Catalyst Ecovillage

NOTE: We are closing on the purchase of 75 acres by March 15th and need a few more people to contribute to the downpayment and help us with loan repayments to the local Farm Credit Bureau! Come join us now! We are doing this! Email: teaganblackburn@gmail.com immediately with any questions!
Mission Statement
Catalyst Community is a forming ecovillage and green business-incubator education center in Warwick, NY.
Our energy-positive residential and agricultural buildings will be visually-inspiring and as ecologically-friendly as possible.
We aspire to share our lives so as to make the load lighter for everyone around food, finances, child and elder care, employment, and personal support.
Various on-site land-based businesses will support the members and community non-profit to fulfill its mission to exemplify green living and help educate others who wish to build and live sustainably.
Vision Statement
Catalyst is a forming intentional community and eco village in upstate New York.
We aspire to live and demonstrate a lifestyle of deep ecology and social cohesion. A zero carbon, fossil fuel free, energy positive community that enriches its surroundings. A community where neighbors are family and family is tribe. Each supporting the others to make a lighter and more loving load for all. A community that serves and nurtures its members so that they in turn may work hard to better serve the world.
THE PLACE
Our community will have clusters of individual eco homes, a large workshop for creation and maintenance, and the group house for low income housing and the large community center building will be the focal points of the social community. They will be artistic and bold.
The property we are currently considering is about an 1 hour and 15 minutes northwest of New York City. Its 75 acres, including 5-10 acres for building and landscaping, 40 cleared acres for farming and livestock and 30 acres of forest. The property has living space for 3 founding families, plus a 10 horse stable, workshop, and large gathering space. Biking distance to two towns.
Our buildings will be aesthetically beautiful and designed to excite and inspire the soul. They will be made of natural and clean materials that are common to the area. They will feature passive and active solar, geothermal, living roofs, radiant floors, composting toilets, water catchments, constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment, recycled materials, and year around indoor plant growing.
Our shared Community Center will be a shared common space for community dinners; meetings; parties and movie nights; workshops; retreats/yoga/meditation; childcare; office space for entrepreneurial incubation; a date night room,; and other common interests of the community. It will have an outdoor hot-tub.
Our Group House will have multiple bedrooms and apartments that will be available for permanent low-income co-housing and space for visitors and guests of our retreat center.
Our clustered smaller-footprint Eco Housing Units will be available for purchase by members wishing to join the community. The will be organized into pedestrian-centric villages and feature private kitchens and living rooms.
THE PEOPLE
We are CURRENTLY SEEKING 1-4 other founding families/couples or individuals that are interested in joining us in purchasing the property. These would be people who have the resources and credit to take a home loan or own a home that they would be willing to sell.
We are also seeking designers, engineers, permaculturists, natural builders and architects that can help us design our utopia. We are also seeking lawyers with property tax experience, and bankers/lenders/investors with vision and people with Community Land Trust knowledge.
Our community will be open and welcoming to conventional and non-conventional families of all configurations and individuals of all races, genders, economic backgrounds and sexual preferences.
Our community is based on non-violence and non-violent communication. We seek kind, compassionate, intelligent, creative, smart, and rational people that share its vision and can participate in consensus decision making.
THE LAND
Our community will have several greenhouses and will grow organic food and algae year around. The algae will be used to make fuel for the community vehicles.
Our community will use community and conservation land trusts to permanently preserve both farmland and wild nature on our site, and take advantage of those tax exemptions as well.
Our community will host a biodynamic community supported agriculture project to grow our own organic food and herbs. We will grow our own and/or lease space to local farmers. Our community will keep livestock or create partnerships with local farmers in order to have local milk and eggs. Our community will have an permaculture orchard for fruit and nuts. Biodynamic principles and permaculture design will be joyously implemented.
Our community will have a large and well-equipped wood and metal shop that will be used to build, and maintain the property and also to create art and beauty throughout. Artist studios too.
SELF RELIANCE
Our community will create jobs and income through:
farming; gardening; keeping horses and renting stables; hosting workshops and retreats; arts and music events; and an eco bed and breakfast.
Our community will have a vibrant mixed-ages homeschooling group (4-11) with a dedicated classroom and a certified teacher hired by a pool of parents, inside and outside of the community. It will be play-based, experiential, Waldorf-inspired, largely outdoor education and have intrinsic opportunities for cross-pollination with the elders, farm chores, and for local community service projects, while integrating the NYS homeschooling academic benchmarks.
Our community will found an assisted care elder-care program for members as they age and for members’ aging parents and relatives, creating onsite paying jobs for our members who are nurses, healers, and health care practitioners.
Our community will seek to document all that it does in hopes of replicating and helping to create a better model for sub-urban and rural development, especially in the surrounding area. Some members will travel as part of a consulting business to start new ecovillages all over this country and in others.
Our community will have a have a blast making a difference!