230 people living communally on 175 acre eco village [video]
I don&#x27;t doubt that there are certain downsides to living like the people in the video (at least when it comes to creature comforts and their overall lifestyles), but personally i just find the surroundings very scenic and calming.<p>As someone who got to move away from the city and work remotely from my countryside home thanks to the pandemic (silver linings), i actually find my current circumstances to be far more stress free than the city life, even if going to the store turns out to be a larger, weekly event, and washing myself involves heating water (or sauna) for a lot of the day with a furnace that consumes firewood instead of just jumping into the shower (and, you know, the house being cold in the mornings, before the centralized heating does a few cycles of water through the radiators and everything heats up).<p>Of course, living in the countryside also involves a huge amount of things that need to be done - everything from mowing the lawns constantly throughout the summers, tending to the greenhouse (due to my dad&#x27;s desires to have one), using a tractor to mow down the grass on the fields and collect it (governmental penalties for not doing that), repairing everything that breaks, from water pumps, to having to repaint wooden window frames so they don&#x27;t rot, acquiring firewood for the winter, making sure that irrigation ditches are okay and don&#x27;t collapse and so on...<p>But in exchange for that, i get no nosy neighbors to invade upon my privacy, fresh air, no soot from all the cars on the frames of my windows (and the inside of my lungs, probably), no sense of urban sprawl or the need to rush anywhere and no worries about the current pandemic either (even though i&#x27;m vaccinated). Plus, growing your own tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and herbs, berries and other stuff is nice, at least as far as the end results go. And building anything or making improvements to the home doesn&#x27;t take permits upon permits upon permits. My sleep is also pretty much excellent nowadays and i also have a safe environment for doing exercise with no judgement or social pressures whatsoever.<p>In short, there are both benefits and drawbacks, but living closer to the nature just feels more <i>right</i>, a sensation that&#x27;s utterly devoid from urban life, save from regularly visiting parks and such.