Common Home Farm - Bloomington, IN

 

 I got to spend a day hanging out at the Common Home Farm just outside of Bloomington.  Laura showed me around the farm she and her husband David started a few years ago after living with their family in the Bloomington Catholic Worker community.  

Recently I’ve been more and more impressed with some of the rehab projects that Catholic Worker communities have been able to tackle and turn into liveable spaces.  

 

While we prepared a sweet potato casserole for dinner she told me about the sorry state the building in which we sat chopping vegetables had been when they first started. Most concerningly was that the building was infested with SNAKES when they first moved in! Every construction project came with the possibility of disturbing a snake behind a wall or in the ceiling.  

 

 

Besides that first and nowadays snake free building (though they come across copperheads on the property semi-regularly) are a couple other housing spaces. A tiny house fit for a single person to live in and another cabin that could fit a couple or perhaps a small family.  

 

Elsewhere around the property you’d find fire rings, outdoor prayer spaces, garden beds, bee hives, picnic areas, dozens of chickens, and a tool shed that doubles as a recording studio. 

 

 Like at the Bloomington CW houses, there was great tile work all around the Common Home Farm space.  

 

Though it was only February I helped Laura start a few seeds in an insulated box with a light for newly hatched chickens (they have a flock of a few dozen birds) to supplement the warmth of the natural sunlight they'd get through a window. It was her first time experimenting with that method and she let me know recently it worked!  

 

Find more photos of Common Home Farm here