Tryon Life Community Farm: Strategic Planning for a new Urban Ecology

Draft Summary of Goals and Programs, for review and revision Ver. 2.0, November 2006

Becoming a Forest:

TLC Farm exists through Portland's broad network of organizations, movements, and citizens committed to a transformation of our urban ecology. Now, we have an opportunity to use this place and project as a catalyst for the emergence of deeper, more collaborative relations: a living ecosystem of change.

Consider the symbol of a forest. Forests are chaotic, decentralized, unplanned – and yet also deeply peaceful, efficient, and resilient, a beautifully complex interweaving of mutually interdependant relations.

Portland once was a forest, and in more ways than one, it can be so again.

On the one hand, this means densely urban ecosystems that support habitat for all our relations: native species, food and fiber sources, ourselves. It means learning how to invite the wild back into our neighborhoods, our daily lives, our self-identity.

On the other hand, we understand the transformative economy of an ecological city as a social forest, a dense network of niches, roles, and relationships rooted in values of responsibility and compassion. This is how the grassroots momentum that saved this land emerged when it seemed impossible. And this is the inspiration for our strategic planning process: to be non-linear, iterative, and broadly-based, inviting cooperation in imagining and accomplishing the impossible.

This document summarizes the results of the strategic planning process to date. It first describes general purposes for the future of TLC Farm and then outlines specific program areas and quantitative goals. It is a summary of a longer overview document which supplies greater detail regarding specific programs and quantitative expectations. That overview is the basis of a thorough revision of the draft strategic plan written in January 2005.

Purposes:

TLC Farm facilitates a diversity of movements, communitiues and individuals in the metropolitan Portland region to:

• educate ourselves and each other regarding skills, values, and paradigms for holistic human integration into our ecosystems;

• experience a sustainable urban ecology as possible, practical, and desirable; and

• emerge as empowered co-creators of a well-functioning network of cultures, economies, and polities of deep change.

Program Goals:

Within 15 years, we will accomplish these purposes by coordinating programs and projects in the following areas:

• Education:

  • Provide learning opportunities for replicable skills in permaculture, natural building, community collaboration, earth arts, sustainability life skills, wilderness awareness, etc.

  • 4500 participant-hours/mo, grossing $9300/mo, with 5-10 intimate partnerships, and coordinating 60 consistent volunteers

• Forum:

  • Host events, meetings, retreats, and performances so that aligned organizations can gather in a restorative space supporting transformative values.

  • 1920 visit-hours/month, grossing $2680/mo, 10 intimate partnerships and 40 volunteers.

• Demonstration & ecological design:

  • Visitors of all ages experience a set of functioning systems that illustrate integration between human and non-human habitats, including food production, dense residential communities, water management, energy cycles, construction, native habitat, transportation, etc.

  • 50 full-time residents, 50% food production for 50, no personal vehicular use, energy independence, infrastructure visited by all other users, grossing $10,000/mo, 5 intimate partnerships, 40 volunteers.

• Healing & Spirituality:

  • Create healing resources integrating various modalities, accessible regardless of income, by which body and soul can relax into a wiser appreciation of the many relations that make the world. These include ecotherapy, body and energy work, food celebrations, spiritual practice, cottage agroindustries, etc.

  • 600 person-hours/mo, gross $9000/mo, 15 intimate partnerships, 30 volunteers.

• Social Ecology:

  • Support the network of relationships within and between working groups, intentional community, partner organizations, neighborhoods, etc. Provide an experimental testbed for empowering transformations of personal, social, economic, legal, and other interactions.

  • 200 person-hours/mo of support, gross $2000/mo, 5 intimate partnerships, 20 volunteers.

• Research and Assessment:

  • systematic protocols for data gathering, analysis, documentation, and dissemination regarding progress towards sustainability goals regarding all projects above, as well as skills acquisition, value shift, psychosocial wellbeing, etc.

  • 5 peer-reviewed articles per year, 5 informational pamphlets per year, acquired by 200 people per month, $1000 per month gross, 5 intimate partnerships, 20 volunteers.