Letter from Bruce

Earthworks Commune
Franklin VT

A letter to Martha Towle of the Franklin Historical Society

Earthworks, or the Franklin Commune as we were universally known by others, was founded in an effort to “return to the land”, to master the skills that would promote agrarian self sufficiency, and to help create a society that would that would provide an alternative to the despair and destruction we were experiencing in our culture, our country and our environment. We were upset about the state of world affairs and set about in a manner we acknowledged to be experimental to improve them. We were particularly opposed to our government’s military violence, to the competitive behaviors we felt were inherent in capitalism, and to the selfish male-dominated, non-cooperative values we then believed were wrongly engendered by the nuclear family. The Vietnam holocaust was to us a source of daily pain. So, too, was the perceived destruction of our natural environment and the permanent annihilation of other living species. We hoped we could make things better. We intended to be social reformers and pioneers, not escapists. Our productive and social failings, and our now obviously erroneous views regarding how planetary life might actually and ultimately be improved, especially in the light of subsequent world and personal history, humbles and embarrasses me today. Yet all of us benefited from our time and experiences at Franklin, learned lessons not available in classrooms or cities, and grew as people, parents, and citizens.

The farm we lived on was purchased for us by Jane Wheelwright, a Jungian therapist who shared so0me of the values we espoused. Jane was always the “owner” of the commune property, though she no restrictions on our personal practices of use of the land, and left us free to do with our lives and the property as we wished. Since we didn’t believe in private ownership of land, this little fiction worked quite well. Jane never provided any money directly to us, but did pay the taxes on the farm and we did not pay rent. In hindsight, her graciousness, and the fact that we did not actually own the land, influenced a number of our decisions and contributed of a number of attitudes and practices that did not serve us well.


Four couples, along with four children, began the commune with a vague, somewhat shared, but poorly articulated vision of what our goals and lifestyle were to be. Genuine participatory democracy was the ideal. Private ownership was out. Male dominance was out. The nuclear family was out. We would try to live self-sufficiently, with less dependence on fossil fuel or purchased goods. We would heat and cook with wood, grow our own food, do the farm work with horses, raise cash crops to barter for other necessities , educate our own children. The means to achieve these ends were often not agreed upon and our vaguely articulated ideals were often in conflict with the reality of individual social and emotional demands, as well as the demands of farm life. For guidance, we looked to romanticized visions of Native Americans and other indigenous “natural” people and to agrarian communes elsewhere in the world as we chose to selectively perceive them.

No matter how skilled or unskilled a commune member was, for example, we believed every person was required to learn to perform every task as an equal, whether that was pounding nails, shoveling manure, operating machinery, or mopping the floor and caring for the children. I remember the shocked disapproval of two men visiting from and Israeli kibbutz as they watched ten or twelve healthy adults stand around doing nothing as one inexperienced commune member tried to back the hay wagon up the barn ramp for unloading at the height of the haying season. Efficient we were not.

In the beginning, we also had a disastrous open enrollment policy. After all, since people should not own the land or the earth, and since private ownership was eschewed, anyone who wished to be a part of our commune must be welcomed. At times during our first summer well over forty people were living on the farm, which strained our resources tremendously. And although the core group of founders always held some primacy, we were often trying to give that power away as well.

Evening meetings were mandatory to process events and divide the next day’s work responsibilities. These meetings were also leaderless, frustrating and inefficient, but in our view necessary to the development of the new society we imagined we were creating.

We first purchased a cow who we named Sophie. That none of use had ever owned or milked a cow did not deter us from the simple, sale, child centered, and immediately rewarding enterprise. Next we bought a team of horses. Jim was the steady and practical older gelding and Mike, was his stronger but far wilder younger brother. Horses, unlike cows, are not easy and can be dangerous. They also don’t respond well to multiple handlers. Naturally, when word got out that we were planning to work with horses, some of the locals from town who loved and honored this way of life, came by to offer instruction and encouragement. Particularly important to use was George Truax, who gave endlessly of his time and wisdom in the arts and crafts of horse management, horse care, and the use and repair of horse drawn equipment.

After our first cow and horses, we acquired others, as well as chickens, pigs, more dogs, and cats. The farm was fertile and richly blessed with good growing lands. It also had a remarkably healthy and productive sugar bush, with a more or less complete set of sugar gathering and processing equipment. Although we had just moved to the farm in February, and knew nothing at the time about horses or sugaring, when the sap started running after Town Meeting that Spring of 1970 we set out our taps and buckets. We produced over 150 quarts of fine quality maple syrup that first year, marketed the syrup to a Natural Foods outlet in New York City under the Earthworks label and made what seemed a handsome profit, save for all the labor we put in.

Naturally when our horse drawn equipment broke down, as old equipment often and inevitably does, we were hard pressed to find or fashion parts. In this realm, we became increasingly familiar with numbers of lovely, profound and philosophical older farmers who gave graciously of their knowledge, skill, and unused machine parts. Ken and Grace Spooner were also important to us in this regard. We often had the image that we kept a team of horses to spread the manure on the fields, to plow the fields, to sow hay for the horses, to reap hay for the horses, to take out the manure, etc. We were their servants as well as they ours. The margin of profit was slim at best.

We were both extremely happy and extremely troubled throughout our existence. The beauty and the freedom we appreciated were ample and ever present. The hardships and harsh demands of form life to novices were equally prominent. Inordinate amounts of time were spent making the simplest decisions. We were ridiculously inefficient. We did not achieve our production goals. Our notion that we could raise all our food organically fell short each year. Yet we put tremendous effort into food production and gardening did plant and harvest a two acre vegetable garden, produced twenty five to fifty percent of the food we consumed, and lived on an unbelievably meager amount of cash given our numbers.

Then, too, we were not prepared for the rigors of country life and experienced some profound and serious setbacks. Large animals who we loved and cared for got sick and we had no sense of how to help them. Potato bugs ravaged our potatoes
notwithstanding a commitment that every man, woman and child would spend one hour each morning hand picking bugs off the plants., and endeavor that lasted for weeks. And the August drought of 1970, when our spring and potable water source quite literally ran dray, shocked us as well as seriously threatened our and our children’s health and well being. With over 40 people living on the property and with the main crops needing to be harvested, the fact that we didn’t have water to drink or clean with created a time consuming problem we were completely unprepared for.

In this regard, our failure to harvest the oat field planted in spring’s enthusiasm reflects over commitment and the absence of good harvesting equipment, as well as an overall level of disorganization and naiveté. The collective harvest of the oat field in winter was a political and spiritual gesture as much as a practical one, where over seventy persons from elsewhere in the state joined us one cold December day to make our way through the field in a visible manifestation of the rewards of joint endeavor. The image was far more important than the actually meager product. The sheaves of harvested wheat which stood I that field were a reminder to one and all of what we were capable of achieving and what we had failed to achieve.

There was an energy to the commune movement that was far greater than we were, a social force operating beyond our will or control. Whereas one day there seemed to be few if any communes in Vermont or in the nation, by the summer of 1971 there were easily one hundred separate conglomerates of people sharing living situations in Vermont who considered themselves communes. These ranged from “political” communes, with no base on the land, to the “spiritual/life style” communes with no interest in politics. In the summer of 1971, the Earthworks Commune co-sponsored a “gathering of the tribes” at the Franklin farm. Over three hundred people from dozens of separate communes across the state showed up for this meeting. Numerous projects started from that gathering whose scope exceeded that which any one commune could create, including a free health clinic, a food buying cop-op and a children’s school at the Mt Philo commune in Ferrisburg which drew children to it from numerous communes across the state.

A fire destroying the Earthworks main house and wood shed right before Thanksgiving of our second year was a devastating blow and came at a particularly unfortunate time in the evolution of the commune. We had finally achieved a modest degree of stability. Our membership was relatively fixed at thirteen adults and six children. We had a very successful summer and fall from a production perspective. The shed was filled to the rafters with over sixty cords of wood. The root cellar held hundreds of pounds of root crops, canned food and preserved meat. We had devised a plan to reduce the number of mouths we had to feed in the difficult winter months. We were preparing for sugaring well in advance.

After the fire, we were forced to face the issue of our survival in very pragmatic terms. We had no place to live, no food and few financial resources. A series of meetings about regrouping versus dissolving were held, mostly at our friends’ house, Nat and Nini Worman. We erected a makeshift cabin where we could cook and where eight crowded adults could sleep. Others slept in the barn and converted school buses. Many from town succored us with food and clothing. Communards from elsewhere in the state, particularly the Mullein Hill commune in West Glover provided manual labor. We drafted plans to build a combination workshop and home, the very home where the Gagne family who farms this land lives today. We arranged for our children to move to Mt. Philo Commune School.

Building in the midst of a Vermont winter is not ideal, to say the least. Daylight hours are pitifully short. Frozen boards split from the pounding of nails. Gloved hands are not agile. Yet we did survive that winter, the children at Mt. Philo, with rotating adults from Franklin helping out, were thriving. By spring, many people from elsewhere in Vermont came to help in sugaring and rebuilding. Naturally, numerous helpers also meant visitors to feed and house. We were organized for them, even specialized. Only 2 or 3 people drove our team of horses. Only 3 or 4 people fed the fire under the pan. Guests helped cook, carry wood, and gather sap.

I have a particular vision of that sugaring season which captures the essence of the Franklin commune experience for me. We were gathering heavily flowing maple sap on a glorious sunny, spring day. We were gathering sap in a tub being drawn by a team of horses. As we drove thee first full tub of sap to the sugar house, the tub tipped off the dray onto its side. We lost some sap. But the full tub couldn’t be returned to the dray. So we set about unloading the sap we had gathered in the tank back into the trees we had just harvest where we poured the sap back into the very buckets we had just unloaded. It was as if someone had taken a movie of our operation and was now playing the reel in reverse. Yet we did right the tank and again made sweet syrup amidst the laughter, self doubt and self-ridicule. We also finished the shop, planted the year’s crops and persevered through similar joys and failures for the year to come.

Then the war in Vietnam ended and the “counter-cultural” energy seemed to dissipate. Parents and their children hungered to make safer saner living units. Couples now separated could not comfortably live with their exes. Old disputes and disagreements as to how we would live were no longer promising of agreeable resolution. Founding members drifted off and the connection to Jane Wheelwright was frayed. Newcomers did not find the commune as romantic or attractive as it once had been. The commune dissolved. Jane sold the land. The sap flows in the trees. The grass has covered the scar n the earth that had been the farm house.

Nearly half a dozen residents of Earthworks still live in Vermont, some in politically and socially active roles. Others have careers in health care, carpentry, psychotherapy, became lawyers and businessmen. Many are still in New England. There was one gathering of many of us reconnecting years later.