Land Commoning

“Commoning” is the verb form of commons. It is the active creation of and care for the beings and relationships that make us who we are. Commoning means building and maintaining a community around our shared sources of sustenance.

Caring for the Commons. Our land commoning work began in 2008, with a purchase from an elder farmer in Greene. With the help of our Board, neighboring landowners, and the wider community, this land base has expanded and now supports one affordable housing community (Wild Mountain), two cooperative farm businesses (Celebration Tree Farm & Wellness Center and Wild Mountain Nursery), Presente! Farm, a Latinx-led farm that grows food for mutual aid distribution, and more than 300 acres of wild land.

Growing the Commons. The heart of our work is the “commoning” of land—that is, the gathering of land into a democratically-structured commons through which its long-term use and care can be shared among the commoners. We work with a number of pathways to welcoming land into community stewardship:

• A Call for Land. We have put forward a statewide call for gifts of land and housing, that will support land return to Wabanaki communities and secure land tenure for other communities of color. We invite landowners to join us in this crucial work of repairing, healing and reimagining relationships with the land and each other. To learn more, visit our Call for Land page.

• Land Shifts & Gifts toward Commoning. Landowners of all ages are grappling with the colonial roots of land ownership, and wondering if another way exists to live on land. We welcome land transfers from all landowners who are rooted on their land and want to be direct participants in Land in Common—enacting alternatives to private land ownership in their own lives and places. Such collaborations can also serve to build new forms of community and collective support for individual land projects while growing the strength of Land in Common’s base. We also work with landowners interested in creating individualized pathways for sharing or redistributing their land that offer life-long land security for landowners, while also creating permanent land tenure for people directly impacted by injustice. The land is abundant, and can offer home to many!

• Landstead Elders Project. We offer a means for elder farmers, homesteaders, and rural landowners to protect their land and life’s work. Elders may gift their land to Land in Common, and thereby permanently protect their land from commodification and extractive development. Elders can choose to remain on their land for the rest of their lives, become resident members, and age in place with the support of a community ready to share time and resources. Alternatively, they may decide to pass on their land to new land stewards who will care for the land in the future.

• Strategic Land & Infrastructure Purchase. When specific community needs or visions toward land-based collective liberation work arise, we collaborate with individuals and organizations to purchase land and buildings.