The herb farmers backed out of the duplex idea. They aren't ready financially, and we appreciate their clarity about that.

That could leave us looking for a rental again, but the thought of this is hard for us to swallow.

About a month before we left, I had a conversation with my yoga teacher after class about what it was like living in community. She lives at Pumkin Hollow, a Theosophical retreat center. It turns out that its not much of a community, there are only 3 or 4 households there full time. Two of those are single person households, none of them include kids. It's mostly a retreat center. Our conversation came around to the fact that they need a maintenace person. The maintenance person gets a HOUSE.

This might be a perfect situation for us, and I've been trying to get in touch with my yoga teacher about it since we moved in June, but I've had no luck. I finally got through to her yesterday. She was pretty negative about the whole thing. Apparently they had an agreement with someone a year ago to take the job, but there was a lack of clarity about the finances - it fell apart at the last minute and was painful for everyone involved. The Pumpkin Hollow people seemed to feel like it was partially because this man had a family to support, and the economics of the position would be better suited to a single person. When I stubbornly refused to be put off by this, she gave me the phone number of the man who would do the hiring

So I called him and he was very receptive! He initially thought that I was the one who wanted to be the maintenance person. So then I explained that it was my husband and that he has experience doing painting and roofing and carpentry. If he had any reservations about trying out a family again, they were overwhelmed by the need for a maintenance person.

The pay is very small, but includes some perks like food from the garden, a stipend for Steve's truck and health insurance for Steve. We're thinking that if we can negotiate his time commitment to them to be 20 hours/week, it would be just as good as a traditional situation. It would also give us the opportunity to sort of try out community living. We are going to meet with the guy on July 31st.