ModernT, I’ve found the same thing. I tried for over 6 years to attract singles and families to help build a community on a 30-acre farm in SW Virginia. In all that time I found only one family of 4 with any experience or skills to contribute. They were a Godsend, but never committed to the community concept and just exchanged labor for rent on a lot to park their RV while they continued to look for a place of their own. Everyone else who visited the property or whom I interviewed by email or phone offered nothing of value to the community. Not skills, money, energy, tools, or equipment. Nothing. They expected to be housed and fed and just help out while learning about homesteading. Sorry, but if you want schooling, you’ll have to pay for it, whether a trade school, college, or whatever. Even grade school isn’t free. The local taxpayers are paying for it, and kids today don’t appreciate their “free” education, such as it is. They come out of it with no skills, little actual learning, and no sense of responsibility. Blame the government-run schools, the liberal administration, the poorly prepared teachers, the parents, or anybody you like, but the facts show that young people today are not being prepared to become responsible adults.
To find people with skills and personal responsibility, you have to look for older adults who have learned through the School of Hard Knocks to take care of themselves. The entrepreneurs, self-employed, self-educated, but frustrated with today’s work environment, who want to build something sustainable as far from the rat race as they can get. Those people are around but hard to find, and a lot of them only want their own place and aren’t looking for a community to join. Only after they get their own homestead or farm do they find out how difficult it is to go it alone, and then they are likely to start a community of their own as you and I have.
I finally got so frustrated with the process that I sold my farm, packed up and set out to find a compatible community to join. I have skills, cash, tools, and self-motivation, but unfortunately every community I investigated from VA to NV had nothing to offer me in exchange. They all wanted my money but offered too little for the price they were charging, or there was no real community, only a land developer trying to sell over-priced lots with no community infrastructure or even commitment from existing lot owners to help each other. Maybe those of us who are trying to build something sustainable should get together and pool our resources to form a Permaculture community somewhere. We may be the only ones with the skills, money, tools & equipment, and motivation to put it all together.
