Aunite Beryl enjoying the warm September sun while Bealers does a spot of carpentry

We have a neighbour who is a lovely lady called Beryl. She is the elderly auntie of one of the people who first bought the farm we live at almost two and a half years ago. Beryl is in her late eighties and in a wheelchair but lives here instead of in a old people’s care home.

She joins us each night at the communal meal in the big farmhouse kitchen, she is always happy to receive visitors for a chat and is taken her lunchtime sandwich by anyone of us who are around during the day. Beryl ran her own hair salon for 72 years and so is fully qualified to chat pleasantly about anything and everything with anyone.

Having her here provides us with extra diversity in our group but also another dependent person who along with our small children needs looking after (she needs someone to get her up, washed and dressed in the morning and in the evening requires putting to bed like a toddler does).

Every day here brings loads of small examples of how a very close knit community provides a brilliant place to live instead of the isolated norm of modern UK society with caring and sharing it is one of the huge joys of living in an intentional community with several other families sharing the same land and working on collaborative projects…

My kids get the school bus along with their friends who also live here – sometimes when their parents are busy I stroll along the lane to collect all of the the children from the bus or will collect them from school if they’ve been to an after school club. Sometimes if my littlest tot is having a nap when school finishes the other children’s parents kindly see my kids off the bus for me. It is ad-hoc, friendly and flexible.

Someone needed a lift to the local town to catch a bus to the city last week – another person was going there to the doctors so a lift was arranged.

Bealers and I wanted to hire a van for a few months while lives in our old home during the week and joins us when he can for weekends, he wanted to bring our possessions each time he came. A chap who lives on the farm here happens to have a big white transit which isn’t being used for a few months so we have rented it from him.

When my new friend/neighbour’s little baby is crying while her mummy tries to eat her dinner I can take the baby and sing her a few of my nursery rhymes and buy the hungry mummy chum enough quiet hands-free time to scoff her dinner while it is still hot.

If I mention to people that I’m off to the local town to take the toddler to the swimming pool I am asked to pick up a watch from the jewellers, collect large ice-cream containers for food storage from kind ice-cream parlours, to take something back for a refund and to buy lemons for jam making. Another lady heard I was taking the little one swimming and asked if she could come too – I wondered whether she’d like to take her while I stayed home to do some business admin next week. She said she’d love to.

If when someone else mentions to me that they are going to ‘town’ I asked them to pick up some forms for the local doctors’ surgery.

These little exchanges just don’t happen with normal neighbours. Its the increase in communication which makes it work and ability to be nosey everytime you bump into someone (frequent as we have people going past to feed the animals, a communal laundry room, a number of shared indoor spaces) – ‘Hello, how are you today, what are you up to?’ ‘Oh I’m planning on going blackberry picking too – shall we do it together – No I didn’t know there was a sloe gin and blackberry vodka making competition in the local village how exciting!’.

Before we moved here I might see a neighbour who I was fond of drive past or leave their house from inside my own and wonder where they were going but there certainly was no sense of saving each other’s time and petrol buy giving her my chores in town despite us all living in a little rural hamlet. Although neighbours offered to mind the children it was only once in an extreme emergency that kids were parked and emergency was tended to.

Now we are here I am delighted to discover that my toddler is the same age as another toddler here (well *nearly* here as her parents are considering moving here but currently live really nearby) and now that the littles are getting to know the other mummies we have decided that we could alternate taking two children to the local weekly playgroup while the other mum stays at home and catches up with work. Childcare swapping is a natural thing to talk about and plan with people you see everyday, who you work and eat and play and plan with. It is the norm and I love it.

Yesterday I decided to take my kids to the beach after school as it was so warm and sunny and living so close to the sea is a huge novelty for us. As I could see my next door neighbours were busy trying to get on with renovations to their home I asked if their daughter would be able come with me. She did and my daughter and her ran away from waves for an hour.

Whilst walking past the pigs recently I noticed a few of the cheeky young uns had worked together to nudge the fence down and were just about to do a porcine breakout. I raised the alarm with someone who knew more about livestock than me and it was sorted in a jiffy.

These are just a few of the examples of how living cooperatively in a community with likemindeds can really enhance life when it comes to caring for one another and helping each other out in a way that is totally pleasant for everyone involved.