Fun

Much of the fun/relaxing time at Alpha is spent enjoying the land. Laying in a hammock, swimming in the creek, or sitting in the forest are great ways to spend a day off. We gather regularly as a community for family-style dinners, for movie nights, game nights, and campfires (when we’re not in fire season!).

We host annual gatherings for neighbors and friends on several holidays, celebrate birthdays, and make occasional trips to the coast, movies, or other local swim spots.

We have various instruments available for the musically-inclined, and have an art studio for creating with paint, ceramics, and textiles.

Work

All members at Alpha are expected to contribute 40 hours of work to the farm each week. While this sounds like a lot, many of the hours consist of housekeeping work, cooking, caring for children or older/sick members, maintaining the grounds, attending community meetings, and similar tasks that are normally performed outside of a 40-hour work week. Not to mention that we have no commute time! For people aligned with the idea of homesteading and the desire to steward land, much of the work available is rewarding, and need not feel like “work” at all.

Alpha’s primary source of income has long been a mail contract with the USPS to deliver mail to several local towns, covering a 100-mile range, six days a week. This amounts to ~ 40 hours of work each week, split among 3-4 people. Some members participate in a small handyman service within our local town, offering neighbors assistance with various projects as needed. We have also recently started distributing a make-at-home veggie burger mix called Alpha Burgers, as another means for paying the bills.

Outside of these income-generating activities, there are plenty of other opportunities to contribute to the health and wellbeing of the community, by participating in various teams, listed below.

Administration (business management, internal structure development, scheduling, social media and website development, etc.)
Automotive (maintaining vehicles)
Community (planning community events, building connection)
Finance (budgeting, accounting)
Firewood (collecting, distributing)
Food (preservation, baking, cooking, shopping, stocking)
Forestry (conservation easement maintenance, sustainable harvesting)
Garden (prepping, planting, growing, harvesting)
Groundskeeping (mowing, weed whacking, herb garden and flower garden tending)
Health (preventative maintenance, caring for sick or elderly)
Household (housekeeping projects (organizing, designing), ensuring tidy spaces)
Livestock (animal care, animal culling)
Mail (sorting and delivering mail for our contracted USPS route)
Maintenance & Construction (water system, electrical, building structure, bridges, etc.)
Visitor Coordination (communicating with visitors before and/or during visits)

Finances

As an egalitarian, income-sharing commune, we choose to pool all income earned into the community’s common treasury, from which all expenses are paid. In so doing, we aim to not recreate the ways in which certain work is valued by the broader economy, while other work is not. Whether you are focused on gardening and housekeeping, or income-generating activities like mail delivery and handyman services, you are entitled to the same housing, food, and monthly stipend as everyone else. Stipends vary each month, ranging from $50/person to ~$150, depending on how much income the community earns.

There is no cost to join Alpha Farm, though we like to ensure that prospective members have adequate resources to relocate in the event that the community turns out not to be a good match for them, or vice versa. All basic needs are provided for, and there is no ongoing cost to remain in the community. That said, additional funds may be needed depending on your attachment to maintaining a cell phone plan, subscriptions, frequent trips to town, etc.

For folks wanting to save money for themselves or earn more spending money than the stipend allows, it is possible to keep 100% of the earnings from any work performed outside of the 40-hour work week. We wish it was possible to allow members to accrue a nest egg while working within the 40-hour week, but our current income levels simply do not allow it, given the costs associated with maintaining the property.

There is currently complete transparency regarding financial decisions, and the entire community participates in reviewing and making changes to the budget.