Joel Sternfeld-Sweet Earth Experimental Utopias In America

I finished reading Joel Sternfeld's Sweet Earth Experimental Utopias In America tonight and I found it so inspiring.  I guess I'm at that idealistic age in my life where communal living sounds like the perfect life, but beyond that the book also has as lot of history that I found interesting.  It seems that a majority of communes tend to have a religious swing to them but no matter what type of commune it was specifically they all seemed to share the thread of tending to the land.  

The Farm in Summertown, TN originally had 1400 people.  It started in the 70's when a bunch of hippies from San Francisco drove buses to Tennessee and started a commune.  They also have a volunteer wing called Plenty.  Plenty was one of the first groups of people to get down to and help during Hurricane Katrina and they have groups set up in Guatemala and other places as well.  I am looking into going down there soon to volunteer, at least to put my ideas to the test anyway.  Sternfeld had two pages of text and two pages of images for this commune, more than any other in his book, so it seems that even to him this was a pretty important place.  I'm glad that it is only an hour away from Nashville.  

These are some of my favorite images from the book.