Holyford

We are a group of six adults, two children (aged 4 and 7), two dogs and one cat living on a wonderful 4 acre rural location in East Devon. Our interests are sustainable living, organic food production, land connection, strong and open communication, emotional growth, living peaceably, cooking, yoga, surfing, fishing and many more! We're a diverse group with varying backgrounds, vocations and skills. Shared utilities are additional to rent and are approx £75 per adult, per month (to be reviewed in autumn 2018). Council tax, electric, water, central heating, wood (and processing costs) for woodburners and hot water, internet, propane and landline phone are all covered by the utilities contribution. Water is from our own spring and is filtered and UV treated. We have vegetable terraces, raised beds and a polytunnel and are considering, for 2019, a food growing and sharing scheme, with people giving either their time or a contribution towards vegetables and fruit. The two founder members have run various vegetable box schemes in the past. We are fine-tuning a scheme to share tasks, such as gardening and land management, looking after hens, cooking shared meals, ‘homecare’ of shared indoor areas, childcare and processing wood for the log boiler (approx 3-5 hrs a week total contribution time). We have a bulk dry goods (and chilled) food order with Essential Co-op. There is also an option to share in orders of sustainably produced, high welfare, fish and meat from local suppliers. Two dogs and one cat already live here. More pets are not preferred. The co-operative is smoke/substance free and we ask that any alcohol consumption is kept responsible and moderate. If visitors smoke there is a dedicated area for this away from the house and children. We also ask that co-op members restrict screen-time (TV, laptop and smartphone entertainment) around the children and where possible share other interests and games with them to provide alternative opportunities for learning through play and interaction. Quiet times are generally between 10.30pm - 7am. We have created an Interactional Agreement document from an adaptation of the Geneva Co-housing Community Agreement.