms give us more space and time not based on daily chores. Guest bedrooms allow us to offer our friends and family a bit of independence and private space when they come to visit, which has been appreciated. We also avoid the need to maintain a spare room in our house for occasional visitors.

Living in a community offered the opportunity for our son to grow up in an intergenerational community with other children and with shared facilities and meals offering a way to reduce the everyday chores of our lives. It definitely works for us.

MORE INSPIRATION

LIVE There is a three-bedroom house for sale at Postlip suitable for a family looking to live in a co-housing community in the Cotswolds. See postliphall.org.uk.

WATCH Video footage from Lancaster Cohousing at lancastercohousing.org.uk

EXPLORE Diggers and Dreamers is the ultimate guide to communal living in Britain. diggersanddreamers.org.uk

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