Five Ways Farm project

Guiding Values: Nature, Health, Friendship, Knowledge, Sustainability

Mission: Living a higher quality life

A COMMUNITY OF FRIENDS

As we enter the second half of life, an important choice is in front of us.

What to do from this point forward?

Stay home and live as we always have, except for our finished job.
Start traveling the world.
Sell everything and retire to a hotel, retirement home, nursing home.
Live a new life different from our previous one.

Five Ways Farm Project falls under the fourth option.

The Project is a proposal for a retreat in the countryside to live an active and healthy life, in close contact with Nature, within a community, following five guiding values: Nature, Health, Friendship, Knowledge, Sustainability.

MISSION

The community’s mission is: TO LIVE A LIFE OF SUPERIOR QUALITY.

A community of friends

The first objective of this project is
to create an Intentional Community

The first goal in realizing the value proposition is to create a community of friends who want to

follow the Five Ways,
share pleasantly with others times, spaces, activities, feelings and emotions,
develop the art of “caring for one another“,
cultivate daily the following virtues: sincerity, honesty, loyalty, transparency, seriousness, responsibility, firmness, kindness and generosity.

Once the community of friends has been created, it will be possible to proceed to create an agricultural limited liability company and an association.

These legal entities will be functional to the management of the community’s initiatives.

These legal entities will be instrumental in managing the community’s initiatives.

They will be indirect instruments to develop and maintain a prosperous community over time.

The corporation and association will also have their own vision and mission.

But it is not up to me to define them; that will be a task we have to do all together once the community of friends is up and running.

To create a community that will carry us through the second half of life, we need at least four elements:

people,
a community intent (mission, guiding values, vision) shared by all participants,
a structure and a set of organizational operating systems aimed at fostering cohesion, a sense of community, and feelings of trust, esteem, respect, and friendship among members; these are the tools directly suited to creating and allowing the community to thrive over time,
the financial resources to carry out the investments and initiatives planned by the community project.

To understand the importance of intent, think, for example, of ecovillages.

GEN’s definition is as follows: “ecovillages are settlement models that seek to protect the planet’s living systems, encourage personal growth and experiment with lifestyles that facilitate harmony among human beings and with nature.”

In the definition of an ecovillage, their intentions are highlighted, not the modes of living. They seek:

to protect the planet’s living systems,
to encourage personal growth and
to experiment with lifestyles that facilitate harmony among human beings and with nature.

Then, we see that ecovillages have a well-defined intent shared by all members and devote special attention to caring for their members (personal growth) and seeking the creation and maintenance of harmony among themselves, among all human beings, and with nature.

In fact, a community is not only living together: it is also the reason for doing so.

Communities are founded on the fundamental belief that in a community one can live a better life than one does, as is usual today, without belonging to a community other than the family.

But this is true only when:

all participants share the intent (mission, guiding values, and vision), and
a structure and organizational operating systems have been set up to allow for non-violent communication, peaceful resolution of conflicts, access to data and information to all members, and decision-making processes have been approved by the members themselves.

Intent of the Five Ways Farm Project Community

The community’s mission is “to make its members live a life of superior quality” by living harmoniously together, walking the five ways, cultivating caring and the virtues mentioned above, and undertaking the initiatives we will decide together once the community has been created.

The community I wish to foster is based on walking the five ways, the community’s guiding values (Nature, Health, Friendship, Knowledge, Sustainability) that will orient our choices and behaviors to achieve the vision.

In addition, I recall the duty to develop the art of “caring” for one another and to cultivate daily the following virtues: sincerity, honesty, loyalty, transparency, seriousness, responsibility, firmness, gentleness, and generosity so that the members of the community can increasingly trust one another since trust is the foundation of every healthy and lasting relationship.

Finally, the community’s vision in the distant future is that of “a community of centenarians, who love each other, are healthy, kind, agile, and lively, eager for knowledge, and dedicated to passing it on, celebrating life and friendship together weekly.“

I am not a group facilitator, an expert in effective, empathic, and CNV communication, or a specialist in conflict resolution – restructuring.

I hope that a member of the community will be such an expert and, in any case, I count on all of us to strive to improve ourselves in non-violent communication, in positively overcoming conflict, and, in general, in managing interpersonal relationships by learning to use tried and tested organizational operating systems that we will learn over time.

After all, we learn by living, and the road to the goal will take each of us’s whole life.

The arrival at the goal will last but only an instant.

Elements	Community	Agricultural Company	Association
Core Values	Nature, Health, Friendship, Knowledge, Sustainability	Nature, Health, Friendship, Knowledge, Sustainability	Nature, Health, Friendship, Knowledge, Sustainability
Vision	"In the distant future is that of "a community of centenarians, who love each other, are healthy, kind, agile, and lively, eager for knowledge, and dedicated to passing it on, celebrating life and friendship together weekly."	To be defined together	To be defined together
Mission	"to live a life of superior quality"	To be defined together	To be defined together
Caring	To develop the art of "caring" for one another	Encourage the creation of agricultural start-ups of young people who wish to establish intentional communities	To be defined together
Virtues	Sincerity, honesty, loyalty, transparency, seriousness, responsibility, firmness, gentleness, and generosity	To be defined together	To be defined together
Organizational Structure	To be defined together (e.g., network, sociocratic circles)	To be defined together	To be defined together
Organizational operating systems	The Way of the Circle and others to be defined together	Da definire insieme	Da definire insieme
Financial Resources	NO	YES	YES
Summary Table