Green Acres
Think communes went out with the 1960s? Welcome to Cedar Moon, where the quinoa grows tall, Nubian goats mow the lawn, and life (almost) off the grid is sweet.
By Randy Gragg
WELCOME TO THE CLAN Fourteen members of the Cedar Moon commune (and one winged friend) relax on the T-Whale, a covered gazebo that serves as the social hub of their home on the edge of Tryon Creek State Park.
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FULL BOUNTY In preparation for the evening’s group dinner, Bonsai Matt and fellow Cedar Moon resident 3-year-old Myrtle pick an armful of giant, leafy kale form their seven-acre farm.
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MOTOR MOUTH One of Cedar Moon’s three Nubian goats does its part to help cut back blackberry brambles and other invasive weeds while satisfying its insatiable appetite.
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RULE NO. 2 Everything at Cedar Moon is recycled, even human waste, which is collected in this composting toilet for later use as fertilizer in the garden.
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RUSTIC COOKING Cedar Moon’s outdoor stoves and oven are made of a combination of mud and straw called cob. The kitchen’s recently finished roof protects the natural appliances from the rain.
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FIRE IN THE HOLE This dragon-shaped, cob-built “rocket stove” not only cooks food, but when properly stoked, it also warms the entire length of the adjacent bench, which is used for outdoor dining.
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NO-CAR GARAGE A rustic tepee makes a perfect environmentally friendly abode for Cedar Moon resident Bernhard Bach.
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SPA FRODO It might look like something from Middle Earth, but this cob building is actually a sauna, one of the more popular social venues on the property.
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HOT ROCKS Inside the earthen structure, a wood-burning stove heats bricks; mud-and-straw walls keep the temperature at a steady, sweat-inducing level.
BRENNA BELL’S LEFT FOOT is harshing my bohemian dream. From about the middle of her left shin to the battered top of her sun hat, she’s the epitome of the 21st-century Earth Mama: tank top, cutoff corduroys, tattoo of the lunar cycle orbiting her right biceps, child at the hip. Her walking stick, with a foggy crystal embedded in the top, has red and yellow ribbons streaming from the handle.
She is, quite unapologetically, a hippie. And not the kind maxing out Mom and Dad’s American Express down on Hawthorne, either. “That word has so many meanings,” the 33-year-old says, popping a freshly picked sprig of dill into her mouth. “But if you mean somebody who’s a free-minded person who lives closely with nature and with other people? That’s what I am.”
But then there’s that foot. While the right one is bare and crusted in a funky shell of sweat and dirt from traversing the trails of her communal home here on the outskirts of Tryon Creek State Park in Southwest Portland, the other is packed inside a hospital-issued, plastic-and-metal walking boot. Limping her way through a garden path choked with bamboo shoots, fennel leaves, snap peas, and various other ready-to-eat flora, Bell rehashes the night three months ago when she wiped out on her bike while speeding down the twisty road toward home. It was dark, and she remembers taking the curve a little too fast, losing control, and hitting the ground. When she hoisted herself up on her elbows, she stared blankly at a foot wrenched 90 degrees in the wrong direction.
So it’s with a smile that she informs me that after being confined mostly indoors for the better part of the last 90 days with a dislocated ankle, she’s officially returning to the fold here at the Cedar Moon commune this afternoon. Not just to the fields—where, like everybody else, she must devote at least 15 hours a week to sowing, seeding, weeding, or other tasks related to education and upkeep—but to the surrounding cedars and firs, where she tends to lose herself for hours teaching her 4-year-old daughter, Ember, the names of the trees and flowers.
Recovery, she insists, would’ve been nearly impossible without the help of the other 15 adults (and 6 children) who call Cedar Moon home. While Bell was laid up, they watched her daughter, cooked, changed her pee bucket, and when the pain medication became too much for her stomach, they even scrubbed the puke out of her bedsheets. “Honestly,” she says, “I can’t understand how people don’t live in a commune.”
As we emerge from the man-made archway of blackberry bramble that signals the end of the Edible Forest Garden, where wine cap mushrooms and fern fronds grow wild, the true beauty of Bell’s home reveals itself in a wide, gently sloping hill that encompasses the bulk of Tryon Life Community Farm (TLC Farm), the five-acre garden maintained by Cedar Moon. Lettuce heads, squash, carrot tops, spindly quinoa towers, cornstalks, and just about any other vegetable or fruit you can think of pop up from the ground as far as a shaded eye can squint. Unseen goats bleat. Chickens cluck. Children with names like Talon and Myrtle laugh just within earshot.
Published: October 2008