WENDELL — The commune that marked its 50th anniversary at Montague Farm last weekend influenced an area far beyond Montague — and this town — where life “is like living on an extended commune,” as one resident put it.
Wendell, in fact, is home to one of the spin-offs of the Montague Farm that was set up in August 1968 by Marshall Bloom and friends and remained through 2003. Today’s 80-acre communal farm was started by and is still home to Daniel Keller, who had known Bloom at Amherst College, and Keller’s wife, Nina.
So it wasn’t surprising for the Wendell Town Hall to be filled with about 75 people for a “From Communes to Community” program Monday.
“We forsook the Revolution and bought the farm,” said one of the evening’s guests, poet Verandah Porche of Guilford Vt.’s Total Loss Farm, in one of two videos shown about the effect of Vermont’s communes created in the 1960s as part of a generation’s search “for a more connected way to live.”
Looking over the gathering, which was preceded by a potluck, Porche, whose commune was closely connected with those in Montague and Wendell, said, “There’s a quality of connection we have together,” including a connection with the people who were here before.
Expressing a common theme throughout the evening, Ira Karasick of Montclair, N.J. — who lived at the Wendell communal farm from 1970 to 1971, after a year at the Montague Farm — said, “The amazing thing was how much support we got from the people living here.” These included farmers willing to loan the newcomers their chainsaws, tractors and other equipment. “It’s important to keep being that way. It’s really a strong part of what this community is and was before we came.”
Myron Becker and his wife, Kathy, who moved to Wendell in 1971 and later served as Selectboard member and moderator, respectively, also recalled being welcomed by the town, along with an assortment of people “in and out using our facilities because we were the only ones with electricity and running water,” he said.
Kathy Becker added that some people lived in yurts. “Not everybody had everything, I think. Half the community bathed in our tub.
“I think we were successful here because a lot of us were political and didn’t have our egos tied up in our success. We just honestly, sincerely wanted to have a better library, wanted to have Old Home Day, and didn’t try to take over the Ladies Aid, the fire department. We started our own newspaper, ‘The Wendell Post.’ … We made our own structures because we were activists.”
Wendell resident Ilina Singh, who grew up in India, said, “Where I grew up, everyone is property and everyone is traded in an arranged marriage. That just has a catastrophic effect on your development as a human being. And to come here to a village where everyone knows each other and helps you if you break a leg or can’t cook for some reason, to me that’s really been the face of a human society that I like to be in — that we know each other and care enough that we take care of each other. That’s the beautiful part of being here.”
Robbie Leppzer, who moved to Wendell in 1989, said, “Being here, there’s like an explosion of creativity and activism.”
He recounted his own work as a filmmaker documenting grassroots movements like Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner’s war-tax resistance, as well as protests over the Seabrook and the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactors.
“The theme I feel I’ve been chronicling as a documentary filmmaker has been about community … and how community comes together and how we can’t do these things alone. … Community is everything, and we have to keep remembering that as we move forward. (That’s) … how we have the strength to keep it going, to both resist what needs to be resisted, but even more importantly, live the life and the ideals that we dream for.”