Day 1 - Welcome to TLC Farm

Greetings from the TLC Farm's Summer 2009 Community Sustainability Immersion Program! My name's Nick Cavanaugh and I'm one of seven interns participating in this 3-week program in order to learn skills for sustaining our environment and communities. We've found our way into a magical, inspiring place and time; we'd like to use this blog to share the knowledge and inspiration we experience here, and to record the experiences for our and others' future reference. I'll be amongst those helping to manage this blog and giving frequent updates on our activities. Please read along with us - you may learn new ideas to try in your place, or you may learn that you too want to come experience TLC Farm.

To start things out, I'd like to catch up to speed on what we've been experiencing so far. Day one at the farm was largely spent becoming introduced to each other and to this place. This place is unique for a number of reasons. First of all, it's a 7-acre farm amidst a major U.S. city - imagine that! It exists on the edges of Tryon Creek State Natural Area, a beautiful 645-acre park that is Oregon's only state park within a major metropolitan area. The space began as a farm in the 1930s. It passed out of farming hands from 1977 until 2006, when the current incarnation of the farm officially began.

This place is also unique because of the confluence of different energies and purposes that come together here. TLC Farm exists side-by-side with Cedar Moon, an intentional community of over 20 residents. The Farm itself is open to the public many days a week, and is used for a number of public purposes, including hosting Mother Earth School during the school year. It's a site for many community events, and indeed, it's the surrounding community that saved TLC Farm from development and made it what it is today.

The full TLC Farm story is amazing, and it's much more than we can do justice for in this blog. A great telling of the story can be read on the TLC Farm website at http://tryonfarm.org/share/story. A short version is this; this land had been rented as a residential space for a number of years preceding the current incarnation. The owners had some big visions for the land which never came to fruition, and they decided to sell it. A couple developers showed interest and backed down after community resistance. Then, Brownstone Homes stepped to the table and envisioned a 23-home development which would dramatically alter the landscape. A complicated legal process ensued, and in the end, a coalition of community and governmental organizations were instead able to purchase the land themselves and create TLC Farm as we know it today. That whole process was truly epic, so I'd really encourage anyone who's interested to read the full story.

Cedar Moon resident Jenny, one of the farm's founders, gave us an very thorough and inspiring tour on our first day. Here a some photos to share which give a glimpse of the some of the tour's highlights.


The "T-Whale" is a great example of the community aspect of the farm. First of all, what it is is a very neat, sheltered community gathering space. Secondly, it shows the community connection that extends beyond the farm - like many things on the farm, it was a donation from the community, in this case a local school.


These are Portland's first public composting toilets. That's right, they're toilets that use no water and instead collect waste and create compost through a dehydrating, sanitary system. This compost can then be used as an extremely nutrient rich fertilizer for any place that food will not be contacting directly, such as the farm's fruit orchards. This is just one example of how the farm uses what seems to a problem, in this case waste, and creates, instead, a solution.


The community at TLC Farm works not only to improve our physical environment, but our social environment as well. This is a sauna built with cob, a sustainable natural material, and which is wood-fired. It can fit upwards of 30 people for relaxing, healing gatherings.




The gardens at TLC Farm are all organic and include a vast array of fruits, vegetables and herbs. They are tended using permaculture principles - more later on what those are.


This greenhouse is used to extend the warm growing season. It's built to utilize the natural airflow of the incline that it sits on.


TLC Farm is home to many farm animals, including goats, sheep, and chickens. Aside from being nice companions, they provide useful goods (milk, wool and eggs) and also tend and fertilize the land.


The Farm is very kid-friendly. There are currently seven children living at Cedar Moon, some of whom we've found to be quite knowledgeable and helpful to us newcomers.


This is the office space that us interns are using. It's upstairs in the barn, and has been insulated and finished with natural building materials.

-Nick