The Journey to An Eco-Hobbit House Homestead

In 1947, my father saw and held space junk in Roswell, New Mexico. He was an organic farmer looking at the sky. Because of that, he was recalled to the United States Air Force (USAF) with a Top-Secret Clearance.

It was the summer of 1962, and Silent Spring had been published. I was a shocked sophomore in high school who realized my Dad was right. I suspected that my great-grandchildren would face challenges I'd never seen. However, Dad said I needed to do all I could to protect nature for future generations. 

In the summer of 1969, Woodstock made it evident to me that my generation was rebelling against the Vietnam War and the behaviors of people over 30. 

In 1966, in New Jersey, my Dad was preforming his military duties on the world's most giant computer.

In 1972, MIT Models reported: "If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity."

After spending time at The First Zen Institute of America in New York in mid-1974, I decided not to eat meat. In the last 25 years, I have felt the same way. Not eating meat has not helped to save the planet, but it does remind me at meal times and when shopping that I am doing something to show respect to Mother Earth.

I and my two kids lived with my father in the early 1980s, before he died in 1985. One bedroom was filled with Dad's awards from NASA. He had 28 years in the USAF and 17 years at NASA in Quality Control for the Apollo, Saturn, and Space Shuttle Programs. He had held a moon rock after he helped to get a satellite back from the moon that had been damaged. He said to me, "Like what I held in 1947, that rock was not from this planet." He warned me that the end of 1999 might be the end of computers if the programming to make the transition to 2000 was not done correctly.

From March of 1994 to January 1997, my husband and I lived in an RV to travel full time and visit eco-villages, intentional communities, Earth Ships, and Solar museums, and interview anyone living eco-friendly lifestyles. We were and still are deeply spiritually opposed to land ownership as typically indigenous or economically marginalized populations are exploited when land is purchased.

From January 1997 to May 2008, we managed 1,227 acres of land on the U.S.-Mexico border for the nonprofit Summerland Monastery, which I have facilitated as its president since 1992. We built 14 buildings there. Each one was at least 60% from recycled materials. We hosted numerous free workshops on strawbale building, papercrete, dry stack concrete, off-grid living, and gardening in the desert. We held free holiday and summer camp events for diversified children. Some of the children were of color, some were disabled, and all were economically marginalized. We were approved as foster parents in Arizona. We also worked with housing recently released inmates at the prison where I was a volunteer minister.

May 2008, we signed a land lease for life in Central Mexico, Cajones, Guanajuato, with a third person, Jolene, who still lives on the hectare of property. The indigenous village we lived in had only 450 people. Our leased house had a shallow swimming pool that the owner had put in for his three daughters when they were young. We enclosed the pool with plastic walls and a roof. We offered swimming lessons every Wednesday for 10 centavos that the gate guard kept as we needed additional adult help with the 40 kids who came each week. We also offered free weekly equine therapy to disabled children and a few disabled adults. We had two older horses that we brought from Arizona to Mexico. 

January to June 2009: My husband designed and supervised a three-story community center. We built two lots from our homestead in Cajones, Guanajuato, Mexico. It is called Resplandor International. Jolene and I taught English four nights a week in that community center for two years. We began teaching without water or electricity for the bathrooms as we were teaching as it was being built.

https://resplandorinternational.org/es/ 

Fall 2012 to August 2013 A house burned down a few rural lots away from the community center in Cajones, Guanajuato, Mexico. The original house had one lightbulb and one double bed for a family of five. We raised over $20K in the United States to rebuild the house. My husband designed and was the supervisor of rebuilding the home. Many neighbors and we three pitched in to do any additional labor we needed. We completely furnished the house and added a solar water heater that the three young girls loved. 

In September 2013, due to my husband's health issues, we moved to Ecuador, South America, for its lower altitude, moderate climate, clean air and water, lower cost of living, and affordable healthcare.

In September 2018, we moved to what was advertised as a Permaculture Farm. 

For about nine years, the place we live was called Finca Fina Permaculture Farm. The ethics for an environmentally friendly lifestyle are exemplified in PERMACULTURE. They are caring for the earth, caring for people, and setting limits to consumption. Permaculture emphasizes working with nature rather than against it, cooperation among humans, and caring for soil, water, plants, and animals. Based upon these values, we can use principles and techniques of permaculture to design gardens, villages, or urban communities. The sustainability approach is born from an understanding that sustainable living is only entirely possible when social justice issues are adequately addressed. In other words, there is no sustainable living, no matter how good your energy usage and waste management systems, if society remains unequal and unjust.

There were several dry composting toilets, adobe buildings, domestic animals, various gardens, and a FincaFina.org website asking for donations and volunteers to work and learn. Local people affirmed that Finca Fina was a nonprofit Permaculture project.

Although we had a valid notarized lifetime land lease ten weeks after we had invested $59K in our Eco Hobbit house, the wealthy absentee landowner (she lied; it was not a nonprofit) told us to move. We moved into the Hobbit House on April 24, 2019. The owner, an extremely wealthy climate denier, visited this farm for four days in 2019. On August 8, 2019, she told us to move due to having 4-ounce Coke Cola on her farm.

When we did not leave, the legal battles began. Restrictions on who could visit and what we could bring home were imposed, armed gate guards threatened visitors and us, dirt roadways were blocked, six 24/7/365 spy cameras and floodlights were installed on us, our water tank was emptied, and the fencing demanded in 2019 by her administrator was bulldozed 4.5 years later. Such an act is illegal in Ecuador.

I thought this week that sitting in this Shrine to Mother Earth homestead for another year or two at our ages of 83.5 and 77.25 might feel in the same spirit as Butter Fly sat 200 feet in the air in a redwood tree top in the NorthEastern U.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Butterfly_Hill

To cope in this time of Collapse: 

• We both have online mental health therapy, 
• I exercise in wood-burning hot water therapy twice a day outdoors,
• I greet the North, South, East, and West in a Shaman manner each morning,
• I walk and speak to the land daily as a part of my spiritual practice.
• I study Spanish online every day.
• I crochet like a mad woman outdoors on our patio.
• I garden and cook a great deal from scratch.
• I preserve foods and stock dry goods.
• And I spend up to 20 hours a week on ZOOM as passive activism.

I cannot imagine surviving without online groups, Guy McPherson for over a decade, Climate Psychology Alliance for about four years (including facilitator training), DAF for about a year (including facilitator volunteering), Collapse Club the last few months, a nine-week online course Resilience and Acceptance in the Face of Collapse, Sterling college Deeper Dive nine-week course ended in March 2024, and massive amount of other online videos related to Collapse. 

I have been a nonprofit administrator since 1986; helping others heals me.

I have been an ordained minister since 1992. I have counseled, worked for or among those who self-identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transexual, transvestite, intersexual, queer, or nonbinary; helping others heals me.

I have taught in camps, nurseries, public or private schools, and a junior college, and I continue to volunteer to teach online. 

These days, I rarely find myself down about Collapse as the real estate legal battle makes me feel certain that I will outlast the Narcissistic landowner who thinks if Climate Change Homestead is out of sight, Collapse is out of mind.

• Lack of Empathy - Narcissists lacks remorse and lies, lies, & more lies.
• Grandiosity - Narcissists' sense of entitlement that they deserve the best and are to be treated as unique can be a detriment in relationships.
• Exploitation - Narcissists often use others to gain something for themselves. They take advantage of people to achieve their own ends.
• Fragility - A narcissist will get angry and try to turn the tables when faced with any criticism. They typically suffer inwardly from low self-worth.

There is no THE END because we leave here tomorrow at 06:30 to be in a courtroom in Loja, Ecuador by 08:15 for another legal action related to us having this homestead. Stay tuned. (story submitted to Collapse Club 3/24/24.)