Please inquire about the 2024 season. I had a great 2023 with several volunteers coming from Wwoof and would love to invite more volunteers.
I will review requests starting in January.

Our community was founded in 1978 by former members of  the Findhorn Community, is a spiritual intentional community located in the foothills on 90 acres of land in western Massachusetts. We are a non-profit educational center with a fourfold purpose as an intentional community, a conference center, an aspiring eco-village and a place for spiritual growth and development. We practice organic gardening, natural building practices,  attunement to nature and meditation in our daily lives in hopes of living more lightly on the planet.

The garden is two acres which includes two fruit production orchards. We do all our work without tractors in a raised bed system using the principles of permaculture, attunement to nature, companion planting and biointensive agriculture. The garden now in its 46th year of production, supplies food for the community kitchen and the surrounding neighborhood. In the garden, wwoofers help plant, water, weed harvest and eat our amazing produce. They get a taste for community living, learn new skills and often grow internally to gain new insights about themselves and their life goals. 

We host 6 interns at a time with an occasional 7th volunteer, Some of our other projects aside from food production in 2024 may include building a shed for our backhoe, making firewood, cutting lumber on the saw mill, erecting our 10 kw wind generator, restoring an 1850s school house, learning the basics of our wood working shop and power tools, driving the tractor and helping with any other task that may arise. We occasionally also support the conference center programs through preparing guest rooms and cooking in the kitchen.
We have over 50 pine tree trunks to mill into lumber, plus all the regular weekly tasks of planting tending and harvesting our garden including making compost, caring for the fruit trees, and processing all the food we gather.

The wwoof volunteers work Tuesday-Saturday midday with the rest of the time off. Our main goal is education and we offer a once a week sit down class along with a check in, plus regular hands on teaching sessions each day as we go about our work. Some the the topics include: introduction to permaculture, how to gardening, food preservation, green and natural building, biodynamics, herb processing. community living, spiritual growth etc.
Volunteers interact with community members and participate in community life. We have a sauna on the land, a small swimming pond and our own system of hiking trails.

 The surrounding area is a college town with places for outdoor recreation including hiking trails, swimming holes, canoeing and mountain bike trails. The pioneer valley has a thriving food culture with local CSAs, farm tourism and festivals. The college culture provides a late-night scene with restaurants, local music, dancing and open mike nights.

We always have great interest in our community and hosted many great WWOOFers in the last few years. We are now accepting interested applicants arriving in the spring beginning in April. The program continues until Thanksgiving. Ideally participants would stay for several months as there is as always more to learn with the seasonal changes. Longer stays for the entire growing season are encouraged.
If  you are interested in coming, please be in touch. I usually arrange an interview to learn more about you and if you would be a good fit.

Please browse our website at www.siriuscommunity.org for more information. Thanks!

Certifications: We use all organic practices but since the produce is consumed here and among our neighbors, we have not felt a need to certify .

Internet access available