Morninglory Farm then

Publishers’ Note:  As Morninglory Farm prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary on March 30th 2019, The Current re-prints with permission Douglas Gloin’s article about the back-to-the-land movement, written ten years ago for the Toronto Star. Gloin’s article is just as valuable now as it was when first published in painting a picture of the unique culture that blossomed in the Valley and attracted the disparate settlers which he so compellingly portrays. It is a valuable historical record that traces the origins of this “intentional community” and gives voice to its unique flavour.

Living green before their time

 Back to the garden? Rob Anderman and his wife, Christina, never left. In 1969, just before Woodstock, he started a commune in eastern Ontario. It’s been a model of green ever since. (DAVID COOPER / TORONTO STAR)

By Douglas Gloin

Sun., May 20, 2007 

WILNO, ONT.          Residents and friends of the farm gathered around a fire overlooking the commune below. After cleansing themselves with smoke from a big, glowing smudge of dried herbs (all of them perfectly legal), people declared their intentions and hopes for the coming season, and then tossed a cedar frond on the coals. They sang, drew inspiration from Celtic, native and goddess sources, and danced in a circle around the fire to a glorious rhythmic din made by a selection of maracas, seed pods, music sticks and handmade drums.

“Forward!” shouted neighbour Tim Rivers-Garret, pointing dramatically as the gathering turned and bowed toward the east, the direction of renewal. A woman named Melodie from the Gaspé offered her thoughts for the season in French. A collective “Aho” followed each declaration.

The chilly evening began with carob and hempseed “hot chocolate” and ended in warm hugs and wishes as everyone headed back to their homesteads down their own well-trodden pathways through the snow.

Morninglory Farm, nestled in the hills near Wilno, Ont., about an hour’s drive east of Algonquin Park, has been marking the turn of the seasons with ceremonies like this for decades, so the gathering on the vernal equinox was not out of the ordinary. Yet coming as it did on the 40th anniversary of the year when hundreds of hippies ushered in the Summer of Love from a San Francisco hilltop, then held a mock funeral signalling “the death of the hippie” just four months later, the event had a certain poignancy.

In those heady days of Hendrix and Haight-Ashbury, “hippie communes” dotted the hills around the south and eastern edges of Algonquin Park as people in the back-to-the-land movement discovered the area had lots of cheap land to get back to. The hardscrabble farms homesteaded by the Madawaska and Bonnechere Valleys’ Polish and Irish settlers were being sold off at low prices as their descendants moved to town.

Most of those communities are gone, as is the “hippie commune” label, overburdened as it was with stereotypes about free-flowing sex and drugs. Today, Morninglory and a couple of others are alive and well, “intentional community” is the preferred term, the “herbs” are mostly for eating or medicine, and the sons and daughters of hippies have grown into adulthood on the farm and are parenting a third generation.

More than that, some of the flower children of the ’60s are feeling vindicated by a growing concern about the very things they rebelled against: rampant consumerism, waste and environmental degradation. At a time that has seen An Inconvenient Truth capture an Oscar, and the U.S. get bogged down in another foreign war, the idea of finding a better way to live has found new currency.

Earlier this month, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Mark Morford, in a column headlined “The Hippies Were Right,” argued that the flower-power generation can take credit for inspiring many of the ideas now accepted by the public at large. “You know it’s true,” he wrote. “All this hot enthusiasm for healing the planet and eating whole foods and avoiding chemicals and working with nature and developing the self? Came from the hippies. Alternative health? Hippies. Green cotton? Hippies. Reclaimed wood? Recycling? Humane treatment of animals? Medical pot? Alternative energy? Natural childbirth? Non-GMA seeds? It came from the granola types. “It’s about time the media, the politicians, the culture as a whole sent (hippies) a big, wet, hemp-covered apology.”

Morninglory continues – preserved, its residents say, through a mixture of tolerance, hard work, communication, adaptability and a touch of compromise. Today, about 20 people live in the former homestead’s old log farmhouse, some of its outbuildings or in cabins and shelters built over the years. About half of them have been there for 20 years or more. But Rob Anderman is the only original resident still on the farm.

Anderman’s workshop is an adventure in eclecticism. A tangle of grouse feathers, a large derelict wasp nest and sacred native tobacco plants hang from the rafters, which themselves are stuffed with aged Whole Earth Catalogues and other reading material. On the workbench are wooden flutes in various styles and states of construction. Anderman, known locally by the nickname Beaver, is an accomplished musician who has released two CDs. His current passion is the Buddhist-inspired shakuhachi flute, but on this day he picks up a dulcimer he crafted several years ago and strums a couple of tunes. “It’s from the word dulce, which means sweet,” he says. And it is.

The seeds for Morninglory Farm were sown at Rochdale College, then unofficial headquarters of the counterculture in Toronto, less than two years after that flower-power summer of 1967. Anderman and his friend Mike Nickerson were students at the alternative, tuition-free communal college when a fellow student named Dalton McCarthy, who hailed from Killaloe, was encouraging his peers to move up to the area around his hometown, where cheap land was available.

“Beaver and I went up and looked at some places,” recalls Nickerson. For $4,300 they bought a 40-hectare farm that had been homesteaded by immigrants of the Polish Kashub ethnic minority whose descendants had moved into nearby Barry’s Bay. In March, 1969, the two said goodbye to Rochdale and waded up the long driveway through thigh-deep snow to the farmhouse. “Moglo,” as some residents have come to call the farm, was born as an experiment in communal living.

“I don’t think we had any clue about process and making something work,” Nickerson says. “What we had was an educational nest egg that Beaver had landed” – a cubic metre of books on alternative living from the Whole Earth Catalogue.

I spent the whole winter reading and making notes. I didn’t know it was called sustainability at that time, but that’s what we were doing.

There was no electricity – the farm had never had hydro service and still doesn’t. Candles and kerosene lamps were used for light. The commune’s first full winter was a constant scramble to collect firewood because none had been cut the previous spring and summer. Woodstock may have been to blame for that.

Anderman had received word that a big concert was planned for August back on his home turf near Bethel, N.Y. He and three others headed off to Max Yasgur’s farm for the party.

At 58, Anderman – who lives on the farm with his wife, Christina, and two of their three sons – could be considered an icon of the ’60s. He led his first protest in high school, battling plans to hold the high school prom at the local Elks Club, which at the time barred black people from membership. Before it was over, a boycott organized by Anderman and a few friends grew until the NAACP set up a picket line around the school board o ces. Through friends of his Jewish liberal parents, Anderman met black singer Odetta, as well as an up-and-coming young folk singer named Bob Dylan.

After high school, he began studies at Quaker-inspired Haverford College near Philadelphia.

Anderman attended a guest lecture by Richard Alpert (who later changed his name to Baba Ram Dass), the former Harvard University professor and close associate of LSD advocate Timothy Leary. “Alpert talked about how this (using LSD) is a way to tune into the spirit,” Anderman says. After several months, he was ready to try it himself.

By the time Anderman was in second year at college, the school had changed the route of the campus tour so that it wouldn’t go past his dormitory window. “You never knew what sort of smoke might be coming out, or what Day-Glo posters were glowing in the window, or what music might be coming out,” he recalls with a quiet smile. Anderman was invited to leave Haverford.

Heading north to study Russian at the University of Toronto, he lived in a Yorkville head shop called Jabberwock before ending up at Rochdale College. Then he got his draft notice, but Anderman avoided going to Vietnam after his parents sent him to a psychiatrist friend, who told the draft board the young man was unfit for the army because of his past drug use.

At Woodstock, Anderman soon moved in with the legendary Hog Farm commune, which provided the “Security Please Force” and other services at the festival. Then Hog Farm member Hugh Romney (a.k.a.Wavy Gravy), whose “What we have in mind is breakfast in bed for 400,000” announcement is a Woodstock classic, led commune members on a travelling “starve-in” protest caravan to San Francisco. Anderman joined the trip in his van, bringing along the Hog Farm mascot, a sow named Pigasus. “I drove my `Morninglory Farm, Killaloe, Ontario’ red van in the caravan with one passenger, Pigasus. I slept in front. She slept in back in the hay.”

Later, “feeling the lure of the north woods,” he headed back to Morninglory for Thanksgiving.

Diana MacAuley is serving a tea made of nettles, clover and anise hyssop from the sprawling garden outside the front door of her cabin, which is built into a Morninglory hillside. A firm believer in alternative medicine, she’s filled the shelves of one wall of her kitchen with various jars of herbs and homemade salves and tinctures.

MacAuley, 58, came to the Madawaska Valley 22 years ago and has lived at Morninglory for more than 16 years. A teacher, she says it has been a healing place for her. “I was a bit shell- shocked from living in that community,” she says of the Labrador settlement she left. “It was pretty rough at times.”

She was a single mother with three sons and an infant daughter when she arrived. One son, Nicholas, still lives with her; the other children are away travelling but intend to settle on the farm later in life. She brought up the children while working as a supply teacher in the area, something she still does.

The farm “shocked me at first, that it was so grungy,” she says. But she got used to it. “We don’t have a judgment of other people’s homes…. Everybody here is pretty down-to-earth basic.”

Governance is done in a circle. At farm meetings, each person gets to speak without being interrupted. Consensus is sought though not always reached. “The whole circle has to come into harmony,” MacAuley says. “It’s the process and the vibe. We work hard to make the vibe good.”

She credits the farm’s women for helping to keep the place functioning as a collective. Years ago, people who came there had to sign all sorts of agreements about how they would live and conduct themselves. The agreements were kept in a thick book, and they became a frequent source of dispute at meetings with new residents.

“Meetings were just a dreadful thing sometimes. They could be very emotional. Then, 15 years ago, somebody said, `Let the women take over for a year.'” They fixed the problem by scrapping the agreements book and bringing in the circle process.

At the moment, Morninglory isn’t taking new residents, although guests – many of them young “WWOOFers” (Willing Workers On Organic Farms) – come through the farm regularly. But people who do want to live there more permanently must first perform a number of tasks that include spending all four seasons at the farm. There is a $5,000 fee to join.

In the early years, says Anderman, when the farm had a collective garden, food was something “that broke apart the community many times.” Some favoured organic farming; others wanted raw food only, or a macrobiotic diet. One woman insisted there  be no meat at the farm.

Today, most people either have their own gardens or maintain separate plots in the community garden, and so a former source of conflict has become, in Anderman’s words, a “great meeting place.” Anderman’s own specialty has turned out to be tree grafting in a small pear and apple orchard.

Early on, there were periods of distrust among some farm members, Anderman says. “Yes, there have been members who couldn’t stand each other … but that seems to have passed as we matured and actively worked things out and grew to trust each other more and more.” At one point, the group brought in a facilitator who helped residents communicate better with one another.

“And it’s not like we’re all in one house camped together,” he points out. “There are days, sometimes weeks, where I won’t see someone on the farm. Then I get to seeking them out because I miss them, and we have a great visit.

“Also,” continues Anderman, “we’re not like an island; we have very active interactions with the local ‘outside’ community. Each of us has our own projects, our children have their own projects, and topics of interest that they pursue. We also have visitors and WWOOFers from the outside world, even from around the world.”

In the beginning, the goal was to live off the land. Nowadays, the residents grow between 20 and 50 per cent of their food. Farm members often do canning and preserving together and share their produce. Many also share meals frequently.

Most residents order much of their food in bulk through a natural food club, and many have enough on hand to last a year or so. Several grind their own flour from grains ordered in bulk.

The farm also has solid ties to the surrounding community. In fact, Morninglory is something of an institution in these parts. The area still supports a vibrant “hippie” community and is rich in artists, musicians and craftspeople. Morninglory alumni are everywhere. It’s not unusual to see Anderman sitting in the bleachers at a local fastball game, playing “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” on the panpipe.

From the start, Anderman says, “We were welcomed into this area.” One farmer ploughed their garden, while others gave them chickens, asparagus plants and plum trees. Yet another helped them cut ice in the lake for Morninglory’s ice house.

There are still some stereotypes out there about the farm, however. “Some people think everybody’s running around without their clothes on,” Diana MacAuley says.

These days, those who conjure up visions of wafting pot smoke when they think of communes would likely be disappointed at Morninglory. There’s a strict policy against dealing marijuana or any other drugs. But some residents do not consider pot harmful and value it for its medicinal qualities.

Most of Morninglory’s children are home-schooled. The Andermans home-schooled (and home-birthed) their three boys. Daryl, 25, who was born at a commune called “The Farm” in Tennessee, still lives at Morninglory with his partner, Rose, and their two young children. He has a show on Killaloe’s community radio station and is its tech-support person. Ethan, 23, is studying circus arts, repairs computers and is an avid naturalist. Ben, 19 and a talented photographer, is still at home.

As for entertainment, potluck dinners with homemade music are a regular occurrence at Morninglory, and every Thursday night there’s a jam session. There are 40 hectares of bush and fields to walk, ski and snowshoe around, and a pond for swimming, sailing and skating.

MacAuley says the children who grew up on the farm tend to be independent thinkers. “They’re not afraid of the land, of nature. They’re not afraid of work. Kids who come out of rural areas – a lot of them are pretty healthy in their minds. I know my kids are pretty strong.”

All Morninglory’s children grew up without TV. And although each of the farm’s dwellings has solar power (the heating is all solar or wood), the number of appliances can be counted on one hand – two blenders, a food processor and a powered stone grain mill. There are no washers, dryers or cellphones. The telephone is the only outside service, and only two homes have running water.

Residents are not anti-technology, however. Laptop computers abound (they use less power than desktops), as do solar panels. The Anderman house gets its power from 12 50-watt photovoltaic solar panels and a small wind turbine. They have the only hot water service on the farm, supplied courtesy of some government-surplus solar heating panels.

Morninglory’s homes are as varied as the people who dwell in them. The farm’s original log homestead is the largest house. The Andermans’ residence was once the granary. One woman built her own cabin, felling the logs herself. 

University student Emma Manchester, 26, spent this past winter in a tent-like shelter at Morninglory heated by a small wood stove. She first went to the farm from her Toronto home about four years ago, arriving the way many of the young people do, as a WWOOFer. Since then, she has come up “just about any time I can,” pitching in with chores such as cooking, woodcutting, making maple syrup and gardening.

“I like the people here and I feel at home here, so that’s why I come back – I feel welcome here,” she says. Manchester also appreciates the fact that people from three generations can live, work and play together.

Mike Nickerson, who left Morninglory in the ’70s  and  now  lives  in  Lanark,  near  Ottawa, credits his time at the farm with helping him to formulate ideas  for  a  book  on sustainable living, Life, Money and Illusion, which he’s  now on tour to promote.  He  was  heavily influenced  by  the  work  of  the  American visionary,  architect  and author  Buckminster Fuller,  in  particular  Fuller’s  landmark  1963  book  Operating  Manual  For  Spaceship  Earth. “He was a generalist – he looked at the big picture,” says Nickerson, a two-time federal Green Party candidate. “He wanted to make the world work for 100 per cent of humanity for all time to come, which is a reasonable aspiration I think for a species of our own making.

“Really, Utopia or oblivion is the choice we face.”

Rob Anderman believes the rest of the world could learn some lessons from Morninglory and other intentional communities.

“People learning to live together, it’s the key to life, co-operation,” he says. “It’s like the best tool we have. We’re heading for some really heavy rides, and until people learn to co-operate it’s going to be very hard.”

“I’ve decided to be optimistic about it – I mean one has a choice, and that’s what I’ve decided to do.”

Douglas Gloin is a freelance writer and editor who lives in the Madawaska Valley.