QIVC Members: About Us

The Quaker Intentional Village-Canaan is currently made up of ten member households (17 adults, 6 children) living on the land together. Here is a little information about our households. For more on our vision, how we got started, etc., see our FAQ.

Sandra and Carolyn: Sandra and her daughter Carolyn live in a modular, blue, two-bedroom house made by Blu Homes and unfolded on-site in September 2010. Sandra is doing a lot of gardening and hopes for a future of orchards, great hikes, listening to wonderful audio books and podcasts, singing with the local chorus, and lots of cutting firewood with her new chainsaw to heat her house. Carolyn is a recent college graduate. Sandra works in development and fundraising for the local public radio (classical music) and television stations.

Jens and Spee and three children twenty and older: Spee's passion and paying work is international humanitarian work, which she does on a consulting basis for Save the Children and others. Jens is very involved with the Alternatives to Violence Project internationally and with preservation and food production right here at QIVC. Among their many projects are care of parents and grandchildren, beekeeping, orcharding, soil improvement, and natural building. They have lived and worked in many countries around the world, including Ecuador, Palestine, and Costa Rica. In 2009, Jens completed building their three-bedroom First Day Cottage house and in 2017, to make space for his elderly parents, completed a cool addition with a sod roof and an upside-down tree in the middle of the timber frame.

Dee: Dee is a retired child and family psychologist and sometime mediator who is currently, slowly building a tiny house named Tiny Red. She is happily anticipating living in a small, tidy, simple space of her own, where she can meditate and create. Drawn to spiritual traditions that cultivate the heart and its expression in the world, Dee, a Buddhist Quaker, finds vipassana meditation and Quaker worship complementary and practices both. Dee's passionate aspiration is to bring more Love into the world.

Paul: Paul’s lifelong passion is organic gardening which has recently expanded into the discovery of nutrient-dense soil-building. One of his current creative outlets is landscaping the hill around their house with rock terracing. A political radical, Paul is known as “Captain Catastrophe” and sees his work in the community as the most creative expression of "collapsonomics."  Paul lives in a passive solar, wood-stove heated home. His two adult sons (1980 & 1982) enjoy visiting and participating in community work and celebratory events.

Eric and two children (1998 & 2001): Eric has a passion for creating the infrastructure for a post-monetary economy based on wealth as thriving living systems, which he does as part of the MetaCurrency Project and Holo. His other interests include collective intelligence and social architectures, the open-source revolution, and renaturalization (Jim Corbett). He also makes excellent scones. Eric's wife Ellen who was a beloved member of the community, died in 2016. She was a Certified Professional Midwife, part-time Web developer, and one time copy-editor. Their two children, both in college, are interested in reading, political science, gender theory, computer science, aviation, and getting things done. They live in a three-bedroom straw-bale house built by local craftspeople, heated with a masonry wood heater. They have solar panels and drive an electric car (charged in a community parking area).

The Michaud family lives in a self-built three-bedroom First Day Cottage heated with wood and solar-heated water. They enjoy living both on the inside and the outside of their cozy little house on the uphill side of the land, where they have a view of the beauty and love that abounds. Emilie-Anne is dedicated to her family and her work as a pediatric psychiatric nurse practitioner. Her main drive is supporting her children in their growth and struggles with disabilities and chronic illness. However, under-girding all this activity and work is her conscious noticing and holding of the mundane moments of life, thus allowing the Light to emanate. Dan is a recently retired social worker. His greatest interests are in existential spirituality, outdoor sports (running, mountain biking, kayaking, camping, snowboarding), spending time with his children, and growing, raising, and cooking food. Daughter Elon lives nearby in Troy, NY and is often here on weekends. She has a passion for nature and animal care. She enjoys music and literature, and inspires others with her courageous fight for recovery from tick-born diseases. One young adult son is living in Los Angeles, and another grown son, daughter-in-law, and their child live in San Diego.

Eric Bear spends a lot of time barefoot and is our NextGen Ambassador and STIR, which stands for: Short Term Intentional Resident. After many sessions as a STIR, Bear remains a frequent visitor and bringer of Bear energy to QIVC. Bear is deeply involved in Agile Learning Centers, a growing movement of wholly remarkable schools that foster self-direction, intentionality, reflectivity, and conscious culture creation. Bear has an erudite/infantile sense of humor which everyone, everywhere, always loves.

Anne and her son Milo were frequent friends and visitors to QIVC (aka "The Land") for years before moving here in May 2013. They love the people, the mission, and the place. Anne is an actress (her specialty is one-woman shows) who keeps the wolves from the door by working for the estate of the sculptor, George Rickey. Milo, off at college, enjoys playing Dungeons and Dragons, theater, computers, and simply being with his friends.

Hana and Noah, and their son Lev and daughter Shira like to forage for wild foods and dig around in the dirt. Noah is a musician with many hats—pianist, singer, conductor, and fledgling jazz musician—and Hana is a journalist, wrestler, and volunteer fire-fighter (training for full-time). Lev and Shira's favorite activities include jumping on the trampoline, digging, reading books with anyone who will join him, and eating pears.

Robin and two daughters live on the land and enjoy community and being near family. Robin is a worker-owner at Random Harvest Market in Craryville, NY

Michelle and Devin with two children are the most recent arrivals to the community. They are involved in everything at Flying Deer Nature Center in Chatham, NY