Mrs. Staveley felt strongly that people interested in self-development would benefit most from circumstances where real work was demanded. If the abnormal conditions of ordinary being existence spoken of so frequently in All and Everything, were to be confronted, it would have to begin practically, with how we live our lives. What could be more practical and challenging than work on a farm, where people could use their bodies to learn skills that were second nature to our forebearers? In 1974 the members of a study group in Portland purchased a small farm near Aurora, Oregon, in order to have a place to learn to work together. Our studies were related to experiencing the wonder of being human, and the ways in which we can discover meaning and purpose through our work together in a place to apply the ideas and methods of Gurdjieff to ourselves.
One of the first things we did when began our practical study was to list our values. That done, we made another list of how we spend our time and money, because that told us what we really valued. We began to see a gap between what we professed to value, and the way we lived our lives. Our age is a difficult one to be born into. Although on the surface it appears that our lives are easier than ever before, there is a high price for this ease. It seems that the “old virtues” that held people together for so many centuries — honesty, hard work, faith, family, a generally accepted code of morality — are disintegrating in the face of “new virtues” of technology, progress, material acquisition, and that after only a generation or two disillusionment has begun to set in. Many people today have given up the quest for meaning, in order to devote their lives to the goal of happiness through pleasure seeking. The questions for the study group became: What is my life for? What is worth doing, striving for? Which of my values are still valid and how can I practice them in my life?
Gurdjieff’s life was a search for real values driven by a burning need to find and understand the sense and aim of existence. He searched far and wide for answers to life’s questions, and developed guidelines and a method for others to find values that could be verified through one’s own experience. The need was apparent for a place to create conditions, to apply and test values, where the ideas and techniques of his work could be practiced and incorporated into daily life. Thus the idea of a farm where we could work and study together was conceived. The members of the study group earn their livings in many different ways — doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, taxi drivers, farmers, businessmen, state officials and government workers, builders, students, professors, writers, and artists, etc. We have homes and families, some in the community, others in the valley from Portland to Eugene. In a way, we are an unlikely conglomeration of people. The common link is that we are all searching for a practical way to work—to realize our potential as human beings—something we found we could not do by ourselves, simply by thinking or talking about it.
In the beginning none of us knew how to do much of anything other than our specialized occupations. There were no farmers, no builders. We were city people, now with a farm and a few ramshackle buildings. So we began to learn to use our hands, to relate to the soil and to materials, to develop skills. It was far from an instantaneous success. We wanted to upgrade the soil — no poisions or synthetics, but instead compost and organic fertilizers. We’ve grown a lot of weeds and insects while learning! Our attempts to upgrade the buildings and learn the necessary skills in the process were fraught with difficulty. The chimney, for example, had to be rebuilt three times, but we did learn something about how to learn and work for quality in the process, even when we were unable to come up to the standards we had hoped for. It is no wonder that our real farmer neighbors often referred to us as the “hobby farm.” Today we have a variety of activities on the farm, through which skills can be learned. We have study groups where we discuss experiences, and share questions. There are movements classses, research groups, a choir, drama, a small school for children. We mark the summer and winter solstices and the equinoxes. These are activities of the work, not the work itself. They were not preplanned when we began, but they arose and continue to arise, out of interest and need.
We are in no way a politically oriented group. Rather, we wish to learn something about what it means to be responsible, in a practical way for the issues we feel are important. If we can, for instance “tread lightly upon the earth”, avoid unnecessary consumption and waste, perhaps we can make a start. In this age of specialization, mass production, mechanization, computers, technology, more things are available to more people than ever before. We began to see that the price for this abundance was a loss of appreciation, a loss of valuing the labors and efforts of others. People are also losing the knowledge of how to do useful things. No one would deny the value of a calculator, but if I don’t bother to learn addition and subtraction, my possibilities for understanding become ever more and more limited. I buy eggs, milk, and meat from the supermarket without the faintest notion of what is involved in producing any of it. Clothing, furniture, tools are all ready-made. If I don’t like something or don’t use it, I can always buy something else. These are examples of those “abnormal conditions of ordinary being existence” — they are indicators of values that reflect weaknesses that we wish to confront, that are a part of our material for work.
We decided to put something against all this by re-learning some forgotten skills, not as a revolt and not as an attempt to step out of the age we live in, but because we felt a need to reconnect with the processes on which our lives depend and hopefully to understand and experience a little more the inter-relatedness of everything — man, plants, animals, the earth — to try to learn to live a little more normally. So — we have a woodshop, greenhouses, food processing and preparation kitchens, gardens, pastures, craft projects. We have a few animals — sheep, pigs, cows, horses, chickens, turkeys, goats. After caring for our animals, we do our own butchering, which makes us more aware of the connectedness of everything.
The farm is in no way intended as a substitute for life obligations. Neither is it a romantic “back-to-nature” dream. We sometimes work long hours on special projects, or on everyday maintenance, scrubbing floors, pulling weeds, or repairing broken pipes. With all of the outward doing, the aim is always to remember the reason why we are here, engaged in these outward activities—the wish to be. We have regular work days on Sundays, and longer work weekends several times during the year. It is our hope that when we return to our homes or our jobs, that we can experience there also, the values and striving we work for together on the farm.