Housing

We have a house on the farm, thanks to so much generosity from our community, so much commitment from us farmers, the craft of dedicated builders, and the materials from earth’s abundance! The house was built to welcome our community, to serve as a center of farm business operations, and to offer farm workers the option of an affordable and beautiful place to live. That option comes with the requirement of co-living respectfully (and ideally joyfully) with Hannah, other farmworkers, and community members, so it is not necessarily for everyone. Below are some details about the cultural context of the Humble Hands Harvest household… contact us if you’d like to live here!

This household is situated at (and owned by) Humble Hands Harvest, a community-oriented diversified farm. The farm is an active place, with various people renting field space here, coming to use our greenhouse, picking up orders, or communing with the sheep. We enjoy it when people drop by, at any hour of the day or evening, and we welcome them to do so.

  • If you love to meet new people, chat in person, and make community connections, you’ll have plenty of opportunity for that here!
  • If you need lots of notice before engaging with strangers, living in this house on this farm will not offer you that.

The farmworkers on this farm, even those who don’t live here, including work-share CSA members working one morning a week, use the kitchen for lunch and the bathroom as needed. We store our meat in freezers in the lower level, and use the lower level for squash and onion storage in the winter. That means that during work days, farmers and workers may come in and out of the house, and do work inside the house, without notice.

Each person in the house has their own private room. When the house is not full, we use extra rooms as guest rooms and may rent them out to visitors (strangers) via airbnb. It is expected that the public spaces in the house be maintained such that a stranger visitor will be comfortable (clean bathrooms and kitchen and floors, generally uncluttered, though a lived-in aesthetic is great!).

  • If it brings you joy to connect with new people and give them homey hospitality, you’ll like it here!
  • If you want the freedom to leave messes in public spaces, this house is not a good fit for you.
  • If hosting strangers overnight makes you uncomfortable, you do not want to live here.

Visitors are welcome for up to a week, for sleeping on couches or in your own room or in a guest room if one is available. Beyond a week it is expected that a visitor would contribute to the expenses of the house. When overnight visitors are scheduled it is important to share that on the house calendar so that we don’t overbook our guest capacity! Guests are generally welcome to use our public spaces as we would, and are expected to clean up after themselves as we would.

Hannah gets a lot of joy from gathering people together for meaningful ritual and conversation. This house was built in part to facilitate that. A goal is to practice the type of hospitality from the poem above, such that the wider community feels at home when they come here. There has yet to be a consistent regular gathering that happens here, but it is top of the list of Hannah’s desires.

  • If you get joy from hosting individuals and groups for quality time over a meal, or if you have interest and energy to be part of frequent regular gatherings for meaning-making and connection, you’ll have opportunity, encouragement, and participation here!
  • If having groups of people in your home on a regular basis makes you squirm, this house is not a good fit for you.

“We eat habitually, if not exclusively, from what the land here produces.” This is part of the mission of Humble Hands Harvest, and one of the joys of living on this farm is endless and abundant access to vegetables that we don’t sell (both seconds and leftovers from market). We make it a mission to eat and preserve the “house pile” of vegetables, and beyond that we strive to source our food directly from other local farms or from the Oneota co-op. Meat from the farm is available in a similar way to the vegetables; it is much more expensive though so if you want to use a cut we would otherwise sell, you will be asked to pay for it.

  • If you like eating seasonally and inventively based on ingredients at hand, you’ll enjoy the food scene here!
  • Co-living with people involves both the joys of sharing meals and chores with others, and the struggles of refrigerator management and differing ideas of what “clean” means. Be prepared to live in collaboration and communication with your housemates!

The housemates find a weekly time to have a group meeting about household issues, including addressing any conflicts that arise that involve the whole household. Sometimes this meeting stands alone; other times it has been paired with a shared meal. Each iteration of the household will find their own way of doing it, but regular in-person meetings are part of what it means to live here, and it is expected that all housemates prioritize these meetings.

The house itself was built with a passive solar design, all-electric appliances, lots of insulation, and a wood stove. We intentionally did not include central air conditioning in the house, as a way of being in solidarity with the rest of the world, and of inviting our bodies to acclimatize to heat (as farm workers, this is important!). We do have a washer and dryer, but we dry most of our laundry on the line. We are lucky to have a new house with modern amenities, and we make an effort to be mindful of what we are consuming. We engage with intention in ways that support our comfort, the house’s wellbeing, and energy conservation (closing windows & blinds on hot days, opening blinds on cold sunny days, cooking over the wood stove in the winter, etc).

  • If you have a passion for reducing your fossil fuel footprint, you’ll enjoy this house’s systems!
  • If push-of-a-button climate control is important to you, this house is not a good fit for you.

We are rural, and fast, abundant internet has not been a thing for this farm. There are workers laying fiber internet on our road now, but we don’t actually know when it will be ready to go. It’s been years in the waiting, and soon, our house will be a place where remote work can be done. Alas, though, not quite yet—we function with cellular hotspots that do an ok job.

The expenses of the house (mortgage, taxes, insurance, utilities) add up to just over $2000/month and are paid by Humble Hands Harvest. HHH rents each of the four bedrooms for $525/month and counts on renting all four bedrooms to break even. Everyone in the house is provided with a month-to-month lease, pays a security deposit at the start of their tenancy, and will be informed with at least 30 days notice of any changes to the lease.

  • Timely payment of rent is a requirement of living in this house.
  • This house is owned by a worker-owned cooperative, which means at this point that the farmer-owners get the final say in ownership and financial decisions about the house, even as we seek out good-faith input and constructive feedback from everyone who lives here.