Brackett, Lisa with Alan McRobert. "Where Have All the Communes Gone? Surprise: Vermont's Intentional Communities are Alive and Well", The Vermont Vanguard Press, 17-24 September 1982.

     Brackett visited nearly a dozen Vermont, communes and talked to the people "who call them home". Included are Quarry Hill (Hancock), Earth Wings (Orange), Dimetrodon. (Warren), New Hamburger (Plainfield), Frog Run Farm (East Charleston), Earth Peoples Park (Norton).Several defunct communes are also mentioned: Mt. Philo (North Ferrisburg); Earth, Air, Fire and Water (Franklin) Pie-in -the Sky (Marshfield) ;and Mullein Hill (Glover).

Borsodi, Ralph. Flight from the City: An Experiment in Creative Living on the Land. Suffern, NY: School for Living, 1947.

     Borsodi, a follower of the ideas of Henry George, was an early back-to-the-land advocate. Tired of paying rent and the financial insecurity of a white-collar job, Borsodi and his family abandoned New York City in 1920 for (then) rural Rockland County. There they bought a homestead and began all experiment in rural living. Borsodi found that modern industry could indeed produce goods more cheaply than homescale production but that; in the former case "distribution costs tend to move in an inverse relationship to production costs". Thus, making many things at home proved to be the more economical alternative.
     The School for Living relocated to Pennsylvania and has continued up to the present under the guidance of Borsodi ' s ,associate, Mildred Loomis (til her death in 1986) , as a source of information and encouragement for new generations of back-to-the-landers.Their current, publication is called "Green Revolution".

Fairfield, Dick. Communes, USA. San Francisco: Alternatives Foundation, 1971. Utopia USA. San Francisco Alternatives Foundation, 1972 .

     These two cut-and--paste collections of articles came out (and were distributed by Penguin) at the peak of the communal movement. A short-lived commune in Barre, Vermont called "Greenfeel" is described in Communes, USA. Utopia USA mentions, the Packer Corner Commune in Putney and the intercommunal network "Free Vermont". The reader is invited to join a hard-working commune named "Rockbottom Farm" in Strafford, and a story is reprinted from The Boston Phoenix entitled "Up in the Vermont Woods".

Houriet, Robert. Getting Back Together. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1971.

     This book relates two closely interwoven stories---about Houriet’s trips throughout the country to visit communes and communities (he makes an interesting distinction) and about his own personal odyssey from newspaper editor in New Jersey to communard in Vermont. (Today he owns an organic vegetable farm in Hardwick, Vermont and works for the Barre-Montpelier Times-Argus) More than any other source, this book brings ,you in touch with the individual. people who have made the Counterculture happen (and those who were responsible for its weaknesses).

Jerome, Judson. Communes and the New Anarchism. New York: Seabury Press, 1974.

     This is another Ralph Borsodi--type story--although belonging to a more recent generation. A middle-aged professional, Jerome dropped---out and moved with his family to a commune, Downhill Farm., in the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania in 1971. Described is a trip he made to communes in New England, including Tail of the Tiger in Barnet, Vermont, Nature Farm in Putney, and "Beaver Road Farm" (probably an alias for Packer Corner).

Kopkind, Andrew. "Up the Country: 5 Communes in Vermont'', Working Papers, Spring 1971.

     Kopkind, who currently writes for the Village Voice, spent a year at the May Day Farm Commune in Putney, Vermont. He describes this commune ("a comparative middleground")and four other nearby and contemporaneous ones: Packer Corner ("writers"), Red Clover ("radical."), Johnson's Pasture ("New Age"), and Tree Frog Farm ("bourgeois"). Most communes have proved shortlived, and only one of the above was still in existence at, the date of the article. Kopkind suggests reasons why. But he strongly defends the communal experience: "I learned more about myself--how to love, learn, and relax--- in a year in a commune that I ever had done i n three decades of non-collective experience.”

McLaughlin, Corinne and Gordon Davidson. Builders of the Dawn: Community Lifestyles in a Changing World. Walpole, NH: Stillpoint Publishing, 1985.

     McLaughlin and Davidson, are the cofounders of the "New Age" Sirius Community near Amherst, Massachusetts. Their book is a survey of intentional communities in the 1980s--which the authors say, contrary to popular opinion, are alive and well. The appendix features a listing of no fewer than 85, inclining the "Sunray Meditation Center" of Huntington, Vermont.

Mungo, Raymond. Famous Long Ago: My Life and Hard Times with Liberation News Service. Boston: Beacon Press, 1970. Total Loss Farm: A Year in the Life. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1970.

     How should a commune support itself? Some, it seems, have raised strawberries or other cash crops or manufactured saleable items like hammocks. Packer Corner in Putney, Vermont, had a novel idea. Its members would write books and live, in part, on the royalties. These are two notable examples. (The commune also included among its members other publishable writers, Peter Gould, Verandah Porche, and Marty Jezer.)
     Packer Corner began as the rural incarnation of Liberation News Service, the zany and irreverent AP of the alternative media. Mungo, a founder of LNS, tells its story in Famous Long Ago and about the first, tough year in Vermont (1968) in Total LossFarm.

Nearing, Helen and Scott. Living the Good Life: How to Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World. New York: Schocken Books, 1954. Continuing the Good Life: Half a Century Homesteading. New York: Schocken Books, 1979.

     Blacklisted as a radical and unable to make his living as a college professor, Scott Nearing and wife Helen moved to a homestead in the Green Mountains near Brattleboro in 1932. This worked famously. The Nearings built their own house out of field stones and supported themselves from maple syrup and other cottage enterprises. Still, their main purpose throughout, was to "demonstrate one possibility of, living sanely in a troubled world". These books have been both countercultural and mainstream best--sellers. Through exposure to them, countless other radicals have been provided with both the rationale and the role--models for escape from the city without succumbing to "escapism". They also advertised the virtues of Vermont.
     Twenty ,years later, the Nearings picked--up again and moved to the coast of Maine where they repeated from scratch what was essentially the same experience.

Nevell, Dick. "Communal Living: A Ouestion of Survival”, Yankee: 37 (April- 1973) , 81-83, 150-156.

According to this superficial article, successful communes differ from those that fail because they are held together by unifying principle, be it "Buddhism, Christianity, education--but it must be strong enough so that each individual in the commune considers the attainment of this principle in its highest degree to be his personal ambition in life". Five "successful" commune; in New England are described, including "Tale of the Tiger", a Tibetan Bhuddist meditation center in Barnet, Vermont.

Page, Candace. "Norton and the Earth People", Country Journal, 3 (June 1976) , 68-81 .

     In 1971, a 550-acre tract in the extreme northern Vermont town of Norton was purchased by countercultural donors to be a free space open to all comers. This attracted both serious long-term homesteaders and a great, number of not always well--behaved vagabonds. This article details the antagonisms between the local. inhabitants and these newcomers while managing to, find sympathy for the circumstances of both groups.

Pollack, Richard. "Taking Over Vermont" , Playboy: April 1972 , 147- 148 , 150 , 213-214.

     This is a highly fanciful article about the possibility of thousands of counterculturists descending upon the state and taking it over.(Apparently, two obscure Ivy League intellectuals produced just such a plan called "Jamestown Seventy”. Contains little solid information.

Portola Institute. The Last Whole Earth Catalog: Access to Tools. Random House, 1971.

     Still fascinating entertainment on a rainy day, this was the "wish book" of the back-to-the-land Counterculture. Don`t know how to obtain government land in Alaska, build an earth-covered shelter, tie a half--hitch to hold your horse, or get spare parts for that old tractor? The Whole Earth Catalog (in one of its several editions) will tell you exactly how to obtain the information you need. This edition lists, among other things great and small, the Country Store in Weston, Vermont and the "Wood Heat Quarterly" published in Wolcott.

     Continued in a magazine format as Coevolution Quarterly and Whole Earth Review.

Shi, David E. The Simple Life: Plain Living and High Thinking in American Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

     Unfortunately, this book’s narrative ends not long after telling of Jimmy Carter's installation of solar heating panels on the White House roof--an event which has shrunk considerably in significance. Still, Shi has produced an excellent overview of an important thread running trough American life from the early days to the present. Included is a brief discussion of Barsodi and the Nearings.

Trausch, Susan. "Where Have All the Flower Children Gone?" , The Boston Globe Magazine, August 2, 1987 .

     Trausch uses altogether too much space (to establish her credibility?) disclaiming any connection with the Sixties. But, among other things, this article contains some interesting bits of information about Vermont communes both and new.

Veysey, Lawrence. The Communal Experience: Anarchist and Mystical Counter-Cultures in America. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.